“To Be Together Has Made All The Difference”: Roddy Bottum On New Releases From Man On Man
Roddy Bottum, longtime member of Faith No More, Imperial Teen, and other bands, and his boyfriend Joey Holman of Holman and Cool Hand Luke, launched a new project from quarantine called Man on Man. From that project, they've released two singles and two videos for those singles, all of which have generated plenty of buzz.
"Daddy" and "Baby You're My Everything" bring us the two sides of the coin in celebrating the more sexual side, and the more spiritual side of attraction and relationships, and in particular, gay relationships. The story behind how these songs came about is far more emotive than you might expect, though, even in these emotional times. Bottum and Holman actually composed and recorded these two songs, as well as a number of others, after a cross-country drive and staring down family crisis and loss. The context only makes the recordings more remarkable for their positivity and the ways in which they've brought people together in support for Man on Man.
Hannah Means-Shannon: You are usually in New York, but you were out in California for some of this pandemic period, right?
Roddy Bottum: Right when the virus hit and things started getting crazy, friends started asking us, ‘What’s your exit strategy?’ Basically, we reserved a car, because my mom was getting sick, and she lived in Los Angeles, where I grew up. We just drove across the country, and we quarantined in a small town called Oxnard, which is about 15 miles north of LA. We stayed there until we went to take care of my mom. That’s where we were to make our record. We ended up staying there, and my Mom passed away, so we were there for the course of that.
HMS: I’m so sorry to hear that.
RB: Thanks. It was a crazy time in the midst of everything else. What a crazy summer with the pandemic and the uprisings. So many things. Even in the thick of it, you’d forget for a minute, then register what we’re in the middle of. Every day is so disturbing.
HMS: How did you handle all the news and social media while trying to make an album?
RB: There was this incessant need for truth. I think we all felt like that. Driving across the country, we were listening to news. There was this quest to figure things out. It’s such a hard time with the administration that we’re dealing with. That kept coming up, if only we had a leader who would be like a father figure during this time and help us. We were also worried we had the virus constantly.
HMS: I feel like never in my lifetime have people had to work so hard to get to the truth. We’ve had to be in such an active search.
RB: There are so many interpretations of “the truth”. It’s like swimming around. It’s a lot.
HMS: How did you manage to get from that mental space to actually working on music and being so productive?
RB: It was a lot to take on, but honestly, we knew when we were driving that we were going to have to quarantine. That was the theme we went with in our writing. We knew it would be a least two weeks before we could go to my mom. It was so open-ended, not exactly knowing how long we’d be isolated. When driving across the country, it came up between us, asking what we could do to stay connected to our art, proactive, and productive. On the way out to California, we went online and ordered things and decided to do some music together. We ordered a microphone and an electronic keyboard to meet us when we got there.
The whole process actually helped me in dealing with the situation with my mom. It was like having something else to concentrate on. It’s also a testament to Joey, who was so awesome to work with, and we had each other to lean on during that process. It made the project what it was. We leaned forward with isolation. It was kind of an unprecedented focus, like I’ve never worked with before. It was like going into a studio, where you have a limited amount of time to get things done, but it was also different. The stakes seemed so high with the virus and everything. This imposed isolation was very intense.
HMS: That’s really interesting how it compared to going into a studio. I think that’s a testament to your way of thinking, though, too.
RB: It was kind of an escape, too, because everything happening on the periphery was so gnarly and dangerous, even life-threatening. I felt like a turtle.
HMS: [Laughs] Did you write the song “Daddy” as well as “Baby You’re My Everything” during that time?
RB: Yes, “Daddy” was one of the first ones that I think we wrote.
HMS: Are there…more? How many songs are there?
RB: We finished the record last week. We just mastered it. It’s an eleven song record.
HMS: Amazing! I really thought you were going to say, maybe, that you had an EP. I did not think you would say eleven songs.
RB: Thank you. We didn’t expect eleven songs either. But it was such a safe place to go as things got worse, with the virus, and with Mom. We kept going back to that, saying, “Let’s write another song.” And we kept liking what we did, which was fortunate. So the goal is to put out a record.
HMS: The process you’ve explained seems like a one-by-one creation of songs, but was there a wider idea of what themes you wanted to explore?
RB: It was more one-by-one. We just explored, having done one thing, trying to then do something different. We had a piano where we were staying, and it was actually the piano that I grew up playing, which is super-poetic in the grand scheme of things. Joey had brought his guitar from Brooklyn, so we had those things, and a microphone. We started out bare-bones, and then do something more electric. We’d go in different directions each time, so as a result the album is super varied and has a lot of different tones.
HMS: That is in keeping with our times!
RB: For us, it feels super tied to our times. It’s a weird time to put out a record, but since it is so tied to our times, we want to release it now. It’s so much of the moment, it’s hard to imagine sitting on it much longer.
HMS: Time doesn’t stop, even though the world is so crazy, so it makes sense to keep releasing things.
RB: There was a beat there, where we were going to release our second video and song, when the uprisings happened, and we held back. It just felt respectful to do that. There was no other option but to sit back and let that exist. Now, we’re coming to a place where it seems really tantamount for people to go forward with their vision in this time more than ever.
HMS: I think a lot of people are paying attention, too, right now, to the music being released and what people have to say.
RB: Are you getting an influx of people making music during quarantine? Does it feel like that kind of vibe?
