Ho-Ag: Transmitting From Pluto
By Adam Arrigo
Photos by Anthony Tieuli

Fun: A word that gets increasingly shrouded by the business side of music. Regardless of where you end up in the music world — how much or how little relative success you achieve — you started playing music because it was fun. It seems like such a simple concept. Somewhere along the way, though, you realized that you wanted other people to hear your music, and you got sidetracked. Whereas so many bands get caught up in self-promoting themselves to every corner of the planet, hiring promotional companies to proselytize their music for them, using MySpace bots to friend entire geographical populations in one click, Ho-Ag is a band that has always stayed true to at least one idea: Music was meant to be a blast. Even if this band’s breed of noise-infused, sci-fi punk isn’t your idea of a party, one thing is clear: Ho-Ag are really, really good at what they do.
Calling Ho-Ag a “local band” would be a disservice: they have toured nationally several times and are on Hello Sir Records — a label out of Athens, Georgia. Still, much of the band’s ethos is a by-product of the local DIY scene in Allston, Mass., where they started making a name for themselves upon forming in 2001.
The founding members of Ho-Ag were lead vocalist Matt Parish, guitarist Patrick Kim, bassist Dave Dines and drummer Jonathan Ruhe. This line-up started playing local bars and DIY shows with the help of local bookers like Dan Shea and artists such as Neptune.
“Our sound back then was sludgier — definitely more like The Melvins,” says Parish.
The four-piece played shows at venues like The Midway and O’Brien’s, and embarked on their first tour in 2003, with mixed results.
Eric Meyer (Hallelujah The Hills) replaced Ruhe in 2004 after meeting Parish while they were both playing in The Stairs. Tyler Derryberry, who had grown up with Parish and Kim in Ohio, moved to Boston to join the group on keyboards. Eventually, Nicholas Ward replaced Dines on bass, completing the five-piece that would become the most stable and successful Ho-Ag line-up.
“When Eric and Tyler first joined was when we really hit our stride,” says Parish. “There were a few months where it was a little shaky, but by the summertime, the new five-piece band had really gelled. That’s when a lot of new people were coming out to see us.”
“I feel like the scene really got going at the same time we did,” says Meyer, who attributes a good amount of Ho-Ag’s rise in popularity to the concurrent rise of Allston’s Great Scott as a venue. “They kind of came out of their frat boy problem right at the same time ‘The Plan’ moved there, and it started to be a destination,” says Meyer.
Meyer also cites Ho-Ag’s 2006 Halloween show as a turning point, when Ho-Ag played an entire set as ‘80s new wave luminaries, Devo — a band undoubtedly central to Ho-Ag’s sound and aesthetic philosophy. “After that show, people were onto us,” says Meyer.
“Night Rally and Clickers were responsible for a lot of momentum,” says Parish. “Those two bands were really hands-on about getting people excited. We were lucky enough to benefit from that. We played the HOSS — those shows were just all about getting everybody into it and having fun.”
Anyone who has seen Ho-Ag live can attest to this element of “fun” that the band exudes on stage — perhaps it’s the band’s ability to connect with its audience during shows that has earned them such an immense, devoted following. Ho-Ag, it seems, garnered its fan base purely through word of mouth, playing DIY shows and tours, and ultimately, by not taking themselves too seriously. Rather than sending out promotional materials with standard information, Parish used to assemble 20-page press kits with random collages and no pertinent information on them. Why? “It just seemed like a fun thing to do,” says Parish.
“You don’t need some huge press campaign,” says Parish. “It’s like having a big party house — weird shit happens and people tell their friends about it throughout the week and from then on people think about going to that house because they’ll meet people they know there. I think it’s a lot better to think about shows as parties or social events — at least at this level. Whenever we’re on stage I always try to take inventory on who’s there and just feel like I’m there with everybody — not like we’re just performing for people.”
Parish references one such show at The Abbey Lounge where Ho-Ag’s on-stage histrionics riled the audience into a near mosh-pit state: “People were running all over the place, falling on top of each other, and I was bleeding out of my head.”
“And I broke all my drums,” Meyer adds.
“Dave [Dines] took his shirt off; I broke the amp I was borrowing,” recalls Parish.
