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  McCarthy Trenching - Headlines
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Dan McCarthy has remained Omaha’s best-kept secret, touring with Mayday, Neva Dinova, The Good Life, Orenda Fink, Maria Taylor, Bright Eyes and many others. His multi-instrumental talent can also be heard on keys for Cursive’s “Happy Hollow” and accordion in Tilly and the Wall’s “Bottoms of Barrels.”

With the release of McCarthy Trenching, the name of his main outfit and self-titled debut, McCarthy may have to finally forfeit his secret status.

This Team Love release marks a best-to-date collection of five years of songwriting and two recording sessions.

Half the songs represent the best of his nine-song 2003 demo “Old Habits” that was recorded by Ted Stevens in the bowels of an old white house that has since been leveled; a mixture of bar songs and waltzes born of nights at a naugahyde stool.

The other songs, from the 2005-2006 “It’s Got Nothing to do with Drinking” sessions, slide out from the bar stool, pack a traveler in the coat, and open scope against a backdrop of piano, electric guitars and commanding acoustic melodies.

The result is a mixture of tear-in-beer waltzes, anthemic drinking songs, and restless tunes of longing that take you from the bar to the road to the track to the morning after and back to the bar again, just in time for happy hour.

Collaborators include Ted Stevens, Ryan Fox, Pat Oakes, Tim Kasher, Orenda Fink, Adrianne Verhoeven, Steve Bartolomei, Alex McManus, Bill Hoover, Renee Ledesma Hoover, and Mark Maziarz.