Huber Putting Finishing Touches On Third Solo Album

It was while visiting Ireland in the early 1990s that Huntley resident Andrew D. Huber, then a budding guitarist and songwriter, thought he had learned something about himself.

“I watched the local musicians come into a pub and play and I thought, ‘I don’t know if I could do that,’ ” said Huber, who is performing at . “Maybe if I had my electric guitar with me, I could play a gig with a band. But God, that takes some guts to just come in, sit down and sing.”

Fast forward to today. Novice jitters long gone, Huber, 39, is not only working on his third solo album, set to be released this fall, but he says his approach to Days Amidst the Dust is reminiscent of the “walk in the door and play” approach that he observed on the Emerald Isle.

“I wanted an album that if someone saw me play in a coffeehouse, just me and my guitar, that they’d be able to buy the record and say, ‘Oh, this sounds just like what I heard,’ ” Huber said. “By the same token, if someone saw me play at a big festival and heard the songs with the backing of a band, I wanted them to also buy the record and say, 'That’s exactly what I heard.’ ”

In terms having a band back him up, it’s not an “if” situation for Huber so much as it is a “when.” In addition to performing solo, Huber also fronts the band The Gecko Club, which consists of Huber, brother Tom on bass, Dave Geist on guitar and Pat Callahan on drums.

Formed in Minneapolis in 1994, The Gecko Club has released two albums, Tokens, Trash and Tarots Cards in 2000 and Evergreen in 2006, with both albums receiving positive reviews from a variety of music websites and college radio stations.

Additionally, Recording magazine’s Marty Peters recommended The Present from Tokens, Trash, or Tarot Cards. Of course, each reviewer offered his own description of the Gecko sound, none of which matched that of Huber, who wrote all the Gecko material with contributions from other band members.

“The tag that I use the most is ‘Guitar Pop for a World Gone Mad,’ ” said Huber, a fan of Newfoundland’s The Great Big Sea and Scotland’s Mike Scott and the Waterboys. “It’s garage rock a la The Replacements sound, but there’s definitely a folk rock element, too. I think on Evergreen it’s interesting we went from something like a hard-driving song to something that can only be described as a modern-day Irish shanty, like sea shanty.”

Some of Huber’s Gecko and solo work, including the song Pretty Victoria can be found at the group’s My Space page.

“I love Pretty Victoria,” said Huber of the song that was inspired by the fictitious Victoria Winters of the cult television show Dark Shadows.

“It’s a great example of The Gecko Club sound in that it’s a little bit of a tweak on a normal arrangement. It goes in a couple of different directions from where you think it would and it has the dynamics and beat you might not expect.”

In Huber’s upcoming 13-song album, he fixates another yet another woman many people will know.

“The first single is going to be Resurrection Mary, obviously inspired by the famous Chicago ghost,” he said. “That one — and I never do this — but after writing that one I looked at my wife and said, ‘I actually think this one is a hit.’ And it’s gone over well at all the shows that I’ve been doing. I’m really excited to get the record out.”

Huber, who majored in psychology, says Resurrection Mary is a “foot-stomping, three-minute folk pop song” about his alleged affair with the infamous ghost.

The Minnesota native also admits he plays therapist to himself with some of his songwriting.

“Sometimes when I’m singing, I’m working out an issue,” he said. “I’m working out maybe some sense of sadness, or some sense of something that was lost, or something I’m still trying to gain. It’s a way of recognizing that and confronting it. Dealing with the monsters that are in the closet, and they’re not all bad monsters.”

For upcoming tout dates please visit geckoclub.com.