By JOSHUA WIMMER
Alumni News staff
Remodeling the house.
Marriage.
A 2-year-old daughter.
Ladies and gentlemen — the stuff of rock and roll?
Only if you’re two-thirds of Lincoln band Mercy Rule.
“I think that being in a rock band, you have to drag along all the baggage and the preconceptions… about what it is to be in a rock band,” says bassist and lead singer Heidi Ore.
Ore and her husband, guitarist Jon Taylor, don’t fit those preconceived notions. They’re dressed in dusty work clothes, putting up new walls inside their home. They’re drinking water and Powerade sports drink.
And Zoie Taylor, who turned 2 on Oct. 30, toddles around them, bubbling and babbling happily to her parents.
“We have day jobs, we have a child, we have two station wagons,” Ore, 35, says. “We’re very ‘L7.’” She makes the sign for “square.”
Maybe not what you’d expect from a band that’s put out four albums, been interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine and toured across the continent.
Which, in turn, is maybe not what you’d expect from a couple of NU journalism graduates who’ve lived in Nebraska all their lives.
The day after Ore and Taylor graduated in 1986, they were married. They moved to Omaha soon after, and Taylor, with a news-editorial degree, started work as a reporter for the Daily Nonpareil in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Ore got a job in her field, advertising.
The couple had played together in bands during school. After graduation, they thought they’d left music behind. But about a year later, they realized how much they missed it.
“We had something worthy to pursue,” Ore says.
And, Taylor, now 34, says, “If we were going to do rock band stuff, that was the time.”
They formed the band 13 Nightmares and released an LP on Pravda Records of Chicago. And in 1990, when their lead singer left, Ore, Taylor and drummer Ron Albertson became Mercy Rule.
Mercy Rule released a four-song record on Pravda, “100 miles per hour.” The band’s first full-length album, “God Protects Fools,” was released on Lincoln label Caulfield Records a while later.
“We toured as much as we could,” Taylor says. While playing in New York, Mercy Rule attracted the attention of Relativity Records, and that company signed them. In 1994, the band released their next album, “Providence,” on Relativity.
“Things really accelerated very quickly after that. We had a picture and a mention in Rolling Stone following the release of that record,” Taylor says.
“It was a very critically acclaimed record,” he says. “And we really still didn’t know what we were doing. I listen to it now, and it’s just a weird record.”
Mercy Rule did a nationwide tour then and made a video, which ended up being rejected by MTV. Taylor says the band’s sound wasn’t entirely conducive to making it big in the rock industry.
“If you didn’t have a song get on the radio, [the industry] didn’t want you around,” he says.
Around the beginning of 1996, Relativity Records decided to drop all its rock acts. Label-less, Ore and Taylor looked for the cloud’s silver lining, they say.
“Having spent most of our 20s just doing rock band things, we didn’t do things like buy a house or start a family,” Taylor says. “When we found out Relativity was going to drop us, we thought: Here’s kind of our window to maybe start a family.”
Ore was pregnant in early ’96, when the band started recording with major-label producer Lou Giordano.
The resulting album, “the flat black chronicles,” took most of 1996 to make. Then, after MCA decided not to release the album, it took the band most of the next year to buy the rights to the album back from the company. In the end, Mercy Rule bought “chronicles” for the relatively low price of $10,000 and released it on Caulfield Records.
“We just didn’t think we’d fit (on a major label),” Taylor says. “As much as we like our songs, and we’re really happy with the band, I don’t think we fit.”
Mercy Rule’s sound is hard and loud — and melodic at the same time. Ore writes her own lyrics.
“We make the music that comes out of us,” she says.
“The music’s written to be rock music that’s fun to play,” Taylor says. The subtler influences of music minor Ore’s classically trained parents is present, but more noticeable is the influence of ’70s rock and ’80s punk acts like KISS, the Replacements, X and Sonic Youth.
Those artists and others inspire Mercy Rule’s live shows as well, the two say.
“They were known for being great live bands,” Taylor says.
Mercy Rule shares a common heritage with some of the members’ musical heros, too. Like the Replacements, Hüsker Dü and Soul Asylum — all of whom sprang up in Minneapolis — Mercy Rule has grown up playing to Midwest audiences.
“Lincoln is our home,” Ore says. “We’re people who live here, and we can’t change that… We also knew that playing in the Midwest made you a better band than playing, like, on the East Coast. You have to play harder for the people here.”
Taylor elaborates: “Image kind of carries more weight on the coasts, and out here it doesn’t carry at all. You just have to play very hard, very intensely.”
Taylor and Ore say their college degrees in journalism have also helped them pursue their musical goals. Taylor says his training in photography, layout and writing has been invaluable.
“You’re always using those skills, whether you’re designing a business card or making a record cover.”
Earning degrees has had other, less tangible benefits, too.
“I think a degree has really helped us focus,” Ore says.
Taylor agrees.
“If you can get through college, you can get through about anything,” he says. “Having degrees gave us an optimism that’s always stayed with us. I think it gave us this kind of a ‘brave optimism.’ We always felt we could do anything.”
In what Ore calls “an unlikely turn of events,” neither her day job nor Taylor’s is connected to their degrees. Taylor repairs string instruments at Dietze Music in Omaha; occasionally he builds electric guitars for customers. Ore is an administrative assistant at the Foster Care Review Board, an agency that oversees foster families.
The couple planned on working in fields related to their degrees, they say, but put those jobs aside to concentrate on the band 10 years ago.
Ore says it felt like a hiatus but that before she and Taylor knew it, more than a decade had passed and they were involved with other things.
Taylor says, “We just kind of stumbled into other careers that ended up being extremely satisfying.”
And rock and roll is runner-up to those careers these days, the two say. These days, they play fewer shows and play those mostly only on weekends.
Daughter Zoie has a lot to do with that, too.
“The band has certainly taken a back seat to whatever’s going on in Zoie’s life,” Taylor says. “If she can say the ABC song, I’m probably more apt to discuss that than, maybe, a show we did in Iowa City.”
Mercy Rule isn’t dead, though. The couple say they’re writing songs, which will likely lead to another album. And even if that album doesn’t turn them into nationally known superstars, Ore and Taylor are quick to point out they won’t be bitter. Quite the opposite.
“I think nowadays, unless they see you on MTV, people don’t think you’re successful.” Taylor says.
“We probably wouldn’t be able to fulfill the responsibilities of being on a major label,” he continues. “We have careers, and we like our jobs. We also have a family that we’re starting. And we want to do those things and be a band.”
Ore says, “We’ve been from one end of the country to the other. We’ve toured with bands that I really like… We’ve been courted by major labels; we’ve been on a major label. We’ve been interviewed by magazines. We’ve been in Rolling Stone. We’ve had an amazing time.”
She gestures at Zoie, who’s squealing and bouncing around the living room.
“And we’re starting a whole new experience. This one, as you might imagine, is an amazing frontier.
“We’ve had a huge opportunity, a wonderful experience. It’s really a fantastic time.”
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