You Should Know ZED KENZO

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Go Psycho”
RIYL: aliens, hip-hop, Tumblr

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Song You Can Dance To”
RIYL: Irish folk music, David Byrne, nature meets a polyrhythmic industrial future-past

Five questions with OQ

1. Did you grow up in Milwaukee? When did you start making music?

I grew up outside of Milwaukee in Oconomowoc. That’s strangely enough how I met Cole [Quamme]. I grew up with Matt Pappas who is in The Fatty Acids with Cole. I was living in Portland and Matt and the band came out and stayed at the house with me and we hung out. Then, I moved back to Wisconsin after a few years and started the band Holy Sheboygan and we played some shows with Fatty Acids and that’s how this whole thing started.

I was writing music really young. My parents didn’t know what to do with me, neither of them were musicians. My mom had a friend who played for the Milwaukee Symphony, so I started going into Milwaukee for composition lessons when I was 11. My mom is a writer and my dad is a painter and also an engineer. They were artistic, just not musical. I was taking lessons and writing funny, thematic movie-music type stuff. The Milwaukee Symphony ended up playing one of them when I was 14.

2. How did you transition composing for the symphony to the indie-folk of Holy Sheboygan?

I was going to school for composition and by the time I was in school it was less movie music and more minimalist inspired like Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Steve Reich. That led me towards folk music. I love repetition, that stuff all comes out of pop and folk music. I’m always doing music, and it’s always a little different every time.

3. Listening to your EP, I feel like your album art does a good job of describing it—equal parts natural/organic and then you have this tangle of electrical cords with cement and grass.

It’s really Cole’s brainchild. Three years ago he started making these world beats and sent it out to a bunch of folk musicians around Milwaukee. It was originally going to be a compilation that he was going to put out as “Cole Quamme.” Everyone else flaked on him. He saw me at a Holy Sheboygan show and said, “I really want you to make a song to these beats.” So I took it home and within a month I sent him a completed song, which was the first song on the record. He was like, “I love this! Now we’ll just wait.” We waited a year. He was my neighbor so I said, “Hey dude, what’s up with that compilation?” He said nobody got back to him. Then we decided to just go for it ourselves. As we got deeper into the process, we realized it was a lot of fun.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Burt Cocaine”
RIYL: garage rock, Shannon and the Clams, Ennio Morricone

Where to see them live:

Wednesday, January 23 at Cactus Club.

Five questions with Saebra & Carlyle

1. When did you get started in music?

Choir every year since sixth grade. I really like to sing, I really like music. When I was 21 I lived in California and somebody gave me an acoustic guitar and I just started messing around on it. I wrote my first song there and everything just came naturally. I played acoustic because I couldn’t find anyone to play with me, so I would say, “I just gotta do this by myself.” I have always liked writing, I’ve always like performing. I moved out to California to be an actress but nothing clicked. Finally, with music I get to use all those components that I love—creativity, performing… I love music so much.

I lived in California on and off since I got out of high school. I moved right at 18. I didn’t make it long, because it’s hard to make it out there if you don’t have a good support system, I was too young. My dad asked  me to leave the house because he was moving in with his girlfriend and I didn’t have anywhere to go. So I said okay, I might as well do what I want to do. Then I came back, then I moved back out there at 20. Then I came back for a man…

For the first time in my life, nothing gets in the way of music anymore which is nice.

2. What do you think of the Milwaukee music scene?

The Milwaukee music scene is equal parts amazing and frustrating. We’ve got a music scene—there is music all over the board here. A lot of great musicians doing amazing things. It’s also frustrating because a lot of the bills are male-dominated. I just want to bust up the bills a little more than they are. There’s so much female talent but it’s like, “Okay,  it’s an all-female bill.” But no, we need to bust up all the bills. Put all the names in a hat and draw them. Those should be the bills, a diverse mix. It gets tiring seeing all these dudes. We need to mix it up a bit. It doesn’t have to be the same people all the time. But that’s getting out there and knowing your music community, supporting each other. Me and Carlyle told each other if we do this, we’re going out to shows, we’re seeing what’s out there and supporting people in our community so we can receive that same support back. That’s what it’s about, it is a community.

