Multimusician Keen hitting Duffy’s stage — five times in one night

Wednesday will be an unusually loaded night for Duffy's Tavern (1412 O St.), with five different acts playing the college bar's relatively tiny stage. All of the acts vary wildly in tone and scope. There's the "party sauce" of Good Speakers Present, the experimental psychedelia of Touch People, the glitchy DJ goodness of  Bad Speler, the raw rock of High Art and the multimedia dancefloor insanity of The Show Is The Rainbow.

It's going to be a wild night.

One might wonder how Duffy's can accommodate the raw amount of personnel and gear that five bands of such different styles would require. Well, lucky them, because all five bands are one man: the charismatic, polymathic, arguably insane multimusician, Darren Keen.

"Everybody is always joking with me because I'm in so many one-man bands, saying ‘Why don't you play all of them in one night?'" Keen said. "So now I'm calling them out on that, and my five bands are playing five sets in one night."

Keen has been a staple of Lincoln's ever-evolving music scene for nearly a decade, developing his style — rather, styles — all along the way.

What started as simply The Show is the Rainbow (although, "simple" is a hard concept to ascribe to The Rainbow) has since blossomed into five full-time one-man bands, and Keen doesn't even break a mental sweat over them.

"I play so much for all of these bands that it's just something I do," he said. "Music is what I love doing. I don't find it exhausting at all."

Keen isn't the type to get exhausted over music, or anything for that matter. He has been on numerous tours around North America, Europe and New Zealand as several of his acts. Also, three days after the Duffy's show, he is getting married. And one month after that, he and his wife-to-be are going on a 10-month international honeymoon tour as The Show is the Rainbow, Bad Speler and Touch People.

He doesn't do anything slow or small. But for now, he's focused on his Duffy's show, and making it as good as a Darren Keen show as has come to be expected.

"I just want to do five really good sets," he said. "I'm not going to get super smashed or anything because I'm DJing between my band sets, and that's when I'm going to have to frantically set up everything and I'm going to need to be on top of things."

If things go well at the Duffy's show, there's no telling where Keen might take such a concept.

"I want it to be an annual event," he said. "I want to challenge anyone else to try to do the same thing."

caseywelsch@

dailynebraskan.com

if you go:

when: April 27, 8 p.m.

where: Duffy's Tavern, 1412 O St.

how much: Normal Door (18+)