It was the Fourth of July at a mutual friend’s bonfire when two guitar players, both still in high school, instantaneously struck up a friendship that has become a musical endeavor.

This wasn’t the beginning of the musical road for Kyle Culver, 21, an Eau Claire native and North High School graduate and Matt Hasenmueller, 22, from Altoona and an Altoona High School graduate.

Formerly known as The Last Semester, the duo performed at The Cabin last Thursday under a new name, The Millenium.

“Music is my life,” said Hasenmueller. “It’s expression, it’s a voice.”

A month after meeting, the two wrapped up recording their first E.P. titled “Everyone is Anyone.”

Hitting 20,000 downloads in six months, they had some pretty good success, Culver said.

“We did a little tour through Wisconsin and Minnesota,” he said. “It was really unexpected; I was a junior in high school.”

Now four years later the duo are set to release their first album under the name of The Millenium. They recently spent time in a
Cincinnati recording studio working on it.

On Nov. 10 they released the first single, “Love in a Ghost Town,” off their second album due out this winter, “It’s so Much Friendlier with Two.”

Hasenmueller said a three-by-five picture of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet with the words, “It’s so much friendlier with two,” they found abandoned in a house they recorded at inspired the name of the new album.

“They’re some of the most talented people that I know in the scene that I’ve met,” said Kyle Featherstone, event crew production tech at UW-Eau Claire.

Featherstone, a senior Liberal Studies major at Eau Claire also plays piano in the band, The Picture Perfect which frequently does shows with The Millenium.

Featherstone said if he wasn’t so busy with his own band, the duo would have been a trio.

“When they first started the project they asked me to be in the project,” he said.

Though they play in separate bands, the two bands support each other in the music scene and also critique each other.

“We bounce ideas back and forth and tell each other how to make things better,” Featherstone said. “We’re always pretty real with
each other.

The next show for The Millenium is on Nov. 24 at Amsterdam Bar and Hotel in St. Paul, Minn.