Man Man

Honus Honus gave simple instructions: “I have a moustache. You’ll find me.”

I walk into the venue and he’s right; I instantly find him and his moustache in all its 1970s porn star glory. We awkwardly shake hands before he leads me down an endless flight of stairs.

“This is where I’m going to execute you,” Honus of Man Man jokes as we pull up chairs and settle into the dank, empty basement.

“Tour has been terrible so far,” he admits immediately. “Everyone got sick the second day. That’s never happened before, but last night the crowd was really into it so that lifted a lot of the bad energy.”

It was Grand Rapids yesterday, Madison tomorrow, and tonight it’s Chicago – a city with which the band is all too familiar.

“We were just here last month recording our new album at the Shape Shoppe. It’s eighty percent done.”

Though the new album has no release date set, no name, and no record label to call home, Honus promises that it’s going to be amazing. “This is going to be our pop record but then again, I think our last two records were pop records, so what do I know?”

“I think there were 12,000 people [at Pitchfork Music Festival] when we went on stage. It was like a drug.” – Honus Honus

Ace Fu’s slaphappy 2006 release Six Demon Bag will be tough to follow up. It’s thirteen songs that sound much like a burly pianist leading a choir of Wizard of Oz munchkins in a junk yard, and this is a good thing – a very good thing.

“The idea behind Six Demon Bag was for it not to suck,” Honus says. It’s an understatement to say the band pulled it off beautifully.

Honus never even considered being a musician until years ago he came across a piano store in Philadelphia that was closing down.

“They were literally chopping up pianos and throwing them in a dumpster, so I went in and bought the last Rhodes and started to teach myself some stuff. I thought it was fate.”

Fate, however, seemed to be taking its sweet old time. Man Man signed to Ace Fu and with a limited budget recorded debut album The Man In The Blue Turban With A Face (2004). The record was almost shelved by Ace Fu, received literally no attention, and after a month long tour, most of the band parted ways, leaving Honus empty handed.

“Nobody has even heard of our first record. It was a stressful time between the two albums. Now, we have an all-star line-up. We aren’t jaded yet but we still don’t command the attention we deserve.”

Maybe not, but they are well on their way. It’s word of mouth about their harebrained live shows and slots on New York’s Siren and Chicago’s Pitchfork festivals that have helped with the band’s rising success.

Last summer with a mid-afternoon slot at Pitchfork, the band was up to its usual antics with paint streaked on its members’ faces, orange headbands, white jumpsuits, noise makers galore, a dozen different drums, a xylophone, trumpets, horns, and, of course, one black sequined smock. The crowd ate it up enthusiastically.

“I think there were 12,000 people there when we went on stage – the largest audience we have ever played for. It was like a drug,” Honus raves of the festival. “One thing I would like to say about Pitchfork is that The Liars were fucking awesome and Devendra Banhart needs a haircut.”

Duly noted.

– Sharyn Goldyn