“[Ryan] Walsh hit me in the forehead with a beer bottle,” Meyer chimes in.
“That stuff doesn’t have anything to do with strategy,” says Parish.
“It’s just some weird, errant notoriety that you get that travels through local channels and through the internet,” concludes Meyer.
Not only known for their “spirited” live performances, Ho-Ag is also known ubiquitously for on-stage injuries, and the band attests to losing countless pints of blood over the years.
“My hands are pretty messed up right now from a Ho-Ag show; I got blood everywhere,” boasts Meyer. “And then the next night we played at Castle Greyskull and I used someone else’s drum set and got blood all over that too. I felt terrible.”
Parish adds, “A wound like that is no different than looking out into the room and seeing that four people are watching. Either you want to be playing or you don’t.”
Perhaps it’s Ho-Ag’s philosophy of “play like there’s no tomorrow” that makes their live shows so unpredictable and entertaining. The band gets the audience involved in the adrenaline rush of a performance by thrashing with a threatening conviction that suggests the music could explode off the stage and into the crowd at any moment, as evidenced by Tyler Derryberry’s Moog stand teetering at the edge of the stage. Ho-Ag’s sound mirrors their on-stage volatility with its sort of controlled melodic and rhythmic chaos — the songs often descend into noisy clamor, only to emerge unfettered with tight band fills and mathy meters that only a veteran rhythm section could pull off. “We want to make it feel like it’s the last night you have to be doing any of this stuff,” says Parish. “Especially in the beginning, it definitely seemed like ‘This is it, there’s no future, everyone’s here at this show — why should it end?’“
Ho-Ag’s live dynamic translates well to record on 2006’s The Word From Pluto, which was recorded at Machines With Magnets in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The record was done in mostly live takes — each track functioning as a snapshot of the live versions, which can vary considerably from show to show. While the basic song structures are the same, Meyer’s drum beats and fills are fairly different each time, as well as “the noises coming out of the weird boxes,” says Parish. The variation in drumming probably stems from Meyer’s solid background in jazz, seeing as he graduated from Berklee College of Music. While Meyer plays with “thick sticks on the least jazz-like kit,” the jazz influence can still be heard in subtle phrases and beats.
Thematically, the record deals with alternate realities and discerning what is real and what is illusion. Not surprisingly, the artwork for the record is based entirely on the work of science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick. One influential work in Ho-Ag’s theology is Exegesis — an eight-thousand-page, one-million word journal that was never published, but is referred to in various biographies and in the seminal Dickian work, VALIS. “It’s sort of Phillip K. Dick’s mixture of insanity, Gnostic Christianity, alternate planes of existence, ego-driven paranoia, etc.,” says Parish.
Presently, Ho-Ag is at a critical juncture in its line-up. Two longtime members, Nicholas Ward and Patrick Kim, recently left the band to concentrate on school. Kim was replaced by Roh Delikat vocalist Kristina Johnson on guitar. Ironically, Ward recently joined Roh Delikat on bass, in what has been referred to as the “Roh-Ag” trade. Both bands share the same practice space and are inextricably linked to one another. “It’s still new and fresh in its infancy,” says Meyer, but the band sees the new line-up as auspicious. The band plans to take the Ho-Ag party on the road in May, still in support of the material from The Word From Pluto, for an exhaustive tour of the East Coast. In terms of new material, Parish already has an entire album’s worth of fresh ideas laid down on various demos.
The awkward part about using “party” as a metaphor to describe the guys (plus one girl) of Ho-Ag is that none of them really exude the party aura as people. “We don’t even like to party that much,” says Meyer, smiling wryly. Ho-Ag is a different kind of party — nothing like the ones attended by the frat types that once inhabited Great Scott before local music took over there. No one has ever been roofied at a Ho-Ag show — at least not to Parish’s knowledge. “My ideal party would be for everyone to take turns looking through a high-powered telescope at faraway stars and realize how little any of us have to gain from exploiting anyone else,” says Parish. “Not that it matters — this civilization is completely unsustainable in the first place and all of this will be like a fairy tale to our grandchildren. They’ll probably romanticize the danger and surprise element of frat boys roaming the streets, getting drunk and networking with future CEOs of ill-fated energy corporations. The Golden Years.”

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