HMS: I would say, to be really simplistic, it was around July that things started picking up. There were already a number of artists continuing to release albums that had been recorded before quarantine, but around the mid to late summer, more EPs and albums created during quarantine started to be announced or were surprise released.
RB: That makes sense. When we put out “Daddy” it was into a barren landscape, in late April. There’s now a difference in the climate, with more out there. Ultimately, people are being productive and not getting bogged down. That’s really promising to see.
HMS: The way that you recorded this album, was that something you had done before, or was that an adaptation you had to make?
RB: Yes and no. There were factors in the equation that were definitely new. Like, as a couple, we’d never made music together. Joey’s a guitar player but we had never made music together. The technical aspects of recording in a room with a microphone were a little bit different, but not so much. In the vocals, there were a lot of harmonies, and neither one of us had a lot of experience recording vocals, editing vocals, or doing harmonies. We just worked our way through it. Also, neither of us had done live piano in a long time, we went through a lot of different recording methods.
Stuff like, “Let’s mic it from downstairs.”, or, “Let’s mic it with an iPhone from the other room.” But that was part of the project, we had nothing but time and there was no noise. The learning process worked to our advantage, I think.
HMS: Do you think that you’ll look back on that time as something special or weird? It sounds like a unique experience, if painful.
RB: Absolutely. It’s a pivotal moment in my life for a lot of reasons. Especially with my Mom. When I lost my Dad a long time ago, I remember linking certain cultural things of the time with it, like the fact that Nirvana was getting huge at the time. Special cultural moments are something I tie to special personal, historic moments. It feels like that to me. Particularly this last video we made and put out [for “Baby You’re My Everything”] is so linked to all of the real things that were going on. There hasn’t been a heavier time, honestly. And it’s been a fucked up five years, since the administration happened.
So many different things in my life happened over this period. My apartment burned down, I lost friends, my mom died. But right now really takes the cake. But the flip side of that, making a record with my boyfriend, and loving it, means that this is a really charged moment, for sure.
HMS: Thank you for sharing all that. Do you have any particular feelings about why it’s meaningful to you to release a love song right now?
RB: It felt natural to us to jump into this place of what’s important in this time, to us. In the course of the recording, we were really clinging to each other, in the horror of it all. That’s sort of where we’re at: What is important to us as people as we go through these crises? Ourselves, and each other, and taking care of each other.
In terms of getting through it all, that felt important to express. It happened naturally. We had done the “Daddy” video, which was sexually charged, so with this one, we went more with love. It was almost the spiritual sense of what people mean to each other.
HMS: Even though the song is most overtly about a partnership, I think the song can be surprisingly universal about various kinds of relationships that people depend on in their lives, and I find that really cool.
RB: That’s nice to hear.
HMS: One thing that I was really surprised by were all the harmonies in it. It does have aspects of Gospel and choir music, as well as Rock, but at the same time, it doesn’t lean so hard in that direction. I almost feel like it’s a little psychedelic instead. Are there other songs on the new album that have that use of harmonies?
RB: There are a lot of harmonies on the record. We ended up doing a lot of vocals. Part of where we went with that, in terms of presentation, as two guys who are a couple creating music, it felt like our voices together were a big part of what we were doing. Practically every song we had layered vocal harmonies going on. Togetherness was a direction that we chose.
There are really pretty songs, there are really playful songs, but I don’t think there are any others exactly like that song on the album. That one was a stand-out love song for us. We leaned in a spiritual direction for that, so it stands on it own. There is a lot of variety on the album, but I feel like the common thread is that we have a lot of vocals together.
HMS: That’s really cool. It seems like not many people are working with that sound. I’ve heard people wondering why harmonies aren’t bigger in various genres of popular music right now.
RB: I love harmonies myself, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of that out there.
HMS: Do you have any personal history or overlap with Tower Records?
RB: I grew up pretty close to Los Angeles and pretty close to the Tower Records on the Sunset Strip. We used to go to shows on the Strip, and that was a real scene. Tower was sort of a cultural landmark. Even coming to New York, I don’t know why, but Tower always had the most awesome magazine racks!
HMS: [Laughs] I keep hearing about that focus on magazines! It kills me because I’m a magazine obsessive and people keep reminding me.
RB: Tower always had NME, Melody Maker, the foreign or English press. As a Post-Punk kid, that was like our Bible, asking “What is London doing right now?” We didn’t have the internet. Also, fashion magazines. The one in Tokyo is also great for magazines. I remember bringing back a suitcase of magazines.
HMS: Yes, that one is fantastic.
You may remember that the Tower Records motto is “No Music, No Life” and also written as “Know Music, Know Life”. Which of those do you prefer and how do you feel that it applies to your life?
RB: I’m one of those people who doesn’t have much else that I could do beyond it, so, yeah, if there was no music in my life, it’s hard to think about. I wouldn’t have a lot if it weren’t for music in my life.
HMS: It sounds like right now, especially, it’s been really important to help you get through this time.
RB: 100 percent. It really got us through. One of the things that also really kept us going through this time is that we released that “Daddy” video, and we got such awesome feedback from all over the world during this time of quarantine.
People are the thing that we have that’s keeping us moving forward, so we are so grateful for the feedback and the friends that we’ve made through the course of sharing this song. If it hadn’t been for their encouragement, I don’t know where we would be. It felt really good to have this sense of community for us, especially in the queer community, to have people appreciating what we’ve done. For them to come together, and for us to be together, has made all the difference on this project for us.
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