On a frigid night last Dec. 5, as the city was hurting from a tragedy earlier in the day, downtown Benson was celebrating local music for the first annual Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards nominees showcase.

Spread over five venues – the Waiting Room, Mick’s, the P.S. Collective, the Barley Street Tavern and Espana, more than 50 OEA-nominated acts performed short sets to extremely enthusiastic crowds.

As fans hustled between venues to catch the sounds of mariachi bands or pounding heavy metal or beer-soaked alt-country acts, the buzz and chatter revolved around, “Wow, they should do this in the summer!”

That’s where the idea for the first annual OEA Summer Showcase event was birthed.

If 500 fans were willing to show up and experience this much quality music stacked into one magical evening imagine how much fun a showcase on a summer night might be.

What would be the objective for this event? Just ask a bunch of acts to perform shorts sets? Who should perform? Why would these artists want to participate in this?

The OEA board discussed this concept at length all winter and the one idea we kept coming back to was this: We thought the December Nominee Showcase event, and the entire awards program in general, had helped increase awareness of some of the acts that were having success in the Big O but had yet to connect with a really large local audience.

Kris Lager, Sarah Benck & the Robbers, Little Brazil, Chris Saub, Tim Wildsmith, Mariachi Y Luna, Acoustic Groove – all these acts and more benefited from their association with the OEAs. Performing at the showcase and at the awards show brought them a larger audience and for a couple, helped them snag an OEA.

That became the central theme to the OEA Summer Showcase set for July 18 this summer. Spread over the same five venues in downtown Benson, local acts will vie for an opportunity to perform in the same showcase setting for OEA academy members and the general public in hopes of securing a nomination for this year’s awards.
Public nominations begin just two weeks later on Aug. 1 and this showcase event gives all those local musicians that are already bringing their “A” game a chance to get in front of the eyes and ears of the voting public.

I could offer a long list of acts who have yet to receive an OEA nomination that are certainly deserving, among them Midwest Dilemma, Bear Country, Brad Hoshaw, Korey Anderson, the Show is the Rainbow, Landing on the Moon, Monica Eby … the list goes on and on and I’ve probably left off some of the most deserving.
We hope these acts and all the other fantastic local artists in our community choose to submit to perform for the OEA Summer Showcase on July 18.

Applications can be found at OEA-awards.com and can be mailed or dropped off at any Homer’s location. Acts are required to submit a two-song CD and basic information about the musicians.

Those selected will be offered an opportunity to showcase with 60 other acts performing 20- to 30-minute sets. Academy members get in free to see the artists and the general public will pay one low fee to gain access to all the venues.

Along with the chance to perform in this special setting one act will be offered a chance to gain a performance slot at next year’s South by Southwest Music Festival and others will score free advertising in the media and Web site placement with Homers Music.