Pitchfork

Tim Kasher has moved to L.A.

Take a minute to let that sink in. Tim Kasher, a godfather to the storied Omaha "scene", bread to America's breadbasket, helmer of two of Saddle Creek's most vital and long-standing bands (one of which he named after Nebraska's original state slogan, for crissakes)-- dude's packed up and skipped town. He warned us in song that he'd leave Omaha, and now he's gone and done it.

Still, from the sound of it, this is a move the Cursive/Good Life frontman has been mulling over for a long time. And we should be excited for the guy.

"It's just something I've always wanted to do," Kasher told Pitchfork recently. "It's exploratory, it's exciting, it's a way [so that at] 80 years old or something I can look back and say, 'And then there was that time when I moved to L.A.'"

While he insists this isn't the reason for the move ("I don't like the vibe of moving to go make it somewhere or something like that,") Kasher-- like many who go the way of L.A.-- has a screenplay in hand. A screenplay adapted from a Kasher-penned play, really, and it's called Help Wanted Nights.

Like a sign one might see outside a diner or something? "Yeah, exactly," said Tim, adding, "it should have commas, but you don't put commas on marquees and stuff, so I thought I'd leave it that way."

According to Kasher, Help Wanted Nights involves "roughly a week in a bar in a small town where a stranger's car breaks down...so, he fraternizes with the regulars, getting too wrapped up in their sordid lives. Something like that."

If that sounds familiar, Kasher's with you. "I didn't hide my appreciation for Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee too much. It also doesn't fall far from the Good Life tree."

Indeed, Help Wanted Nights the play/screenplay in turn helped inspire Help Wanted Nights the album, Kasher's fourth with the Good Life, tentatively due for release via Saddle Creek on September 11, 2007. "There was definitely talk about what's appropriate or inappropriate," Tim explained when asked about the release date. "I think [the label] just saw it as the most logical release date for when we were done with recording it."

Help Wanted Nights features the same Good Life line-up heard on 2004's Album of the Year: Kasher, Stefanie Drootin, Ryan Fox, and Roger Lewis.

And while this won't exactly be his Album of the Decade, "everything's very idealistic," mused Kasher. "It's like if I could ever get that performance to be put on or to be shot, then this would be some kind of soundtrack for that. It was kind of the impetus for writing this record."

The album-- recorded with the famed Mogis brothers, Mike and A.J., at the pair's new Omaha studio-- marks something of a departure for Kasher as a songwriter. "I tried to have the songs be less storytelling, and less narrative...since I was writing this fictionalized counterpart to this thing, I kind of liked the idea of writing songs to [exist] more as ideas that complement something else that was written. I tried to focus less on narrative and more on those big ideas."

Song titles include album-opener "Picket Fence", "A Little Bit More", and closing track "Rest Your Head".

This "big idea" approach of course calls to mind-- perhaps warily-- the songwriting trajectory of Kasher's dear friend and sometime collaborator Conor Oberst. Indeed, Kasher and Oberst continue to play and record together from time to time, although Kasher wishes to keep the details of their collaborations under wraps for fear of tarnishing what they're doing. "Just for fun," as Tim put it.

The Good Life will likely hit the road just after the album-- presently in the final mixing stages-- arrives in late September. Until then, Kasher will don his Cursive cap for a late-April Tokyo date and May's mammoth jaunt with Mastodon. Juggling two successful indie acts doesn't make the veteran musician sweat, however.

"I don't think it really matters too much," he explained. "Maybe this is what it is: when you're touring songs with the band, you're not really creating it, you're not writing it, you're just kind of doing it. And then for an hour you go on stage and play those songs. That doesn't really mean that's what your life's about at that time or anything like that. I just stay in that frame of mind."

Tim's not the only one "Leaving Omaha"-- his Cursive bandmate Matt Maginn has also opted to migrate elsewhere. With crucial folks on the way out, what does this mean for the much-rhapsodized Saddle Creek music community?

"I think Conor [offered] some kind of response for that a few years back that I thought really put it in stone for me," Kasher said. "I feel like he was the first to admit that that's something that happened and something we did...that was all kind of a movement and something special to everybody [but] it's part of my past now, and it's a great memory, a bunch of great memories.

"[Back then] we were all living four people to a house, and now everybody has their own house with their wife or their husband or they're living alone or whatever. It's just different; everybody got older. And that's good, too."

For now, with a new place and a newly acquired "cheap convertible" in Los Angeles, Tim's just going to bask in the moment. "I don't even want to think that far ahead, really. It's temporary-- or I'll stay here forever, if that's what I feel like doing. I have a hunch that I'd probably like to see more places, though."

Catch Cursive curlicue-ing through a club near you this spring.

Dates:

04-27 Tokyo, Japan - Shibuya-Ax
05-01 Los Angeles, CA - Wiltern *#%
05-02 San Francisco, CA - Warfield *#%
05-04 Portland, OR - Roseland Ballroom *#%
05-05 Seattle, WA - The Fenix *#%
05-06 Boise, ID - Big Easy *#%
05-07 Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue *#%
05-08 Denver, CO - Fillmore Auditorium *#%
05-10 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave *%
05-11 Minneapolis, MN - The Myth *#%
05-12 Chicago, IL - Riviera Theatre *#%
05-13 Detroit, MI - State Theatre *#~
05-14 Cleveland, OH - House of Blues *#~
05-15 Toronto, Ontario - Kool Haus *#~
05-16 Burlington, VT - Higher Ground ~
05-17 New York, NY - Roseland Ballroom *#~
05-18 Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory *#~
05-19 Boston, MA - Avalon *#~
05-20 Buffalo, NY - The Icon ~
05-21 Columbus, OH - Lifestyles Pavilion *#~
05-22 Cincinnati, OH - Bogart's *#~
05-23 Baltimore, MD - Sonar *#~
05-24 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle ~
05-25 Orlando, FL - House of Blues *#~
05-26 Atlanta, GA - Tabernacle *#~
05-27 Nashville, TN - Exit In ~
05-29 Springfield, MO - Remington's
05-30 Lawrence, KS - Bottleneck
05-31 Omaha, NE - Waiting Room

* with Mastodon
# with Against Me!
% with Planes Mistaken for Stars
~ with These Arms Are Snakes