Tim Kasher with Aficionado and O Fidelis at the Conservatory, OKC, 9/8/11

Tim Kasher is a genius. An often overshadowed genius, as Omaha-based frontmen go, but one who's been around for a long time, involved with such now-defunct Saddle Creek legends as Commander Venus and Slowdown Virgina, as well as still-rocking bands Cursive and The Good Life. When I heard Tim Kasher's solo tour was swinging through Oklahoma City, I bought a ticket in advance. Way in advance. I must have been the only one, because no one showed up early. The attendance was so sparse for the first few hours of the show that I was worried no one was coming. An small venue is a beautiful thing, an audience of ten kind of a sad state of affairs. A lot of people showed up late, after the two openers, which was good for the atmosphere and somewhat disappointing in terms of the pre-show ritual.

After a pleasantly folksy opening set by a soon-to-be-married local duo called O Fidelis, my ears were made to ring for three consecutive days by a New York band called Aficionado, whose performance is probably best described as "loud." That was about all my brain managed to process of the experience, though I do remember trying very hard to hear a flute being played somewhere under the noise of guitars and drumset.

Kasher's first solo attempt produced Monogamy, a really kind of heart-rending(ly sarcastic) LP about reaching your mid-thirties and realizing that nothing in life, but especially your relationship, is going even remotely how you'd hoped. He followed that up with Bigamy, an EP of songs recording during the same sessions that contain perhaps more assholery than honesty. I wondered how these songs were going to play live, and I was more than pleasantly surprised, despite their relatively simple compositions and melancholy theme. The band added ample time for rocking out, and turned the record into something much more complex than the original. It was fantastic to hear.

The venue was a new one to me, and charmingly dilapidated. Tim claimed it reminded him of a lot of dives he played when he was young(er). It was a tiny but enthusiastic audience, and nobody seemed to object to the rambling monologues that were dispersed through the second half of the set (I certainly didn't). He went on a tangent about Lady Gaga using Nebraska (and by means of awkward radio edit, Oklahoma) to gain some kind of country folk appeal, and was wildly applauded. Someone convinced him to play a song each from the catalogs of his primary projects, Cursive and The Good Life -- "From the Hips" and "Album of the Year" were fantastic to hear, but were, surprisingly, outshone by the songs from Monogamy.

The end of the show was outright chaotic, with members of Aficionado and Tim Kasher's band all crowded onto a tiny stage and having swapped instruments. The bass player managed to fall over into me (but this was okay, as she's small) and we pushed her back up on stage. When Tim ended up moshing in the crowd, blaring a trumpet over his head, I lost track of what was going on. It was a wondrously energetic end to a rowdy night, and when the lights came on, and the band stepped off the stage and started meeting people, it felt really strange. It was too engrossing a show to fathom the performers hanging around and acting like real people without any pretense of leaving the stage to preserve the mystery. My head was already pounding and my ears already ringing when we walked to the car, but I didn't really notice.

The solo tour is over now, and I hear he's headed back to the studio with Cursive, but if you get a chance to catch him on the next round, then, by all means, do it.