Milwaukee pop-punk proponent and emo enthusiast Chris Luecke applies his musical passion into his online “MKEmo” endeavor that highlights a wide range of local artists who land under those stylistic classifications. However, his primary gig is traveling around the country to record episodes of his “Manufacturing Happy Hour” podcast with business professionals in a variety of fields.
His two very different worlds will collide on Saturday, May 10 when Amorphic Beer releases his “Stay Innovative Stay Thirsty IPA” and hosts a show featuring the likes of Action/Adventure, Barely Civil, Buena Cara, and Endswell. In advance of this weekend’s concert and beer release, Milwaukee Record asked Luecke about some of the parallels between his day job and his passion project, the current state of emo and pop-punk in Milwaukee, how his partnership with Amorphic came about, and upcoming plans for MKEmo.
Milwaukee Record: From what I know about the endeavor, MKEmo is an unpaid hobby, a side thing, and the definition of a “labor of love.” Can you talk about your decision to start it, and its development through the years?
Chris Luecke: While MKEmo was created in 2022, it’s worth mentioning that my love for emo and punk rock started over two decades before that. I grew up going to every Warped Tour from 2002 to 2013, seeing acts like Fall Out Boy play 150-person rooms before they skyrocketed to fame, and playing in bands of my own. As my friends moved on and developed a taste for indie rock and “stomp n’ holler” nonsense like the Lumineers, I always thought pop-punk was something I was supposed to grow out of. But thanks to the energy and community of the genre, I doubled-down instead. Emo is my genre through and through.
When I moved back to Milwaukee in 2020, I had just turned my side-hustle, Manufacturing Happy Hour, into my full-time job. Since I had already created one brand, grew a niche fanbase, and built a business out of Manufacturing Happy Hour, I started thinking “What’s stopping me from building out a pop-punk and emo platform as well?” Seeing the potential for a name like “MKEmo” made the decision for a new side-hustle an easy one.
MKEmo really started as a social media account that I still describe as a “Milwaukee-based support-your-local-scene account with an emo bias.” It’s a platform that celebrates both legacy emo acts, as well as Milwaukee’s current vibrant music scene. The next stage in its evolution is taking place right now as MKEmo becomes more of an event platform/series, while still advocating for all things emo taking place around Milwaukee.
MR: As you mentioned, your bread and butter is Manufacturing Happy Hour, a podcast that brings you to breweries and board rooms across the country to record interviews about business with manufacturing professionals. Do you think there are any parallels between the realms of emo and pop-punk music and marketing and manufacturing?
CL: That’s a great question. If I were to draw a Venn diagram of Manufacturing Happy Hour and the pop-punk world, the primary overlap is that I run my business and my podcast like a DIY band. I book a lot of events and live podcasts—more often than not at breweries—and every podcast interview is like stepping on stage.
When bands put on a show, the best ones are keeping the crowd engaged from start to finish, and that doesn’t happen by accident. If I’m interviewing a tech executive and my audience is going to spend 40 minutes of their life listening to that episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, it’s my job to ask thoughtful questions and make sure that conversation is engaging for my listeners from start to finish as well. It’s cliche to say, but a lot of the lessons that have helped me grow as a podcaster, I learned from punk rock.
MR: To this point, MKEmo has mostly been on the sidelines as an appreciator of local and touring bands, but this month’s show is your foray into booking a show. How did you decide on these bands for the May 10 concert?
CL: What I love about this Saturday’s lineup is that I feel these bands really span the whole emo genre. When I think of emo, especially today, I don’t think of a singular sound. Between Action/Adventure, Barely Civil, Endswell, and Buena Cara, there are elements of Midwest emo, pop punk, post-hardcore, and more.
There’s a lot of regional representation that I like in this lineup as well. Barely Civil and Buena Cara are based here in Milwaukee, while Endswell and Action/Adventure hail from Madison and Chicago respectively. MKEmo is about celebrating our homegrown acts, but it’s also about celebrating a city and a scene that visiting bands look forward to being a part of when they come through.
MR: Beyond the bands on the Amorphic show, who are some of your favorite Milwaukee bands right now? Are you hoping to dabble in booking more bills around town after this show is behind you?
CL: First, before I get into some of my local favorites, I’ll start with a more general comment: as a whole, Milwaukee’s local scene right now is incredible. We’re lucky to be in a city where you have your pick between three or four really great local shows in a given night. I think that’s a huge testament to the leaders within the local scene, from the promoters to the venues to the bands themselves. There are a lot of people invested in making sure Milwaukee is a thriving, welcoming place for bands and live music.
