LIGHTNING STILLS LP
Track Listing

Gas Me Up
He's Not Heavy, He's My Dealer
Drunker Than Me
Rambled Out
My Mama Wants a Love Song
Spirits
Willie and the Ghost
Closed Down the Bar

Reviews

"The 8-song LP vacillates between more old-fashioned traditional country (“Gas Me Up,” “Drunker Than Me”) and something that resembles modern indie-country (“He’s Not Heavy, He’s My Dealer,” “Willie and the Ghost”). Then there’s “Spirits,” which kinda/sorta reminded me of Silver Jews, with Fort’s basso voice coming close to Berman territory. " - Lazy-I

"Lightning Stills is a venerated cast of Omaha musicians – a who’s who of local artists of varying genres, all unified in a love for pure and unadulterated Outlaw Country." - Twangville

“As Lightning Stills, they’re breaking out their best dusty twangs and lamentations for some sweet-kickin’ tracks Outlaw Country-style!” - Revenant Media

Lightning Stills

After twenty years of full-throttle drinking, Craig Fort had to straighten out. To help get through the rehab days of sobriety, he created an alter-ego, Lightning Stills, a rhinestone cowboy in the vein of Waylon and Johnny Paycheck. All their hardship tropes, Fort lived through. Once he started writing as Lightning Stills, the songs poured out: part catharsis, part what the hell was that? Heavy stuff, though not without toe-tapping sensibilities.

He recruited longtime bar stool neighbor, Mike Friedman, to collaborate on tracking/producing a debut EP. In the six years since, Lightning Stills has grown into a mixed bag of longtime Omaha players. A bunch of road-tested dust punks, doing whiskey-drenched tunes of fast living that, if they weren’t so hard earned, might sound cliche. - Chris Harding Thornton

Press Release

“Previously, my drug of choice was ‘more’. It didn't matter what it was. If I was drinking, I wanted to drink more. So I would find something to ‘help’ to do that,” explains the now-sober Craig Fort of Omaha-based outlaw country band Lightning Stills to AntiMusic about the inspiration of their new critically-hailed self-titled debut album (out now via Max Trax Records). Fort adds, “Then I would want to do more of the ‘help’. I basically lived at the bar that I worked at for ten years. Most nights we went pretty hard.”

Lightning Stills isn’t about the negative effects of alcohol. Instead, it's about learning how to manage through life’s moments. Americana Highways says, "The Omaha band has crafted a country record soused in late-night bar misadventures, plus more than a little day (all hours of the day) drinking. But it’s not the celebratory slop you’d hear in, say, a Lee Brice song – its stomach-churning truth about what can happen when the bottle becomes the only thing you cherish."

The album features previous singles such as, “My Mama Wants A Love Song” which "will not be a song that non-country fans can’t stand. Rather I think they’ll appreciate that this song has heart, punk ethos, and persistence that you don’t find in the doldrums of some country genre songs that many despise,” claims Scummy Water Tower. Whereas Americana Highways lauds "Gas Me Up" as “groovy, drawing and all consuming.”

Originating in 2020, Craig first formulated the band with Omaha music icon and multi-instrumentalist Mike Friedman who had been playing country for decades. Pulling into their magnetic orbit a “good-timing odd bunch” that features guitarist Tom May, bassist Dan Maxwell, and drummer Javid Thunders, Lightning Stills was born.

Excited to finally release their debut album, Fort expresses to The Reader, “I think that in the very beginning there was a little bit of heartbreak with it. I have moved beyond that and used it for more of a coping mechanism for just getting out stuff from the past and stuff that I am dealing with now and everything like that. Writing for this band seems very comfortable and easy and not forced, they just come out and come together exactly how I like them.”

Lightning Stills is Craig Fort (vocals, guitar), Mike Friedman (steel guitar, guitars, keys, vocals), Tom May (guitars), Dan Maxwell (bass), Matt Baum (drums) with Oliver Bates Craven guesting on fiddle (NOTE: Javid Thunders played drums on the album).