What can I say, friends? It’s Thursday night, the end of a long, weary week, and I’m writing to you from the top of one of Milwaukee‘s highest hills, looking out at a freezing, glittering town, drinking a glass of wine and fighting the accumulated fatigue of one more battering day.

I just left the national premiere of Handmade Nation, a coast-to-coast documentary of the revival of indie craft and DIY art and design philosophy, a project helmed by Faythe Levine, one of the most active and visible members of Milwaukee’s tenacious creative community.

I’m exhausted. I’m trying to save my independent local monthly from oblivion, spending long hours with web developers, underpaid freelance writers, designers working on the promise of future projects, video interns who have long outlasted their requisite semesters and have only stayed on to help the cause. At the end of every day (and sometimes, on the really bad days, at the very beginning), I just think it’s time to give up the ghost. I’m tired of the meetings, building strategies from the ground up, optimizing every last resource, asking for favors. I just want to get into bed and sleep until springtime.

I’m drinking said glass of wine at a beautiful slow food restaurant at the top of those previously mentioned highest city hills. One of my best friends tends bar here. Since the kitchen closed an hour ago, the bar has become an impromptu staff party; no one is drinking here but off-shift waiters, cooks, bartenders, managers and me. The sous chefs are playing bar dice to my right. To my left, I just showed my friend Robert how to make an uppercase cursive letter Q. (I bet you a buck you have to look that shit up.) This is my Cheers. It’s suffering, too; the owner just bought out all of his investors, who all wanted to shut down the shop. Everyone I know right now who’s really doing what they love is living on a wing and a prayer.

But today, for you, is a Friday, and that means all sorts of new hopes. And among them are these three: Milwaukee musicians, some of whom I’ve told you about already, all of whom are doing something approaching sublime, their styles ranging from the earnest to the indulgent to the gloriously ridiculous. Maybe I’m just a big sissy, but it’s taken me a whole lot of time and reckoning to recognize what an absurd and incredible amount of hard work it really takes to get shit done in this world. But by God, these men (and that lady bassoon player) have done it.

THE OFF KEY –”A Family at Home”
Download audio file (theoffkey.mp3)

^{The lovely, sweaty Schleicher brothers. Photo by Kat Berger.}

With his humble blog, one-man band Aaron Schleicher (who also plays in Juniper Tar – you may remember him from that Iron Maiden shirt) has made a promise to keep himself honest – he holes himself up in his studio once a week, come hell or high water or one of his bandmates accidentally burning the place down, and writes a song, records it track by track, polishes it up and posts it on his site for the taking.

It helps that Aaron is a good producer and a sensitive writer of graceful, considered songs. If he misses a week, you can send him your address and he’ll send you his entire catalog of recorded works. Besides the incentive of, you know, exploiting failure, it’s really satisfying to watch the project evolve. And when Aaron performs live he brings along some (or all) of his brothers and they all play music together. If you’re reading from Milwaukee, or if you feel like taking a really impulsive vacation, The Off Key, with all four brothers Schleicher, performs tomorrow night at Mad Planet with Time Since Western and Conrad Plymouth.

THE TRUSTY KNIFE –”Stealin‘”
Download audio file (stealin.mp3)

The inscrutable Zach Pieper makes every day feel like the 4th of July

Ah, the endless summer of the Trusty Knife –the blaring horns, the twangy guitars, the bassoon. A garage, a red wagon somewhere, some lemonade, a bunch of stoners eating caramel apples, maybe an unattended yard sale, somebody kicking a can –these are the timeless images this sunny, jangly lo-fi band evokes. I love the sing-along chorus and the burst of the harmonica. I love Zach Pieper’s impenetrable lyrics (the man, though full of rumpled charisma, is pretty impenetrable himself) and I love that I can’t turn on this record and do anything but dance.

YOUNG E-DOUBLE aka MR ELEMENTARY – “Happy Birthday”
[audio:
Young E’s eponymous debut album is available on iTunes and CD Baby

In case, on first listen, you miss any of the mind-bogglingly delightful turns of this 10-year-old’s phrase, here’s a few highlights to keep an ear out for:

“Like you got a good job with a lot of pay/Show your teeth with a bright smile, no tooth decay”

“I’m the man of the house/See my mom do the cooking/but I’m the one that takes the garbage out”

And of course, the part where he gives a shout out to everyone who has a birthday in every month of the year is just exultant. So even if your birthday isn’t for another eight months – even if you’re not sure you’re going to get another birthday – Young E-Double wants you to boogie-oogie on your day. Groove on.

(I heard an interview with Young E-Double on Milwaukee’s mighty WMSE, in which he thanked not only everyone who’s bought his record, but everyone who is thinking about buying his record. If that’s not incentive for you to buy his record, I don’t know what is.)