Interview: Man Man

We live in an era when indie music can be divided neatly into the sum of its schools: retro post-whatever, Banhartian "freak folk," various strains of Americana, and the neverending stream of genres and styles still being vomited up by punk's thirty-year-old Big Bang. Thank God, then, for Man Man: a self-styled cast of weirdos, maniacs, and carnival sideshow freaks whose crazed, eclectic musical approach gives meaning back to the term "alternative rock." Compare their recently-released second album, Six Demon Bag, to Waits and Beefheart if you must - you certainly wouldn't be the first - but the truth is, there's little in the way of precedents or peers for the Philadelphia five-piece; just a tradition of music that is authentically and uncontrivedly weird in the best possible sense of the word. Let's put it this way - how many other recent Pitchfork buzz bands have a live show which has drawn more critical comparisons to seedy three-ring circus milieux than to any identifiable rock'n'roll heritage?

The Modern Pea Pod recently caught up with Man Man's newly-recruited drummer, Pow Pow (a.k.a. Chris Powell), and discovered not only that he could speak in complete sentences, but that he could do so without bellowing. Looks like the lunatics running the asylum aren't so different after all...

Modern Pea Pod: Now, you're actually a new addition to the Man Man lineup...when did you join the band?

Chris Powell: Officially I joined in December, but I'd been playing with them off and on since before that. It was just this thing where the old drummer [Tom Kevell] quit, and Ryan [Kattner, a.k.a. Man Man frontman Honus Honus] asked me to do the record over the summer. So I recorded it with them, but I was playing with other bands at the time and had other obligations, so I wasn't really able to join.

Anyway, a couple of months went by and the drummer they'd had in between wasn't really working out so hot for them - it wasn't anything personal, just the style wasn't working out. Also at that time, my other band [Need New Body] had decided not to play shows for a long time, so it was sort of the perfect opportunity. And the guys in Man Man were still interested; Ryan just kept asking me again and again. (laughs)

MPP: But Man Man's music is so different from what you'd call a typical rock band; it seems like it would be a lot harder to adapt to that as a new guy, especially with an album [2004's The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face] already under their belts. Did you have any trouble adjusting at first, or did it come naturally?

CP: It actually wound up being pretty easy. I mean my old band jumped around styles a lot too; we went from being very aggressive to some really pretty stuff. So it was similar - aesthetically it was a very different sound, but the energy and the spirit was extremely similar. I think just the types of music I'd been working on with other people, it made sense for us to be playing together. I'd known Ryan for years, I dug his stuff, we might as well be in the same band.

The only thing that was tough getting used to was reinterpreting the old songs...the other drummer and I play nothing like one another, and it winds up being important because it's the drums that drive any band. Not to say that marimba or guitar or whatever necessarily stand out less, but when you have drummers that play completely different, you can really notice it. We wound up pretty much reinventing a lot of the songs anyway, though, so it wasn't too hard.

MPP: Even though you weren't around for the first record, do you get a sense of the difference between songs from that album and songs from this one?

CP: Well, here's what I've heard the other guys say. As far as recording, for the first album they already had the songs, they'd been playing for a while; so it was easier to go into the studio, and it took a shorter amount of time, a few days, a week or something. But the songs were still being worked on with this one. The old guitarist [Steven Dufala] pretty much quit around the same time as the drummer, and he was one of the main songwriters. So we had a lot of room to rework things this time around, and we also just gave ourselves a lot more time to do the record, and that can really turn the songs into something different.

(Cave-dwellers: Man Man, Mk. II)

MPP: So you were able to have a major role in the writing of these songs; it wasn't just set up and start playing?

CP: Oh, definitely. I mean a few tunes had been for sure already written, and they felt pretty solid about them; but pretty much every tune was reworked a little bit. It was definitely a collaboration working on the new record - a lot of times we did actually write in the studio, so it was a big mix of all different things.

MPP: A lot of bands nowadays don't get the opportunity to really craft an album like that.

CP: Yeah, we were recorded at this studio by this guy Craig [a.k.a. multi-instrumentalist Les Mizzle], who wound up playing on the last few tours - it was his studio in Chinatown in Philadelphia. So we were pretty much recording at home. And it also wound up being digital, so we were lucky enough to have as much time as we wanted, we didn't have to worry about tape or anything like that. Doing it at home gives so much more time to work on ideas, and sometimes that's not the best; but it really helped in the situation the band was in at the time, with Ryan basically trying to reorganize the band and get a whole new crew together.

MPP: It seems like the album came out really well for you, too; I know you've been getting a pretty good reception lately from the press.

CP: Well, I mean, the attention is good but it isn't huge. I think people were really digging on a lot of the shows when the band was touring, and they're getting a little more attention just because they've been hustling for a while. But we were definitely hoping we'd get at least as much press as we've been getting; I mean it's peanuts in the grand scheme of things, but it's helping out a whole bunch for us. Once we get press under the belt, more kids start coming to shows and things like that.

