Last year indie rocker from Omaha Matt Whipkey released the excellent double album memory rocker Penny Park: Omaha, NE: Summer 1989. An immediate best of the year for anybody who heard it, a classic rocker with a tinge of sadness and a lot of joy, Matt cemented his reputation as one of Omaha’s greatest local stars.
Yeah, that and $5,000 will get you a new album. It is really sad that a song as great as “Been waiting” isn’t a radio hit in this day and age and can’t carry the heartfelt and smart, beautiful played, highly concentrated masterpiece like Penny Park into the mainstream. Which is where it belongs. No one is looking for a miracle, but I think we are all looking for a gifted musician like Matt not needing to go on Kickstart to get some funding.
But there you go, life is the definition of unfair.
This is off his Kickstart page:
“Narrowed down to ten tracks, “Underwater” is split between songs performed between my trusted band of rock and roll specialists (Scott “Zip” Zimmerman, Robert Carrig, Korey Anderson and Travis Sing) and collaborations with J. Scott Gaeta. Throughout the summer, recording sessions went down with an ease I had not felt in a long time. Everything was fitting, the sound was cohesive, the songs laid bare their hungry bones: this was an album.
“Over my 14 years releasing recordings, no single collection has featured songs written exclusively within a small window of time. “Underwater” is unique in the sense that each tune came from a feeling and place rooted in the winter of 2014 (with one written in June). While it is common to sit on and workshop songs for up to years, I did not want this collection’s initial spark tampered with. Though not a concept in the sense of “Penny Park..”, “Underwater” may be my most conceptual work to date, an aural documentary of fourteen frigid weeks.”
“Underwater” is a fabulous song, sort of a soulful folkiness, with some of Dylan in the rasp. I like it a whole lot, but I tend to, try it yourself then give Matt some money.