Saebra & Carlyle at 414Live

3. If you could collaborate with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

Oh, god… Shannon Shaw of Shannon and the Clams. She’s the voice of our generation. On her first tour 10 years ago, I opened for her. Steve Look put on the show at a speakeasy venue where we weren’t really allowed to have music there, but we did anyway. I opened with my acoustic music and ever since then she’s been really cool with my music. Every time she comes into town she says, “I’ve got a guest spot for you.” She’s always the sweetest. She’s coming to Madison with her solo album which I think is the greatest thing to hit our generation.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Americana”
RIYL: folk, protest music, roots music

Where to see them live:

December 22 at Anodyne Coffee Roasters on Bruce St. with Sista Strings.

Five questions with Nickel & Rose

1. What were your early influences?

Johanna: Growing up, my dad always had Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Ernest Tubb, Lead Belly, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and other country/ folk/ blues playing throughout the house.  At the same time my uncles on my mother’s side were playing Summerfest and local clubs with their ’80s rock bands. In high school I started going to punk shows. Now I probably listen to more of what my dad was playing, but I like a lot of different music.

Carl: as long as I’ve been playing music I have been exploring and enjoying just about every kind of music I could find. Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell made me want to write songs and Jason Becker made me want to practice guitar.

2. How do you describe Milwaukee to out-of-towners?

Carl: We tell people that there’s great music coming from Milwaukee but we don’t gloss over the negative parts of the city, or life in America. We make a point to talk about the good things but since we both grew up here, we understand that the city has some serious problems.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Keep Lovin’,” “Hideout,” “Boathouse”
RIYL: hip hop, going “up nort,” good vibes

Where to see them live:

See Mic Kellogg live at High Noon Saloon in Madison on Friday, December 7. Get more info here.

Five questions with Mic Kellogg

1. How did you get started in music?

I always had a love for music. How I got started on a more serious level, was right at the end of high school. I went to high school in Madison and I had this class called Hip-Hop Studies my senior year. It was the first hour of every single day. We would walk in and make beats, write music or just learn about hip-hop. It was pretty crazy. Our final was to put on a hip-hop show. Everyone produced their own songs. That’s when I got introduced to the production side of things. Pretty much every song I have out right now is also produced by me. I spend a lot more time on production that a lot of people know, actually. That’s one of my main loves, producing. I play the background part for a lot of different artists. That’s how I grew my own sound; I started making beats for all my friends that were around me. Slowly I started to shape what I wanted my beats to sound like.

I was doing hip-hop shows back then, but I wasn’t that serious about it. I didn’t have any music online. I shaped my producing craft for two or three years after high school. I moved out to Colorado right away and I was just a ski bum out in Breckenridge, CO. Working on music a bunch, but still not putting anything out. Finally, my friend Damien [Blue] lived with WebsterX in 2014. I knew Webster was about to put out a project and we didn’t really know each other, but I decided to move back to Milwaukee and pursue music more seriously. I lived with WebsterX for a year and Damien and we created and created. That kind of started everything for my first project, “Breakfast.”

2. Do you have a day job?

I do right now, I wait tables. It’s very flexible, I can take off when I need to and go in the studio or do shows. I’ve also done that my whole life, I grew up in a restaurant. My aunt has a restaurant in Madison.

