STERBA, NOAH: 13-Bar Blues LP
Noah Sterba "13-Bar Blues" LP (Grapefruit)
Preview the track "Too Far Gone" HERE!!!
Noah Sterba is one of Omaha’s underground music heroes, literally
performing most of his songs and poetry into dented Radio Shack
microphones in the subterranean basements of tornado alley for the last
decade. Beside releasing several solo cassettes on Unread Records, he
was a founding member of short-lived critical darlings Yuppies, lo-fi
local legends The Prairies (which also featured David Nance), and The
Subtropics (whose posthumous double cassette is seeing vinyl reissue in
2017), and has been an important member of Simon Joyner’s Ghosts since
2011. He is also involved in a multimedia art/publishing collaboration
called Slowed Soul with fellow local Omaha artist and musician Jeff
Sedrel.
In a time when so much music is
fueled by self-congratulatory irony, The 13-Bar Blues is refreshing for
its unapologetic sincerity. The album distills folk, blues, punk rock
and country influences and merges them with poetry, allowing Sterba to
graciously tear up his hat in the face of those who have come before him
as he claws through America’s gnarly 21st century landscape with his
tongue, pen, busted guitar, and wide open eyes.
“I
think it is music that needs to be out there right now... Almost every
sort of rock or folk music, musics born of protest and boiling blood and
grit and energy, has lulled back into apathy. Over the last six years
this album created itself and whether or not it means anything is up to
other people to decide, I suppose. What I can say is I put every ounce
of guts and soul I got into this. It is me being as convicted and
truthful as I can be about all I have seen around me and inside me since
I started doing this thing.”
Tracklist:
1. 12 Bar Blues
2. Too Far Gone
3. Three Sheets to the Breeze
4. Lady Madonna Ain't My Friend
5. Dead Hero Blues
6. Violin Eyes
7. Dark American Rodeo
