Avast Comrades!
The Solstice show this weekend will be our last show in Boston, as residents.
We will be celebrating the arrival of summer! We set sail at the end of June.
Where will we go?
everywhere.
But First we're off to N.H. to get the bus inspected for another year. M@'s bro, Nate is gettin' hitched way up north on the 8th of July and we'll be bouncing around New England playing shows in VT, NH and ME, working to finish the interior and exterior of the bus for our departure from "the nest" in late summer. If by chance we do have another show in Boston after June, it will be as guests.
An open letter to Boston
Boston,
You are everything we hoped you would be. We found gold here, none of the players have been natives but you have been a meeting place. We stayed for 3 years, that's longer than we've stayed anywhere. Though your media has misunderstood us a bit and confused us a bunch as "the next big thing" and filled your columns briefly with fluff stories that served as a distraction from what is real, all and all you've come around. We think you have a good idea of what we are, how we work and why we even make muzik in the first place.
You have figured out that HUMANWINE is not an entertainer and what we make is not manufactured for easy or passive consumption.
You have seen that we use muzik as a soapbox from which we will never shout, "Buy our Crap! Stare at our glamorous photos and feed our vanity! Create a Frenzy for us! Give our lives meaning!" Rather, We are active, conscious members of the human race who also write songs. The cause and the message would be cheapened and would go down simultaneously if were to take an active or passive role in the music machine of today.
We say this because so often we hear the words..."When you make it big" or "I'll say I knew you when". Only time can prove how very much we mean it when we say that we have no intention, ever, at all, of "making it big" and please don't hope to find yourself saying, "I knew them when" let it be that you will still know us because we are all working for the same goals. Exposing the Bush crime family, The Rothschilds and Rockefellers and other coups against humanity for the sake of the wealthy elite, supporting investigations into the 9-11 cover up, celebrating documentaries such as Zeitgeist, seeking out REAL NEWS like DemocracyNow! with REAL JOURNALISTS like Amy Goodman, supporting bills in the House (Kucinich: D- Ohio) to IMPEACH Bush and Cheney which work to TRY THEM AND THEIR CABINET IN A COURT OF LAW FOR WAR CRIMES IN THIS ILLEGAL WAR, supporting the abolition of Human Trafficking, TORTURE and the END of the U.S. occupation in Iraq. Supporting, researching and utilizing renewable resources, reusing AND recycling what we bring into our lives, taking care of ourselves and our friends, making more friends, slowing down, slowing down and thinking clearly about our environment, the new buzz words "Extreme Weather", flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and our impact on our Earth as a result of a greedy, FABULOUS, false, cheap, "just throw it out" after it's not fashionable consumer lifestyle.
The music business doesn't have room in it for thinking clearly, not enough room for us anyhow. We strongly discourage you from spending your money in Sprawl+Mart. We thank you for your constant support and hope that you continue to look closely at what you are eating, drinking, listening to, looking at and supporting because you are taking it all in aren't you, you are a global citizen with everything at your fingertips.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.
We all are.
YOUR STORY is interesting.
YOU matter.
Fight the urge to live through other peoples lives because you think they are more interesting than you, they aren't, they're selling you something.
You don't have buy it.
ARE THEY USING THEIR BAND TO SELL REVOLUTION?
ARE THEY USING REVOLUTION TO SELL THEIR BAND?
Keep your eyes peeled and your ears to the floor, it's a fantastic time to be alive.
Oh and...
Apparently there are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan and Cuba. Not too long ago there were 7 nations on the list...Can you guess which 2 they were?
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Who do you think the U.S. Government will target next?
word.
HUMANWINE
|  06/21/2008 - Cafe 939
Berklee College
939 Boylston St.
(next to Cactus Club)
Boston, MA 02215
| SOLSTICE!
Doors @ 7:30pm
8:00pm - 11:ish
Capacity=200 people
Come Early!
$15 General Public - $10 students
|  | 7:00pm - Be there EARLY to ensure a spot!
7:30pm - doors open, check out our tables
8:00pm - Julia Easterlin
singer/songwriter and jazz vocalist
8:45pm - Luminescent Orchestrii
Romanian gypsy melodies, punk frenzy, salty tangos, hard-rocking klezmer, haunting Balkan harmony, hip-hop beats and Appalachian fiddle, all eaten and spit out by two violins, resophonic guitar, bullhorn harmonica and bass.
