A Brief History...
At Northland College in Ashland Wisconsin Coconut (Joe Maurer) heard familiar sounds emitting from a dorm room window and he looked up to see Duke (Lucas) rocking back and forth with a guitar in his hands. Joe invited Lucas up to his room for a jam session. For a few months, they jammed in dorm rooms and on cabins by the lake, sharing their own compositions and playing covers. At the end of the school year, Joe transferred to an Art School in Minneapolis. Lucas and Joe maintained their relationship via email. They visited each other sparingly.
Lucas and Joe maintained their relationship via email post college from Bethlehem, PA and New York City respectively These electronic transmissions became fodder for songs.
Circumstances were ripe for the picking in 2008, when Joe would spent weekend's at Lucas' house. Their emails became songs, which become an EP - We'll All Become Homemade Boats Someday (self-recorded on an old four-track with $20 microphones). Available for free at their music page.
After finishing the EP, they began work on their debut album - In The Bamboo Forests Of Pennsylvania. Joe relocated to Wisconsin, forcing the album to be recorded apart from each other. They traded songs/parts back and forth via an FTP and email.
Since The release of their debut, the Invasive Folk duo continue to email and continue to record - The Cover Of The Month Club. They have played live in Menomonee, Eau Claire and Winona, MN, with plans of more live shows soon. Joe now lives in Eau Claire and Lucas in Bethlehem.
About the name: The band name comes from two nicknames. Joe sent Lucas a coconut back in 1999. Ever since then, he has been known as Coconut Joe. Lucas used to work as a coffee-jerk at a Borders, where he was prone to wear empty drinking straw boxes on his head. His manager remarked that the boxes looked rather majestic, so she started calling him The Duke Of Straw.
