Even if you don't recognize her name, a quick glance through your record collection will probably reveal that you own something that Tiffany Kowalsky has played on. After spending several years as the violinist for the much-loved Omaha, NE band Lullaby For The Working Class, she now divides her time between Omaha's Mayday (with ex-Lullaby bandmate Ted Stevens) and Chicago's Head of Femur. In addition, she's been a touring and session musician for, among others, Bright Eyes, M. Ward, The Bruces and Dave Dondero. During Mayday's tour stop in Portland, I spent an hour or so in a dive bar with Tiffany discussing the upcoming Mayday record, life in the midwest, and weeping willows.

JF: How long have you been playing violin?

TK: Well, I started when I was about three or four years old and I quit when I was twelve. You know, the whole rebellion of "I don't want to do this anymore." Then I started again in high school, I quit when I was eighteen. Then I started again when I was about 20, and I'm 27 now, so I've been playing seriously for seven years maybe.

JF: You started young, were your parents musical?

TK: I actually just recently found out. I asked them the same question and I found out it was because I had reading troubles when I was a kid, I was super dyslexic, so they wanted me to try to read music right to left to help me read. They're not very musical at all, but we always had music in our house when I was growing up. Friends coming over playing guitar. Still to this day, on Friday nights there's people over playing music, everybody just shows up with an instrument.

JF: So they weren't expecting you to go to Juilliard and expecting that to be your life?

TK: They didn't really care, they just wanted me to do whatever I wanted to do and they were happy with that.

JF: How long have you been playing in bands? Has that been relatively recent or for a long time?

TK: It was actually when I was 20 that I started playing in bands, which was why I started again playing violin. I'm from Milwaukee originally and some friends and I just started a band for fun. My friend owned a cafe that closed at ten o'clock and we would just play there at night and eventually we started getting shows. Maybe about five years ago, I hooked up with Lullaby for the Working class, met Ted [Stevens] and ever since then I've been playing with Nebraska bands.

JF: How did you even up joining Lullaby for the Working Class?

TK: It's a strange story actually. They were opening up for a band I wanted to see in Milwaukee, I think it was either Low or Ida; it kind of escapes me now, but they were the opening band. They had a cello player and I love playing with cellos more than anything else. I think violin and cello go beautifully together. So I just approached them after they played and said, "Hey, do you need a violin player?" and they said, "Yes, but we live in Nebraska." At the time I wasn't doing anything, I was looking for changes in my life so I said, "I'll go to Nebraska." So then I joined Lullaby and stayed in Nebraska for a while. Then years later we broke up and Ted formed Mayday. Mayday has always been a band. He would do Mayday shows by himself or with our various roommates. The drummer for Mayday right now was our roommate in Nebraska. It was kind of a house band and then it became an actual band after Lullaby broke up.

JF: You've been living in Omaha for a while, how do you like it there?

TK: Actually...I don't prefer Omaha. [Laughs] I only lived there for about a year. And I moved to Chicago, maybe three and a half years ago. I've been just going back for recordings and practices. It's really easy, it's only a seven hour drive or a $30 one-way flight. So I just kind of go back and forth. But I'm going to be living in Nebraska for about six months to save some money since it's very cheap to live there. It's just that I'm not good at entertaining myself, I need outside entertainment. I need to see shows and I need to see movies and Omaha doesn't get very much of that. The flipside of that is that you have to make your own entertainment, so there's great music and there's great art and great poetry and all these great things that come out of Omaha because you need to create your own scene. There's literally nothing else to do. No movies go there, no bands play there and there's not even a venue, even if a band wanted to play there.

JF: I'd imagine it would be bad in the winter when it would be hard to tour in the midwest, there wouldn't be too many bands coming, at least.

TK: Yeah, sometimes they'll stop in between Chicago and Denver. One of the owners of Saddle Creek is going to open a venue but it's not open yet so there's only one or two places to play and they're both miserable.

JF: What are they?

TK: Sokol Underground is one place.

JF: Is it a regular venue?

TK: It's a regular venue but the sound isn't very good. It's in the basement of an auditorium, basically, so the ceilings are very low and the sound quality is never good. Besides that, there's a lot of smaller places, where you can maybe fit 80 people into, but nothing that a regular touring band could play in.

[There was a running joke that night that I should ask her the infamous Barbara Walters question, so...]

JF: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?

TK: I would be weeping willow for sure. They're the most beautiful hanging trees with their vines. They need to be by water, too. They can't live in a dry climate. They need to be by a creek or a lake. They're just lovely, drooping trees.

JF: That's a good answer! I can't even think of what I would say.

TK: I knew instantly. [Laughs] They're fun to swing from when you're a kid, they're just great trees.

JF: Mayday's new record is a bit of a departure from their previous album Old Blood. It's more stepped-down production-wise with nods to old workers' songs and the roots of country music. What did you guys do differently this time around?

TK: When we were recording the last album, not the new one but the one before [Old Blood, Saddle Creek Records] , Ted was listening to the O, Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack for inspiration. Like, old gospel. And Mayday, especially recently, has taken a much bigger move toward the roots of American Music. It's been an interesting move even for myself. I never grew up with any country music or anything, I was pretty much a city girl. So it's rather explorative for me. I've never done anything like this... The old record was more orchestrated and more produced. [The new album] was done only on half-inch tape with no punch-in pedals, everything live. There were times when there were four musicians around one microphone, very old-style. So, it's got a much different sound to it. It was done in basements and a few studios that were rented, but there's no "production" like the other one. There's no cello, there's none of the arty sorts of things.

JF: So, do you have a day job? What do you do?

TK: I don't at the moment. I've been traveling since August just playing music. But if I do have to work then I tend bar. That's it, I don't really like it.

JF: How many bands have you been playing with?

TK: It would be impossible to count. In the last year I've played with maybe six or seven bands which have included Mayday, Bright Eyes, The Bruces who are another great band from Omaha, Dave Dondero, M. Ward, and my Chicago band Head of Femur.

JF: I'd imagine violin players were fairly in demand. If you're going to have a violin player there's only so many, compared to the number of bassists or guitar players or drummers.

TK: It's probably true and it's an advantage for me to be able to jump around. If I played guitar it would be so much more difficult to do what I'm doing. It's good. The flipside of it, of course, is that you're never going to be the front person...

JF: You could be a violinist/singer in a band.

TK: Yeah, but I like playing with other people, it's more fun for me. I like working with songwriters. Most of the people I work with like Conor and Ted and Alex and M. Ward and Dave Dondero they're songwriters and I kind of hit a niche, I help them extend their music.

JF: Do you write songs on your own?

TK: Yeah, I've got a four-track; I've got a cello at home and a guitar that I screw around with.

JF: Are you planning on ever doing anything with that stuff?

TK: If I ever have time, I would. But I just don't have the time.

b/w photos by Jasper Coolidge. Color photo by Rhianna Matthais