singing a lullaby

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat

Mike Mogis of Lullaby for the Working Class hesitated when asked what instruments he plays. "I play lots of different instruments," he said finally. "I don't consider myself any sort of player of anything, although on tour I'm going to be playing guitar, banjo, pedal, steel chime and glockenspiel, vibraphone, that kinda thing," he concluded.

Lullaby for the Working Class, part of Omaha, Nebraska's Saddle Creek collective, is one part acoustic pop, one part experimental, and one part intellectual indie-rock. Their music can be described best by listing off all the instruments involved and imagining how they all would work together.

"It's a weird mix of stuff," said Mogis. "The music we play is, well, I don't know how to describe it."

Lullaby for the Working Class's core members are Mogis and Ted Stevens, who sings and plays guitar. The band has been together for almost three years, estimated Mogis, and in that time, has seen nearly a whole lecture hall of members.

"Throughout that period of time we've had it seems like hundreds of members, but it's more like forty. I consider anyone who plays with us a member. Literally, there's been over forty, including the new people. It makes things interesting for us."

The band, whose name conjures up images of a sleepy proletariat, snug in their blue-collar beds, embodies an ideal of the way a band should be; the way music should be.

"I'd almost say communism," said Mogis, trying to describe the influences on Lullaby for the Working Class. "Communism never works out in theory. We're not communist," he was quick to clarify. "(Steven)'s just influenced by that. It strikes a chord with him."

"When me and him started playing together, he was reading a lot of Tolstoy and Marx stuff, and we were in my basement playing a lot of stuff, and he put a sticker on it as a way to differentiate it from all of the other tapes. He put 'Lullaby for the Working Class' on it and then Conor (Oberst, of labelmate Bright Eyes) took the tape and we were kinda forced into calling ourselves 'Lullaby for the Working Class,'" explained Mogis.

Their record label, Saddle Creek, has a similar utopian story behind it as well. Saddle Creek started as a project by Mogis and Robb Nansel for an entrepreneurship class they were taking. "We got an A. A 94," said Mogis. They started out as Lumberjack records but had to change the name to Saddle Creek since there's also a distribution company with that name. "Saddle Creek is a road in Omaha where everybody kinda lived off of," said Mogis. "They'd always take Saddle Creek to their respective houses."

Saddle Creek's bands include Bright Eyes, which is a solo effort by Conor Oberst, an eighteen-year-old guy with a lot of heart and an amazing songwriting capability, Cursive, The Faint, and Park Ave.

"Me and my brother have our own studio, and we work together, put out bands we like," said Mogis. "We've put out the new Bright Eyes, new Cursive,.. those have been doing really well."

Saddle Creek has branched out into a collective of bands that help each other out, play on each other's records, and even live together. Bright Eyes has enjoyed some time near the top of CMJ's charts, and Lullaby for the Working Class has had reviews in Rolling Stone. Flip through the latest issue of Magnet magazine, and you'll find a profile of the label.

"Everybody lives together in this big strange house in Omaha. It's a big house split into three apartments," said Mogis, who lives in Lincoln. Saddle Creek has a few ties with another musicians collective in Georgia, the Elephant 6 consortium, which consists of bands like Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel, some of whose members played on the new Bright Eyes album. "It's similar," said Mogis, "It kinda happened around the same time outta necessity."

"Every band that's on the label plays a role in helping it," said Mogis.

As for Lullaby for the Working Class, they're currently in the middle of a West Coast tour, which stops at Club Congress tomorrow night, with Vic Chesnutt and Edith Frost. They've just put out a new 7", called "The Ebb and Flow the Come and Go the To and Fro," and the band will have copies of the 7" at the show, sans covers (they aren't finished yet). Lullaby for the Working Class are working on their third record, which Mogis predicts will be out in "either April or August."

"We're going to try and make it nice for people to listen to," said Mogis.

And with all those instruments working together in a revolution of the masses, how could it be anything but?