Milwaukee music is great, but there’s something special about Milwaukee music that’s about Milwaukee. Songs like Lorde Fredd33’s “Reflections” can call attention to the city’s ills, while songs like Maritime’s “Milwaukee” can celebrate its quirks. Falling squarely in the second camp is the debut track from the brand-spanking-new Hughes Family Band. “Pierce Street Boogaloo” is a honky-tonkin’, boot-scootin’ country ditty about getting your kicks on the titular Riverwest road. Sample lyric: “Me and the guys, yeah we like to get high down on Pierce Street.” A boogaloo, indeed.
So who is the good-times-havin’ Hughes Family Band? Holding down the “Hughes Family” end are brothers Nathan and Ian Hughes. Rounding out the “Band” portion are Bryce Kedrowicz (Iron Pizza) and Connor LaMue (Bad Wig, Sex Scenes).
“Bryce was saying to me one night about how he wanted to start a country band,” LaMue tells us. “I had been talking with the Hughes boys about something similar for a while, so we all got together and gave it a shot. It clicked pretty quickly. The boys brought the song, lyrics and all, to practice, and after a couple swings at it we ended up with this.”
Recorded by Ian Olvera (Daydream Retrievers) and mastered by Justin Perkins at Mystery Room Mastering, “Pierce Street Boogaloo” is about as straightforward as the street it celebrates. Unsurprisingly, that street is close to the band’s collective heart.
“We all live or have lived on Pierce Street, so it was pretty appropriate,” LaMue says.
The Hughes Family Band plans to record more material in the future. Until then, listen to “Pierce Street Boogaloo” below, and see the group play its first show (along with Casey James Prestwood & The Burning Angels, DUSK, and The Best Westerns) Friday, September 14 at Cactus Club.