(Woman Woman? Honus Honus implements gender equality)

MPP: We've already touched on this a little, but I think what strikes me most about Man Man is how you can't really shoehorn the band into anything else that's going on with indie music right now. You don't sound like anybody. Is that something you set out for intentionally, or does it just happen?

CP: I think that's just how it goes for us naturally. As musicians we play all different types of styles; no one's ever really spoken about it, especially the new crew. We all just started playing, basically. And my old band jumped around styles too, a hell of a lot more, even. It just seems to be an unspoken thing, just happening that way naturally. I don't know if we all have A.D.D. or what, but I think we can all agree that it makes for way more exciting music, way more interesting music.

MPP: Does that extend to your influences, too?

CP: Yeah. We all listen to a lot of different music; I mean most people do who play in bands, but at the same time, sometimes they don't. (laughs) A lot of the time we'll be touring with a rock band and talking about music, and they'll just listen to rock. They don't know about world music, or big band or whatever. We're influenced by everything, so it's cool, because if you're playing the same thing all the time it can get really boring. Playing different styles keeps it interesting for everyone.

MPP: Have you always listened to a variety of music, even growing up?

CP: Sort of... I personally grew up listening to a lot of heavy metal and punk rock, just heavy, aggressive dude music shit. But I also loved, like, '80s freestyle, really early rap stuff. I loved that growing up. Then maybe sometime in high school I started finding out about jazz, world music, field recordings, all that different kind of stuff... I was always the kid who was into heavy metal but liked all this other weird music, like big band and samba. As far as everybody else goes, there's definitely not one guy in the band who's been into one thing and that only. It just wouldn't work with the band, it wouldn't make sense.

("Shit's crazy!" Man Man in concert - photo by Shaerocker)

MPP: So let's talk a little bit about the live show, which is the other part of the band's reputation: for someone who's never seen Man Man, what should they expect?

CP: It's just really fiery, super, super fiery... We like to put on a good show for people, that's for sure, and it's something you take home with you in more than one way. Shit's crazy live, it's fuckin' fun. That's all I can really say. We don't stop between songs to tune, or say "this song is called whatever," "this song's about whatever" - fuck that shit. Bands who take a break and tune up, or chatter, you'll see people just start to lose interest. They'll start thinking about other things, and you want to keep people in some kind of trance or whatever, keep their attention on the stage.

MPP: I know a lot of bands think of themselves as either a live band or a studio band; what would you say is more important for Man Man?

CP: I'd say they're equally important, in their own ways. I mean we all say that seeing the band live is where it's at; some bands sound best recorded, and I think we're definitely a band who come off best in person. But I think the recording turned out great, it has a different spirit. I can only really come from my perspective, I guess, which is that over the summer we worked on these songs, and even Ryan and I, we'd known each other for years, but we'd never played music together. We didn't have that type of history. So the recording has a different character from the way things are now - it's high energy, but in a very different way.

Now that we've been playing together and touring together, though, I think the next record will have more of a live feeling, for sure. I mean I didn't know any of the other guys, and now we hang out all the time; that changes things. So the live and studio thing are very different now, but hopefully after a while it'll be one and the same.

(Ambushed by moustache hunters!)

MPP: Are you already thinking about a new album, then, or are you just going to concentrate on this one for a while?

CP: Basically we're just touring our asses off right now, and that's really it. But we've already started working on songs for the next record; we have a few done, and we're playing them live already. It's hard to work on new songs when we're touring, so we'll just use the little breaks in-between and write all day instead of just hanging out in the bus or whatever.

So in the fall we'll do another tour, probably September and October; then in November we'll go to Europe. We'll come back from that, hopefully finish up the ideas for songs, and then ideally we'll start recording in winter.

MPP: So you're going to try to get this record out in a shorter period than the space between the first and second albums?

CP: Yeah - we were just going to put out an EP, but it just wound up being some record label bullshit, and it didn't happen. So essentially we have these tunes, and we're all writing new tunes really, really quickly because everyone's really happy and excited, so that's generally what happens. We might as well just stay on top of it. Right now there's so many bands and so much shit going on, you just have to - kids will be like, "okay, haven't heard about them in three months...now there are five million other things we can listen to." I think musicians should keep that in mind, that people lose interest fast.

MPP: Is it too early to ask about the new songs, or do you have a sense of how they feel compared with the other stuff?

CP: It's a different sound, definitely. The same type of thing, but definitely a different mix of vibes or whatever you would say. We're going new places, and it's happening naturally, which is awesome, just because of the new people involved, and everybody's different backgrounds. So it's very exciting; there's nothing I love more than a band that sounds different with each album, but still sounds like the same band. I feel like we're well on our way to that, and it's awesome.

Man Man are currently on tour in the United States; they will be playing their sole Michigan date at Mac's Bar in Lansing tonight, June 6. For more information, visit Man Man's website or MySpace page.

Official Site
Buy Six Demon Bag on Amazon
See Also: Man Woman