Photo by Jaclyn Tyler
Around this time last summer, Milwaukee-based pop rock band The Middle Ground were performing on the KNE New Music Stage at Summerfest, their first gig on the grounds of Henry Maier Festival Park. For a band that has played at venues both big and small and won the WAMI for Best New Artist last year, this was a particularly big deal. Playing Summerfest is one of the highlights of being part of Milwaukee’s growing music scene, says singer/guitarist Joe Neary.
“I think playing in Milwaukee in general, there’s such a cool melting pot of ideas musically,” Neary says. “The more and more you play with other bands, the more you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s really cool what they’re doing and I’d love to try to incorporate that in what we do.’”
And so they did.
The Middle Ground started out as the aptly named The Joe Neary Band. During this time, they had a much more acoustic tone, in the same vibe as Andy Grammer, a musician who struck a chord with Neary to start writing songs and follow a similar path.
As The Joe Neary Band, Neary and the others took a DIY approach and set up a small studio to record their first full-length album titled, From Love, To Loss, To Living, an album that was written as Neary was struggling with a breakup.
“For me, the reason I picked up a guitar or anything was just like I was going through a rough breakup, so I taught myself how to play guitar as a creative outlet and it ended up turning into an album-worth of songs that people really enjoyed,” Neary says.
With a small home studio, they had total creative control over their sound. Instead of having only three hours to knock out an entire song, they instead opted to spend three hours on a single idea, trying to perfect the song in its entirety.
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At this point, Neary didn’t want to continue to take sole credit for the work they’ve been doing together, so he said it was time for a name change. After all, Neary says, everyone had an equal part in writing and creating. The group—which includes drummer Chris Halbauer, bassist Jordan Burmeister and lead guitarist Brandon Mathieus—settled on The Middle Ground.
With a name change came a new sound. For their second effort, a five-song, self-titled EP, they fine-tuned their pop sound. “It’s more mature,” Neary says of their new output, “It’s more evolved.”
Neary says writing the EP was a cathartic experience.
“The EP is all about stuff people deal with day to day, figuring out purpose and place and trying to make it a relatable message that comes across in a cool way that people don’t normally think of,” Neary says. “It’s cool to write about personal experiences, to see people connect with it and talk to you about it afterwards.”
The Middle Ground will perform their first Milwaukee show since March at Summerfest’s KNE New Music Stage on Sunday, July 5 at 7:15 p.m.