10:15pm - HUMANWINE
Socio-political lyrics from a band who lives what they sing about. Family. Struggle. Peace.
| On the tables:
Recycled Movement
www.nervousrelatives.com
To sum up our goal has shifted from a "plan" (that perpetuates a system of dependency which would only enslave & hide us) to a PLAN which allows HUMANWINE to speak to as many people as possible in the most independent, clean and self-sustainable way our current technology allows. Please donate to this RECYCLED MOVEMENT if you can.
Tunes & Tees: All of the bands will have merchandise at this show.
| |  Donate Scraps to Recycled Movement | What we still need:
+ Galvanized Steel air duct
+ Steel Bed frames
+ 6" and 8" 5/8 - 3/4 bolts
+ 2 pieces of 5/8 - 3/4 Plywood
+ 4 screen doors or 8 window screens
| If you have these materials
or can direct us to them...
Please write to:
donate@HUMANWINE.org |
June 2008 Cover Story
By T. Blake Littwin
Photos By Dave Kimelberg
FREE COPIES
If you live in CT, MA, ME, NH, RT, or VT then email web@performermag.com
for a list of locations where you can pick up a free copy.
There is a celluloid element throughout much of HUMANWINE's music, an audible spinning of dusty movie reels.  The stories in their songs unfold in a fictional place called Vinland, a surreal space full of characters good and bad. This strange new world highlights an important artistic truth that perhaps best explains HUMANWINE; creation is control. The authorial power that comes with defining a new world is all encompassing and unlimited in scope and range. Writers place readers into scenes and breathe words in to their characters, while painters grace their subjects with light and weight and let viewers take it all in. Good musicians string together melodies and rhythms, mapping out a specific listening experience full of peaks and troughs. When in that space � in their world � we're subject to their creation. The regular rules no longer apply.
At the core of HUMANWINE are M@ (Matt) McNiss and Holly Brewer. While living in New Hampshire they spun in the same musical circles for half a decade before working together. Once the connection was made, the duo began producing music at a prodigious rate. Eventually moving to Boston in 2005, the accolades soon followed as HUMANWINE won the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll and the "Best New Local Act" at the Boston Music Awards in 2006. The following year, their album Fighting Naked won "Best Album of 2007" by WBZ TV. The band has enjoyed recognition but is still hard to pin down in terms of their overall sound.
"I wouldn't describe us as anything," says M@. "Muzik: that's what we play."
"...If anyone listens to HUMANWINE without a visual representation of what we mean, I feel like they're getting half the story." explains Holly.
In HUMANWINE's visual world, Vinland is a diverse realm. There are YerYer, Enjoyeurs, Hordes, and Abrogated Munificents. There are conflicts, struggles, and men overboard. There are mindless cogs who never question their place in the machine. Vinland may be a well-constructed fantasy but the issues HUMANWINE address through the individuals and institutions contained within are modern and familiar. What should listeners take away from their episodic visits to this world? "If they feel uncomfortable that they're not alone," says Holly. "If they think that it isn't right to have a cubicle and a rat-like job and to be unhappy all the time. It's not normal for humans. If you feel uncomfortable about it, it's fine: you're totally on the right track."
For M@, the idea of acceptance extends beyond the issue of corporate employment. "One of the most major questions ever that we ask is 'What are you consuming'?" he says. "What are you taking in? What are you believing? What are you taking for granted? What are you putting into yourself?" Modern consumption comes in many forms and perhaps one of the most insidious and ubiquitous mainlines goes unnoticed on billboards and buses. "A lot of what we talk about is advertising because you're just bombarded with it," says Holly. "I don't want to become desensitized to it.�
The band draws on personal experiences and observations but tries to avoid the confessional, first-person approach that plagues many acts. "It's not to say we don't sing about ourselves, says M@. "We try to include greater numbers than just ourselves when we're writing a song. We put our own thoughts and emotions into this but we try to make a bigger thing. The world is way bigger than just the two of us."
Although HUMANWINE's music is an amalgamation of genres and styles (there are dirges and waltzes and metal riffing) their lyrics have a decidedly punk edge to them. This designation is a complicated tag though. Holly recounts several instances of people approaching the band after shows saying, "Your music is not punk but your lyrics are punk, but I guess that's really punk!" M@ explains that HUMANWINE, "is not 'punk rock' but punk is a mindset so anything that goes through that filter has that attribute."
