Jake Bellows with Christopher the Conquered and Both, the Slowdown, Omaha 12/23/15

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Christopher the Conquered (left), with jingle bell guests
For the second year in a row, Jake Bellows played the Slowdown on December 23. In 2014, it was a rare show with Neva Dinova. This time, it was solo.

Both opened again, just like last year. I think they sound pretty good, but they spent a lot more time talking than performing, and experienced some distracting technical difficulties and had to beg members of the audience for AA batteries.

Morgan (left) and Jake as Supermoon
Christopher the Conquered was up next, for the last night of his 4-show December residency at the Slowdown. He's a pianist from Iowa who demanded a lot of audience participation. He has a very powerful voice, but I can't say I connected with his style of music very much. He was off to a European tour to start the new year. To get in the Christmas spirit, he was operating a sort of challenge, where anyone who wanted to could come on stage and, in exchange for doing some kind of performance with the jingle bells (to be specified by Christopher), receive a free record. Several people participated, including the people in the photo.

Jake's set was really interesting -- stripped down versions of songs from his solo work and Neva Dinova records, done with just one electric guitar and vocals. He hit a lot of high points from his catalog for me. Probably my favorite single track was "Brooklyn". I'm a sucker for the self-titled record, so maybe that was predictable. Jake also did a cover (by maybe Waylon Jennings?) I really liked -- I keep waiting for the lyrics to come back to me.

Toward the end of the set, Jake invited his girlfriend, Morgan, onto the stage to sing a couple of songs with him. They duetted the vocals. Apparently, they're forming a country band called Supermoon, and recordings should be forthcoming. I'm looking forward to it.

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