Live at Lake Effect is our music series featuring local and nationally touring artists performing in the Lake Effect Surf Shop in Shorewood, Wisconsin.
We brought the Lake Effects together, along with Visionary Studios, to showcase musicians once a month through an interview with the band exclusively on Lake Effect, plus filmed performances.
This episode features Joseph Huber from the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wis. Huber is a founding member of the .357 String Band, a "Streetgrass" group that disbanded in the middle aughts.
"We actually came up with that name and changed our website to that name so people would start calling us that," recalls Huber. While his solo career is also steeped in the American folk music tradition, Huber refers to it as "no grass" so that he can avoid any particular genre classification.
"I just say 'Roots' or 'songwriter.' Roots music just seems easy enough," adds Huber.
No matter where his sound takes audiences, Huber continues to write music under his own name along with his fellow touring partners - including Eston Bennett who joined him on upright bass and backup vocals for the "Live at Lake Effect" session.
Huber is known for his lyricism and introspective writing style, evident in his latest album Downtowner (2022) and Moondog (2019) before that, "which is probably our most eclectic album that we end up doing, probably even, like 40% and 50% of every of every show," notes Huber. "That's kind of part of the set so that's the one I push people towards most."
Huber also writes, performs, records, and produces everything himself. He recalls that the inspiration for the Downtowner album simply came from his physical surroundings after he moved into a place in Riverwest opposite on Center Street of the Uptowner.
"It was owned by the same people at the time, so people just around the neighborhood called it the Downtowner, opposite the Uptowner on Humboldt. I recorded the whole thing there, and it was a side bedroom that was the one room that was farthest away enough from the noisiest street corner... And so I tucked in the back room there and recorded that whole album there the first year that I moved in there," he says.
When Huber is not busy performing or working on music, Huber enjoys woodworking. "I just started out doing it probably 12 years ago now, and it's kind of a mixture of mid century modern and other rustic elements. You know, everything is pretty clean lines, but there's always one little thing that makes it off beat a little bit," he explains.
While not as fine-tuned as furniture, Huber assembled his own percussion setup for solo shows with a Samsonite suitcase, a kick pedal and a tambourine strapped to his foot with duct tape. He notes that he stole the idea from Morgan O'Kane, a street banjo player from New York City.
"At the time that I started, it was after .357 and I started doing solo stuff, and I just thought, well I just need to beef my solo experience up a bit," Huber explains. "So I just kinda went and got a suitcase and dived into that and tried it out. It’s kinda funny, I tried it for two days and then I did a show and I did it perfectly... so I just never stopped doing it."
"[I'm locked in]. No bathroom breaks mid-set, you know, you're strapped in," he jokes.
SET LIST
- Dog Days (0:24)
- And The Night (4:30)
- I Wonder Where You Go (8:00)
MUSICIANS
- Joseph Huber: vocals, guitar, harmonica, percussion
- Eston Bennett: backup vocals, upright bass
Live at Lake Effect Team:
- Executive Producers: Audrey Nowakowski & Trapper Schoepp
- Audio Engineering: Jason Rieve
- Location: Lake Effect Surf Shop in Milwaukee
- Production Company: Visionary Studios
- Camera Op: Kieran Walter Sundaram, Kelly Pudroski & Jessica Wolff
