FA: Who are you and how are you related to the club?
My name is Otis Jerome Huber. Right now I’m a waiter at the Depot, and my father has been mixing sound here for 30 years.
FA: How old were you when you started coming here unattended but not at shows?
OJH: When my parents split up and I couldn’t get other daycare, I’d come down here and watch my little brother and run around on the Mainroom floor. I was like 10 or 11… They used to have a pool table and a foosball table. Conrad (stage manager) showed me a trick about playing pool forever by putting those plastic pint glasses in the pockets so you could just keep playing for a dollar. I was a shark. I remember he could open up the foosball table and just grab the balls out, but besides that, you’d have to pay for pinball, everything. There were big pinball competitions. Lee (sound engineer) was really into it. There were three good machines on the side, basically where they raised it up where the bar is now.
FA: So you grew up, like, dickin’ around on the [club’s] floor…
OJH: Yeah. We’d be playing basketball while everyone would be trying to set up and it’d just be me and my little brother trying to go by each other and, like, do a move. But there’d be no hoop or anything and we’re just standing there dribbling. Eventually my dad would be like “HEY! We’re trying to soundcheck! You can’t be dribbling the balls anymore! Get outta here!” So we’d go roam the skyway. Or I’d go read a book at Borders [that used to be across the street].
FA: You know the club really well, so where do you want your picture taken?
OJH: How about I climb up by my dad’s drawings in the garage?
***
Otis doesn’t do Instagram, but find him IRL at the Depot. If you ask nicely, he’ll probably recreate the voicemail greeting Killer Mike (@killermikegto) once recorded for him.