Holly continues, "Before punk turned into, 'let's drink beer and throw beer bottles at squirrels in the park,' it was actually kids like us being so rip-shit about the classism in England that they would focus more on class rights and women's rights and they truly felt it was 'cool' to be political. It was cool to give a shit, and it's not like that anymore � especially here. Punk to me has always been synonymous with being a politically active member of your community."
While HUMANWINE has carried on punk's philosophical torch, they have eschewed the more aggressive front that is associated with the movement. The decision to address social and societal woes in a less grating manner is a deliberate one. "Nobody likes that or learns from just being yelled at or forced into something," says M@ of punk rock's confrontational tactics. "People learn much quicker and much better and actually evolve at a greater rate, I think, if you just present them with the pieces and let them put it together. And people do. You have a serious thing to portray to others but it's generally done angry, people are screaming and yelling."
Although listeners are brought fully into the world of HUMANWINE, there is no a soapbox to be seen. They may pass through the looking glass but aren't berated with a manifesto. "We're not yelling at people. We're being creative and singing about it in a way to allow people to enjoy the music. If they want to take that other step and look a little bit deeper they start to see what we're really talking about. It all goes back to allowing the people who listen to our music to be creative with it in their own right because we're not necessarily spelling every single thing out."
Sharing their world is second nature for HUMANWINE. Orbiting the band is an ever-changing lineup of musicians who are pulled in for a show (or a series of shows) and then set loose. Seeing the band perform one night can be an entirely different experience a month down the road. The musicians work with M@ and Holly separately from one another and often meet for the first time on stage. It's all part of the expansive but porous world that the band has created. "We hand pick our top-notch favorite players out of every band in the area," explains Holly. "That violin player, that cello player, that upright bass player. We're not a band wrecker because everyone goes back to their band afterwards. It's serious but it's not monogamous. It's like you're a mistress band" The broad talent pool that HUMANWINE draws on also means that there are very few dates they can't play. "It never stops the show from happening," says Holly. "That's a great benefit."
While M@ and Holly are still the creative force behind the HUMANWINE universe, they appreciate the multitude of benefits that come from playing with other people. "We do write all our own material," says M@. "But at the same time, because we're picking these top-notch people, we feel very safe at having the input of these other musicians. It makes it a whole new thing and it enables us to re-look at the song, to say as we're teaching, 'Hey maybe you play this instrument. Let's make this sort of different, actually, [and] try this thing.'"
The band also attempts to deconstruct the rigid line that often divides the audience and the band. "A huge part of it is getting people...who wouldn't normally do something in public like play an instrument or bang on something or run around with a painting," says M@. "It's a way to evolve what we do."
As unique a system as it is, HUMANWINE wants to expand this idea of a musical collective to embrace a larger body of people. "Our dream," says Holly, "is to collect other bands who are like-minded and have a community with them; a circus-y vibe with actual collaboration. If we could get five to six bands that all have buses, that all have circus acts, that have Bread and Puppet based themes with puppetry and a political message, all the lines blur and you're one monster."
To that end, HUMANWINE has taken careful steps to retain control of the creative world around them. They were signed to a label but now release and promote music through their own label called Nervous Relative Records. They handle their own artwork and graphics. They are also in the process of converting a bus into a mobile home and tour vehicle. "We're control freaks," laughs Holly. "We have to be in control of everything because our names are on it at the end of the day." M@ agrees with that punk ethos but acknowledges that it's not an exclusionary or narrow view. "DIY or die," he says. "A lot of what we do we see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it, so to have somebody else do it would be more work in the end. We need to be involved with absolutely everything but we love working with other people. We love having new energy."
In the same way that HUMANWINE constructed the ethereal Vinland, they have managed to create their own world within the conventional sense of reality and the rules have been written. The traditional ways of addressing issues in songs and playing shows have been supplanted by a new methodology. The old ways have been cast aside in favor of widespread collaboration, stylistic crossbreeding, audience involvement, and an undying commitment to controlling what they put out and let in. Once you cross that threshold and are under the big top, enjoy the show.
View story on-line
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LONG LIVE ART! RAH! RAH!
word.
holly & m@
HUMANWINE.org , RupertSpace , WebLog , LJ , the61
Fighting Naked and mp3s also available through Napster, iTunes, PayPlay, Tradebit, GroupieTunes, MusicIsHere, Inprodicon, GreatIndieMusic
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