Within the pop-punk and emo genre, I have to give bands like Gold Steps and Honey Creek—R.I.P.—credit for being some of the first Milwaukee bands that jumped on my radar when I started MKEmo. They’re always high energy on stage. If you like screamo, Garden Home is another can’t-miss act. Beyond emo, Ladybird—a band I like to describe as “Great Lakes Country”—released one of my favorite albums of 2024 and Diet Lite puts on one of my favorite live shows in Milwaukee. Now that they’re opening for Jimmy Eat World on Friday, can we consider them an emo band as well?
This list is just scratching the surface. With such a large pool of musical talent to pull from, I’m planning on hosting a handful of shows annually under the MKEmo brand, with a couple late this summer and in the fall already in the works.
MR: How did the collaboration with Amorphic come about? And what was the process of creating your new “Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty” IPA?
CL: Toward the end of last year, I started writing down my goals for 2025. One of the items that was high on my list was to team up with a brewery to brew the first Manufacturing Happy Hour collaboration beer.
Amorphic Beer was first on my list and also seemed to be the natural choice. I had gotten to know their owner Ron Hockersmith over the past year-and-a-half after participating in a few of their 3 Minute Thesis events. If you’ve been to Amorphic, you also might know that there’s a science theme to the brewery. Serving their beer flights in chemistry equipment is the most obvious manifestation of this. Since Manufacturing Happy Hour also has a science and tech side to it, Ron and I started the conversation.
What we decided to brew was a hazy IPA, one of Amorphic’s go-to styles. “Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty” is the sign-off line I use at the end of all my podcast episodes. We wanted to create a recipe that honored the innovative approach and rich tradition of American brewing and manufacturing, so we created a hop profile that includes classic West Coast and newer Michigan-grown hops. When we tap into it for the first time later this week, we’ll be treated to a tropical, citrus-y IPA that pairs perfectly with local emo tunes.
MR: Putting on your businessman hat, what are some ways you feel Milwaukee musicians can better sell and market themselves and build their so-called “brand” into something that reaches a larger audience?
CL: I’ll start with the disclaimer that it’s been awhile since I’ve been in a band, so this might not be apples-to-apples, but my DIY ethos still fuels my business today. Similar to how I set a goal for making a beer this year, I feel one thing that gets overlooked in music is having a clear vision of where you want a band to go in the next year, two years, five years. When you have a vision, you can make a more deliberate plan, and take the actions to make it happen.
If your band’s vision is to be a big local act that plays festivals and clubs across Milwaukee, then by all means, load up on gigs in the immediate area. But if you have aspirations to go regional or nationwide, maybe you’re only playing four to six big Milwaukee shows while planning out a dozen weekend-long tours throughout the year.
Either path is fine, but you have to get yourself out there to the audience you want to reach. One thing I’ve learned as a niche podcaster is how important it is to engage with your audience in-person. Even in a highly connected digital world, nothing creates more connection, “superfandom,” and word-of-mouth than genuinely interacting with the people that care most about your music, podcast, or brand.
MR: What are some other plans for both MKEmo and Manufacturing Happy Hour in the near future and in the years to come?
CL: While more shows are in the works for MKEmo, in the meantime, you can count on seeing me out and about at shows from Falcon Hall to X-Ray Arcade and everything in between. I’ll continue to be a local music and emo advocate first and foremost. As I line up more shows for 2025, I’d love to get to the point where MKEmo is hosting five or more events every year, and I would expect each event will have its own unique spin. It won’t always be a concert coupled with a beer release, but everything from emo trivia nights to mini-festivals are on the table.
Manufacturing Happy Hour is also finishing a round of spring events next week. After that, I’ll bring the podcast abroad for the first time to explore the manufacturing industry and the beer scene in Germany. Most of my summer will be spent in Milwaukee planning another podcast tour as well as a handful of parties I’m throwing at various manufacturing trade shows in the fall.
MR: Is there anything else you’d like to say about the show, the beer, or Milwaukee emo in general?
CL: Come to the show this Saturday at Amorphic Beer. The beer release party starts at 3 p.m. Music begins at 5 p.m. In the meantime, pre-orders for four-packs of Stay Innovative, Stay Thirsty IPA are currently available on Amorphic’s website.
And at risk of being emo, I’ll end on a note of gratitude: I think we have something really special going on in Milwaukee across the emo, pop-punk, and broader independent music scene. Looking back, I feel lucky to have spent my formative years during the pop-punk and emo boom of the ‘00s, but I was a teenager and probably didn’t fully appreciate it in the moment. Now that I’m an elder emo in my thirties, I’m appreciating the moments as they play out in real time. Milwaukee is proof that local music is alive and well. Someday, we might look back and say “Wow, that really was the perfect time to be part of the Milwaukee music scene.”
