Conor Oberst

Conor Oberst started out as a scrappy, teenage lo-fi artist on the Omaha, Nebraska underground and eventually became the linchpin of an entire scene as well one of the most lauded singer/songwriters of his generation. Heavily influenced by Omaha indie troubadour Simon Joyner at an early age, Oberst, who was born in Omaha on February 15, 1980, began making home recordings of his songs, which combined poetic language with intense emotional landscapes. He released his first limited-edition DIY cassette, Water, when he was just 13 years old. The dizzyingly prolific Oberst played in and recorded with several bands while still in his teens, including Commander Venus, new wave revivalists The Faint, and Park Avenue. All the while he was making music on his own under the Bright Eyes banner, though the first Bright Eyes album wouldn't be released until 1998. The majority of Oberst's work on these various projects was released by Saddle Creek, the label his brother Justin started to release Oberst's music. By the late '90s, Saddle Creek had expanded to represent the burgeoning Omaha scene, gaining in popularity alongside Bright Eyes. Oberst broke through to another level of renown when the 2005 Bright Eyes album I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning went to No. 10 in the U.S. album charts. By that point he had already started Team Love, a companion label to Saddle Creek, on which he released albums by everyone from Simon Joyner to The Felice Brothers. Albums under his own name, though, mostly came out on other labels, like Merge and, later, Nonesuch. In 2009 he released a record as a member of indie-rock supergroup Monsters of Folk, also including M. Ward, My Morning Jacket's Jim James, and producer Mike Mogis.