Humans Behavior

You might remember the Band of Humans. Now just a bygone cultish phenomenon buried in Knoxville's collective cultural memory, the Humans once entertained this town with courage akin to indecent exposure. They presided over an unmatched marriage between the literate and the heathen, the sacred and the profane, the artistic and the drunk. The Humans explored a cartoonish allegory that spanned the anthropology between … well, you get the point: Phil Pollard's been gone a couple of months and we miss the band.

Anyone paying even the slightest attention to the Knoxville music scene this past summer must have noticed the fanfare that accompanied the once-ubiquitous Pollard at his departure.

“It certainly was a big couple of weeks leading up to the move. It made me feel very good to know so many people I respect also respected me and were going to miss me. I'm so way pumped about coming back to Knoxfield in what I'm calling Rocktober.”

And it's no surprise Pollard is returning to Knoxville this month specifically to rejoin the Band of Humans. With their blend of white-boy funk, virtuosic percussion and cultured original lyrics, the Band of Humans' sound seems wholly birthed from Pollard's distinctive artistic imagination. He is the first, however, to point out that this band does not get the attention it deserves as a massive collaborative achievement.

“With this band, the thing is everyone's sense of adventure. They all try something before they judge it. Then they always say it's stupid, and we do it anyway. I've always said music is like comedy in that if it's not funny the first time, it will be the third time and the fourth.”

This free-spirited mantra has also allowed the band to become a space for its members to freely don new musical personas and enhance their skills in an organic and improvisatory setting.

“The biggest thing about the Humans musically is that everyone is playing an instrument they don't usually gig on or filling roles they don't usually. Jon (Whitlock) had never played kit in a group before. Robert Richards was never a bass player. If you knew Chris Zuhr in Knoxville, it was as a bass player, not a lead player. Of course Kyle (Campbell) and Dave (Nichols) only played in the horn section in high school. Geol (Greenlee) gets to play keys without carrying the bass, melody or chords. And you know Matt (Morelock) never played timpani before.”

But will the band be able to stitch their jubilant chaos back together after a long two months apart?

Guitarist Chris Zuhr is unafraid: “As long as one person remembers how something goes, pretty much everybody is good enough to follow that person.”

This is, after all, the unpredictable condition in which this band has always best thrived — the live performance.

“We don't bring anything.” Pollard says. “We don't bring any CDs or T-shirts. It's all live. I'm very funny on stage. I'm the whole deal. I sing, I dance, I tell jokes. I play very little.”

No doubt Pollard will return in rare form. He's likely felt the absence of the Humans more than any of its devotees or other members.

“I've missed running into people I know. No one in Richmond [Va.] cares that I'm Phil Pollard, even when I wear my Bonnaroo shirt with my name on it, which I do a lot so someone might ask about it. The other day at a local radio station, I said to someone, ‘You know, I wore this Bonnaroo shirt so you'd ask me about it.'”

Speaking of wardrobe, Pollard offers a final suggestion for the homecoming: “Let's all wear capes on Friday the 12th — it's the second scariest day of the month.”

Phil Pollard and His Band of Humans

Friday, Oct. 12

Knoxville Museum of Art (1050 World's Fair Park) / 5:30 p.m. / $8 non-members, $4 members and students

Preservation Pub / 11:30 p.m.