Interview with the Band Humanzee from the San Francisco Bay Area

I love to find new bands to listen to. There are so many different kinds of bands out there that have really good music. I would rather listen to a local band, or up and coming band versus a popular band where their song is played 50 times a day on the same radio station. I recently found out about and awesome band out of the San Francisco Bay area and I did an interview with one of its members to find out a little more about their group.

Question: Who is in your group and where is your group from? When were you formed?
Humanzee was formed around the San Francisco bay area in 2005 and remains a power trio to this day, having switched drummers in early 2006. The Humanzee name was impressed upon the very human like Oliver chimpanzee/human. The band's name is more of a tongue and cheek way of saying that we are chimps with instruments, a humorous overtone that reflects the character of the band as a whole. Humanzee members are Tim Agee - Guitars/Vocals, Eli Colvin - Bass Guitars and Roger Reese - Drums/Percussion.

Question: Why were we attracted to music as a prospective career?
Well in short, we mostly were influenced by family members who played some form of instrument while growing up. A natural progression of growing with music took us over from there, and needless to say, I think it is every musician's goal as a musician to make it in the industry. The innate need to perform for people and go through the creative process to make music that people love to hear, that is our personal goal.

Question: Do you write and produce all of your own music?
We write all of our own music in Humanzee. Many of our songs are labors of love that have been changing and evolving over many months to get them to their final place and hopefully maintain the goal of contributing to a particular theme for an album project.

Question: What are your influences and inspirations?
We are influenced largely by the 80's rock era. We are in agreement that early Genesis, Yes, Rush and Peter Gabriel have influenced our individual playing styles quite a bit.

Question: Do you use drum machines when recording your music?
No. We usually have a concept in mind when we all sit down to hash out what will be a new song. As a drummer, I don't like to be influenced by a metronomic rhythm. I want to go through the process of changing tempos and experimenting with different dynamic elements in the writing process. A drum machine just can't replicate this. I will leave the drum machine writing to Devo.

Question: Does your group have any vocal training?
Humanzee? Huh, no. But we'd like to think that people will like that aspect of our music. The vocals are as different as our style, I'm guessing.

Question: What are your musical ideas and ideals behind the band? Well, we have a great way of working together, using a process of rehashing our songs until every member is happy with what we all are playing in the context of every song. In any good band, every change to one instrument ultimately changes the way another member will approach their parts as well. An ongoing tug of "non" war goes on until a balance of satisfaction and ear pleasing music is the final outcome.

Question: Would you like to share anything about your upcoming projects?
We would love to share information on upcoming projects. We are going into the studio in early April to record our next CD, currently untitled. We also produced our own demos to help us create a format and overall template to use for the upcoming CD project.

Question: Where can I and fans find your music?
www.tagworld.com/humanzee (videos and full length songs)
www.myspace.com/humanseemusic (general information)
http://humanzee.imeem.com/music/ (videos and songs)