Meet BUHU,
your backup hook-up band

After PHOX released Unblushing in 2012, I met Jeremy Rogers, BUHU frontman (and de facto manager) through a cold-call email offering his services as our manager. This was the first time I’d gotten an email like this, but my predestined response was “Yes, and.”

I ought to introduce myself. I’m Matt Holmen, and I play with PHOX but spend most of my time answering emails and stuff.

After a date at Maduro, where I was positively smitten with Jeremy’s storytelling (and hair), we agreed and started working together on PHOX for the next six months. It proved to be a crucial time for all of us. Maybe most clutch was Jeremy booking us a week’s worth of events at SXSW 2013 — while we were all in Austin together, PHOX met basically every member of our future team, including a new manager.

Eek. So, at this point, I had to conceive of the uncomfortable words that, in a strictly business sense, meant “we’re gonna have to let ya go.” This is really hard to say to someone who is primarily a friend and who has also been instrumental to your business. He said he was happy to get us to the point we were at, spent like a rocket booster falling into the ocean after its shuttle hit altitude. :’(

But we both made it out alive. Jeremy moved to Austin for work, weather, and a gal (there are no other reasons to move, but rarely do you get the hat trick). Turns out, all three were crucial in forming the project we’re here today to talk about.

BUHU is founded on a lot of the same principles as PHOX: they’ve got core Midwestern values, caps lock, and a DIY approach. Their music takes those dusty, wood shop hands and lays them on filthy synths and distorted guitars. The vocals are twisted through tuners and filters until the human behind them sounds foreign, like a film adaptation of a book you’ve heard of but haven’t read. Surely there’s a purer form of it, but you like the Hollywood razzle-dazzle and the popcorn kernels on the floor.

Jeremy and I said our “what’s up”s and “fer sher”s over e-lunch via telephone, and I had the sadistic pleasure to begin our interview with the one question no band wants to answer.

Do we want to talk about where your band name came from?

“I mean…” (sighs) “It’s a really short thing with an easy answer.”

It sounds like you don’t want to.

“I can if you want.”

Just tell me, just so I know.

“I already knew every band in the world had the name Boo Hoo, and I wasn’t even necessarily that interested in that band name to begin with. I was just on a fucking Googling spree of band names. I switched out the o’s with u’s and tried that, and all that came up was Urban Dictionary. A BUHU is an acronym for your backup hook-up, your backup booty call.”

That’s actually pretty good. Backup hook-up.

“Yeah, I was actually pretty surprised.”

So, it’s a mistress.

“I mean, everyone talks about Adolf Hitler’s mistress, and look at what happened to him.”

You’ve already said a lot of printable material.

“You bring out the best in me, Matt. What can I say?”

What is the core of your band? Is it an idea? The recording process? Is it the writing? The performance?

“That’s something that we’ve been discovering this whole time. I think what every band does is try to figure that out. The more we go about it, it’s being completely self-proficient in what we do. We can record ourselves. We have great film capabilities. Not too far off of how PHOX started, actually. I’ve never had a band like this before. The whole DIY aesthetic is the center of the band.”

That is the working model. You have the tools. Didn’t you also book other bands at SXSW this year?

“Yeah, totally. The very first event I threw in my life was a SX event, called Freaks Meet Folks. And I threw it again this year, five years later, making it a quinquennial event.”

Quintennial?

“No, quinquennial. Q-u-i-n-quennial.” (laughs) “It’s an event that happens every five years. It was like 38 bands that I booked, on three stages. I did it as a way to… how could I immediately repay these bands that have gone out on a limb to help BUHU on our first tour? And this was it. It was a huge success. We had 3,000 people enjoying them on a Monday, before music even began at SX.”

Well, probably the most fun event we did at SX was the backyard screening of Confetti that you put together.

(laughs) “Yeah, that was just a good, easy, silly thing to throw together that I thought was very appropriate.”

But for us it was huge. Our live show wasn’t great, but we were proud of the video.

“And that’s so funny, because that’s exactly how we felt until recently. It’s so crazy, Matt, because we’ve been a band since 2013. We still only have, like, 8 songs because we’ve spent all this time mastering the live show. And we just finally figured it out before this SX. Now we’re ready to get it on the road and tour so we can really hone it in and use touring as a way to not just get our name out there but to polish ourselves up in every kind of scenario.”

Oh, you’re doing two Milwaukee shows? Wait, three!

“Yeah, that’s a big part of what we’re doing. It’s called the Mostly Midwest Tour because we’re doing weekend residencies a lot. Milwaukee is my hometown, so it’s very important to me. These residencies typically include a DJ set or a house show or something personal, a studio session, and a big blowout club show.”

What’s the right space for BUHU?

“The tour is going to lend itself to discovering that. We’re playing everything from dive bars to outdoor stages to Daytrotter and Audiotree. We’re playing in people’s houses and 800-capacity stages. We’ve probably played 20 or 30 shows as a band now; not very many. This tour is going to help us figure that out. I personally like… any space where it’s full.” (laughs) “That’s what I like.”

That’s most musicians’ opinion, I think.

“As long as it’s full, I’ll do it.”

Do you love performing?

“Yeah, performing is very much a natural place for me. It’s all about making sure my confidence is there. I’m not terribly good at faking my way through things, but when I’m in the zone and I feel very good, which is most of the time, it’s great.”

Sorry, my mom just got home and put on the news. I had to shut the door.

(laughs) “That’s intense.”

Hearing local news… it just gives me the willies. It’s still the same meteorologist as when I was a kid.

“Some things never change!”

You know, I’m starting to gain an empathy for journalists that I didn’t have before. Trying to come up with good questions is hard. The last thing I ever want to hear a journalist say is “Where did you get your band name?” And that was the first thing I asked you.

“That’s interesting. Well, to me, I’m just happy anyone’s asking any questions. I’ll talk about anything. I love to talk.”

That’s brilliant.

“It’s true. You know it’s true.”

So, is 4-Track Cinemat the newest thing?

“Well, yes. That is the live video EP we released where each track was filmed and recorded in a different location. One would be recorded in the refrigerator, some under staircases, some up in trees. The whole concept was to get the best possible image and the best sound out of the space we were using. …

(Side note: Funny, that’s the order we prioritized, too, during Confetti.)

… It was probably one of the hardest things but also the most natural things the three of us have ever done. It’s too much, you know, to get super anal about so you just gotta gotta get out there and do it. Just make something that honest and that fun.”

It ties into the quinquennial approach: You can discover the meaning or pattern after you’ve made it. Seems like the same thing you’re talking about here.

“For sure. Or just letting the process, you know, discover me. I even take back that whole DIY thing I said earlier, because as this conversation is unfolding I really think that is what the heart of the band is. And it took this conversation to maybe kind of discover that. But that is how I always have been my whole life, you know, is that I just set out to do something with a goal in mind, and that’s how the goal changes and shifts into a different goal. You let it unfold and you do the best you can and you follow the pattern you let it lay before you.”

BUHU plays at the High Noon Saloon in Madison on Tuesday, April 21 (6:30 pm) with Oh My Love. That’s Matt Holmen’s birthday, so you should do *something* to celebrate.