Phil Pollard: Press

The name is a coy understatement. These aren't your mother's humans.
These particular nine humans wear shiny bathrobes and play ukulele,
trombone, flute, mandolin and vibraphone. Sometimes clarinet, kettle
drum, or didgeridoo. And what they play is a sort of jazz funk to some
interesting songs, or recitations, from poetry or American history,
done mostly by frontman Phil Pollard, who stands and plays the
vibraphone as he recites letters and speeches by Lincoln (including the
only danceable version of the Gettysburg Address we've heard lately),
with bits of Blake or Plath thrown in for variety.

He finished the second set with a phenomenal kazoo solo that was so breathtakingly miraculous and moving I lost all control of my emotions and almost fell out of my chair. Pollard is the Louis Armstrong of the kazoo.

Better than a slip-n-slide

Knoxville is chockablock with musicians — and talented ones, at that — but is anyone serving up greater doses of pure joy than Phil Pollard?

Dare you to argue otherwise. (All reports from Bonnaroo 2006 attendees testify that the Band of Humans had the crowd won over in mere moments. They broke a sweat, of course, but not because they had to. That’s just how the BOH kicks it.)

Phil Pollard is a natural frontman for an act like this, cracking jokes in character as a sort-of legendary boy-band leader. He must be the only lead singer in town (in the state, country?) who punctuates his vibe solos with robot dancing.

"Pollard's narration pays obeisance to all the greatest of puppetista tradition...Punch and Judy would dance for joy...."
--Lost Time magazine

"There is nothing simply human about Pollard and the band of humans....They are super-human..."
--Nonewsweek

LIT-ROCK QUIRKINESS: Phil Pollard and the Band of Humans

Local Band of Humans front man Phil Pollard would be just as happy if they went out and bought a book.

For Pollard, music and literature are intertwined — quite literally. A Band of Humans show is often billed as a performance of "lit-rock," given Pollard's proclivity for reading poetry, excerpts from classic novels and even famous prose like the Gettysburg Address over the group's music.

Before he leaves, someone asks him about his goals for Band of Humans. It’s a rote, reporter’s sort of question, the kind of thing every journalist has asked every performing artist that has granted an interview since the dawn of man. And Pollard starts to give what sounds like a stock answer….

“This might sound cheesy,” he says, as if prefacing yet one more aspiring musician’s diatribe about Just Playing Music. “But I’d really like to play the Acropolis. I’d like to play Stonehenge. I’d like to be the band where people say, ‘We need a band to play Stonehenge; they’d be perfect.’”

Stock answers, it seems, just don’t figure into the Phil Pollard equation. After all, this is a man who will try anything.

Gonzo local-music scholar Jack Rentfro calls them "Don Ho fronting the
Mothers of Invention."