The evening of April 26, the UW-L Campus Activities Board (CAB) put on a concert in the Student Union Cafe. Freshman McKenzie Jurgens managed this event, which featured Milwaukee-originated band The Middle Ground. With sounds similar to Young the Giant, Wild Cub and Hippo Campus, The Middle Ground is a Midwest alternative rock band.

Jurgen’s handled everything from contacting the band, organizing the concert, and publicity for the event. “The Middle Ground has played here before and they are really cool people to work with— they make my job easy!”

Consisting of: Joe Neary (vocals), Chris Halbauer (drums), Jordan Burmeister (bass) and Zach Gruznski (guitar), the outgoing and very sarcastic band members brought in a large crowd to The U. The crowd was seemingly very excited that The Middle Ground came back for a second show here at UW-L. Many students even approached the band after the show to ask questions and buy merchandise.

Starting out, the band was a duo of Halbauer and Neary. Shortly after, Burmeister joined and then when they moved to Nashville about a year and a half ago, they met Gruznski. Together, becoming the band by the name of “The Middle Ground” was a random idea at first that has now taken on meaning to them. While working on music, as Halbauer stated, “we’ve always got to find the middle ground.”

Now with two records out, their self-titled 2003 EP and the newest “Start Again” album, the band is on the road with goals to, “Play music for as many people as possible.” They have upcoming shows at various universities. “Colleges are a wide spectrum of possibility,” Halbauer explains due to the high volume of college-aged fans that they have.

The band collectively finds any shows great opportunities, but were specifically excited about their recent show at the Rave in Milwaukee where they played with local bands The Living Statues and Vinyl Theatre.

Growing in popularity from their single, “Never Needed Me,” fans should be on the look out for more singles from the album coming soon along with a video to be shot soon for “Good Love.”

The guys are in the early stages working on a new album. “I always think, ‘Oh, is this a catchy chorus? Is this in radio parameters?’ But I think right now we are just trying to make music that we think is really cool,” described Neary, “We have a list of like fifty some new songs that we are trying to sort out for new music.” Ultimately, they have faith in their band and in the music they make.

Check out the band at: http://www.wearethemiddleground.com/ or on Spotify and iTunes

Instagram: @wearethemiddleground

Twitter: @MiddleGroundMKE