So, “Breakfast” isn’t too far off 

No, it’s not too far off. Plus, my last name is Kellogg, so it’s always been a staple in my life. My dad has a big collection of vintage and antique Tony the Tiger things of that nature. I’m in my studio right now and I have a Tony the Tiger clock… it’s fun to get something with your name on it.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Stranger Things,” “Yaaa Glitch”
RIYL: video games, Massive Attack, dreamy electronic pop

Where to see them live:

Album release show with Dashcam and Immortal Girlfriend on November 1 at 9 p.m. at Cactus Club

Five questions with LUXI

1. When did you start making music and when did you get into electronic production?

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact time I started making music…I was very young when I started. My mother was a folk singer and guitarist, which was probably my first exposure to making music. I know I wrote my first sheet music around five years old because my mom (my grandma who raised me) recently found it in one of her cookbooks.

In high school, when I wanted to record my songs to be able to send them to friends, I started experimenting with different free programs on the computer. It eventually evolved into getting the next best program every couple of years. The next tool I used was GarageBand, then I found Logic and started using that, until finally landing on Ableton Live, which I’ve been using since 2011. Since then it’s been a long evolution of just trying to get better and reach my full potential.

2. Tell us something people would be surprised to know about you.

I’m sure there’s a lot, [laughs] but probably the biggest thing is that I was raised by my grandparents who I call mom and dad. I think it definitely shaped who I am as a person now and it helped teach me to be a more compassionate person. It’s probably why I have the intense need to create and express myself.

3. Do you have a day job?

Currently I’m pursuing my art and music full time. Recently I opened a small online boutique and still haul my art out to the fairs during the summer. I also do small mixing projects for artists who find me online, so I’ve been able to piece together an income through multiple sources.

It took a long time to get there, my last place of employment was a sign company that I was doing design work for. I also used to work at a place doing vinyl decals on cars. I also previously worked at a video store and a roller skate rink.

When I was working full-time I worked 16 hour days or more. I’d work for eight hours at a job then come home and work for eight hours more on my own business and projects…for at least two years. It was intense. There were many days I’d go to bed completely depleted and wake up crying having to go to jobs that I didn’t like. It was very unhealthy, but the work I put in has been worth it and I’m glad I did it. I’m very grateful to be where I am now and to be able to pursue my passions full-time.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Seasons,” “Boogie,” “Never Belong”
RIYL: hip-hop, R&B, Sylvan Esso

Where to see them live:

October 23 at Cactus Club with Oxymorrons (NYC) and Bonelang (CHI)

5 Questions with Klassik

1. How did you get into music?

Through my dad, he was the artist. He bought me my first saxophone. I played jazz all the way through high school. I was 11 when I started playing sax. My background is heavy in jazz, which I’m trying to get back into. I use it aesthetically and vibe-wise it always has that feel, but it definitely formed much of my sound and career.

You went to High School of the Arts, right? That place seems so cool…

Yeah, everyone asks, “Is it like ‘Fame’?” Kind of, actually… yeah. People were playing music in the hallway; dancers were dancing; artists were painting, rehearsing, singing in the cafeteria.

2. As an artist you work across disciplines – is that something you carry with you from that experience?

Absolutely. It’s a big reason why I try to be involved in as many youth programs and anything that has that kind of cross-pollination and exposure, because those opportunities I had when I was in school don’t even exist or are greatly diminished from what they were.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Gravetalking,” “Only in Dreams”
RIYL: Kate Bush, Strehlow, Angel Olsen

Where to see them live:

September 22, at 8 p.m. as part of the AlleyWayz Concert Series held in Black Cat Alley 2122 N. Prospect Ave.

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Songs you’ve heard on 88Nine: “Take a Chance,” “Used to Be”
RIYL: Bruce Springsteen, pop-rock, David Bowie

Performing in Milwaukee:

You can see Devil Met Contention perform at Cactus Club on June 19 and at Summer Soulstice Music Festival on June 23.

5 Questions with Devil Met Contention

Where they’re from: Milwaukee, WI
Song you’ve heard on 88Nine: “New Kind of Love,” “Downtown”
RIYL: power pop, Thin Lizzy, keggers

Performing in Milwaukee:

You can see Platinum Boys perform alongside Juiceboxxx at Cactus Club on Tuesday, March 20 at 9PM