Hear Nebraska

by Chance Solem-Pfeifer | photo by Clay Lomneth Doug Van Sloun remembers the oddity of being on the phone with a potential client. The out-of-state artist was asking Van Sloun to master his next record. Only the musician had no idea that the Omaha-based mastering engineer was currently treating the album of the band with whom he was currently on tour. The bands were from different cities and neither was Omaha. “There was no connection at all between the three groups of us,” Van Sloun says. “That sort of stuff happens more frequently than one might think.” Coincidence, maybe. But Van Sloun is working on those odds all the time. The clients page on his website details more than a hundred artists, and it’s not even an exhaustive list of all the people who have trusted Van Sloun’s expertise on their albums the last 10 years. It’s not an exaggeration to say you’ll find the words “mastered by Doug Van Sloun” in the liner notes of the majority of well-produced Nebraska albums. From the bulk of Saddle Creek r