The Circus is Back in Town

After Months on the Road Trying to Raise Enough Money to Record, Man Man Finally Has Label Backing and a New Release

originally published March 5, 2008

One thing fans can be sure about with Man Man is the band won’t over-stay its welcome when it takes the stage. “We look at all the songs on paper we have and go, ''Man, we could play for two, two and a half hours, even longer,” singer-keyboardist Ryan Kattner says in a phone interview. “But I don’t want to see a band longer than 40 or 45 minutes, even a band that I love. I just don’t have the wherewithal to withstand that much music, especially where we’re coming from. We wear people out after 40, 45 minutes.”

Part of the reason Kattner (who goes by the stage name Honus Honus) feels fans get their fill of Man Man after 45 minutes is the group’s set is structured to fit in more songs than one would expect. Unlike most bands, Man Man doesn’t take breaks between songs, and instead transitions from one right into the next without a pause. This has been a signature of Man Man shows since Kattner formed the group about five years ago in Philadelphia. “You know, when you first start out and you’re the first of four bands in some [lousy] bar, you have only 30 minutes to make an impression,” Kattner says. “So do you really want to tell lame jokes they’re supposed to answer, which people can’t understand over a microphone anyway? The benefit of just playing straight through, too, is if people aren’t really into what you’re doing, they don’t have time to really heckle. So we definitely did that out of necessity.”

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One can only imagine that especially on the first tours, plenty of concert-goers weren’t quite sure what to make of Man Man. For one thing, the band brings an unusual visual presence to the stage. The five bandmembers - bassist/ multi-instrumentalist Sergei Sogay (real name Chris Shar), guitarist-trumpet player Alejandro “Cougar” Bord (Russell Higbee), drummer Pow Pow (Chris Powell) and sax player/ multi-instrumentalist Chang Wang (Billy Dufala) - dress in white and wear face paint.

On a strictly musical level, this is also a band that has left the vast majority of writers struggling to find words to describe the music. In reality, there may be no way to fully describe the music of Man Man, whose third CD, Rabbit Habits, will be released Apr. 8. Most articles cite Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and Tom Waits - three of rock’s most idiosyncratic icons - as references, but similarities to those artists are fleeting at best. Other oddball touchstones might include Primus or the ever-cosmic Sun Ra. But as Rabbit Habits proves, the group has its share of far more accessible and conventional influences that cut across the realms of rock, pop, hip-hop, jazz and beyond.

“We’re very schizophrenic musically,” Kattner says, summing up the musical tastes of the five members. “Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of country music, like honky tonk, Texas stuff, like Ernest Tubb or Lefty Frizzell. But other guys in the band, Cougar, he turned me on to [Appalachian banjo player] Dock Boggs and also Ethiopian guitar work. We listen to hip-hop. We listen to all kinds of music.”

Choose any description you like, but the bottom line is Man Man is nothing if not entertaining. On Rabbit Habits, the band races through hugely catchy, madcap tracks like “Mister Jung Stuffed,” “Hurly/Burly,” “The Ballad Of Butter Beans” (with some rapid-fire xylophone as a featured sound) and “Easy Eats or Dirty Doctor Galapagos,” while changing the pace on occasion with slightly more restrained fare, such as the New Orleans jazz-flavored “Big Trouble” and the multifaceted “Poor Jackie.”

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The group clearly puts just as much effort into its studio work as it does into its much-discussed live act. “They’re both just as equally important,” Kattner says. “It’s a different thing for the record, because you can do things that you can’t do live. There’s different instrumentation.”

Rabbit Habits, like the group’s first two CDs, The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face (2004) and Six Demon Bag (2005), is filled with a plethora of instrumentation, vocal harmonies and a cornucopia of sonic bells and whistles. Not surprisingly, the recording process can be painstakingly difficult, as the band takes the songs from basic tracks to the finished versions.

“Before we go in the studio, we have an idea of what we want,” Kattner says. “Like this song should have violins, have ascending and descending violin patterns, and then we take it from there. Some songs are tested out on the road. We play a lot of the songs. When we get in the studio, those shapes can change. And there are some songs that we wrote and we went [right] into the studio and recorded. ‘Poor Jackie,' we wrote right before we went to Chicago.”

The recording session last February in the Windy City was the first of three that were needed to complete Rabbit Habits, with two additional sessions taking place in Philadelphia.

“This record [which has since been picked up for release by Anti- Records] was self-financed, so that’s why we took so long, because before each of those recording sessions, we had to go on the road and make money,” Kattner says. “So we did it in February, in June and in August. So all in all, [it took] probably two months.”

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Onstage, the band doesn’t attempt to recreate the studio versions of its songs - not that this would possible to begin with. “I like to say that it’s a lot more visceral live than the [albums],” Kattner says. “It’s just a different vibe entirely. When there are people there, when there are kids there, you know, they give us energy and enthusiasm that just fires us up. It’s like a tent revival.”

The non-stop pace of the show - partly a product of not pausing between songs - also means Man Man has to plan out the song sequence and rehearse more than might be apparent in order to create a seamless set.

“It’s an arduous and terrible process, trying to find the right songs that can kind of coast along,” Kattner says. “I like to see [the set] as one big song. Also, it’s a logistical nightmare, because Cougar or Billy will have to pick up a sax in one part of the song and then bash the drum in the same song. Then next, [he’ll] have to head over to someone else’s station. It’s fun, though. It’s a lot of fun trying to roll that way because anything can go wrong.”

It’s not an easy show to perform, and Man Man’s heavy tour schedule makes touring even more of a strain. The wear and tear has prompted quite a few bandmembers to bow out of the band along the way. The current lineup, though, is showing signs of longevity, and Kattner praises the professionalism and perseverance of his bandmates.

“Fortunately, I’ve had the same little crew with me for the past three years,” he says. “It’s great. It wouldn’t be happening if these guys weren’t able to subject themselves to relentless touring, sleeping on floors and blah, blah, blah. It’s our life.”

Alan Sculley

WHO: Man Man, Mouser, The Extraordinaires
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Saturday, March 8
HOW MUCH: $10