“I want to last”--an interview with Homunculus’ Kevin Shima (written by Aaron Poehler, copyright 1997. Originally published in BC Magazine)

Anyone who’s had occasion to step into one of the local music bars around town in the last year has probably run across Homunculus once or twice; their blend of slacker funk and progressive classic rock has quickly become a staple for many nightclub crawlers. Maybe you’ve seen their self-titled debut CD at your favorite record store--if not, you can write to the band at 1004 E. 2nd, Bloomington IN 47401 or call them at 323-9183 or 323-9184. Even better, you can check out their website at http://www.homunculture.com and get more information about them than you ever dreamed possible: photos, bios, lyrics, sound clips, reviews and more for the Homuncuhead. The band is Kevin Shima on guitar and vocals, Matt Wilson on lead guitar and vocals, Ben Doepke on keys and vocals, Chris Ellison on drums, and Chris ‘Gil’ Gilmartin on bass. I recently talked with Homunculus guitarist/vocalist Kevin Shima about the band’s origins, their response in Bloomington, and their future destinations.

Q: How long has Homunculus been going?

Kevin: We’ve been playing out about a year and a half, I think we’ll have been together two years this fall--fall of ‘95 was when we got together. We’d kind of played in various bands before: Matt played for Flatus and Johnny Socko, I had my solo acoustic thing, Chris was just playing around town. Then I met Ben and he and I put together a group called Wild Edibles, and Matt was putting together a band called Fatso at the time, and so Homunculus is pretty much an amalgamation of those two bands. We were all friends, just hanging out and getting silly--we didn’t have any songs, but we’d just come up with some themes and kind of improvise on those. Before we knew it we figured out that we wanted to put something together that was organized and we started writing songs together and stuff.

Q: And where’d you come up with the name?

Kevin: As I recall, it was one of those ‘cover-your-eyes-and-flip-open-the-psychology-book-and-point’ deals, and when we pointed it was a picture of this little dude called ‘homunculus’ who had really big hands, big feet, and big lips. If your body was based on your nervous system you’d have really big hands, big feet, and big lips, because that’s where the highest concentration of nerves are. I don’t really get it, but it looks good on paper, I guess. I personally don’t really like the name. There’s only one reason I like it and it’s because it’s just a very neutral word. You can’t have any preconceptions about a group called Homunculus, which is why we decided to keep it.

Q: What names did you reject?

Kevin: ‘Gil and the Pillbugs’! (laughs) Thank God it wasn’t that! We were thinking of keeping one of the names of the older bands, but that never worked out.

Q: Did you carry over much material from the previous bands?

Kevin: We play some of my solo songs in our repertoire but we didn’t record any of them; we wanted to break ties with anything that we’d done before. We wanted the repertoire to be a product of all of us and not just one person. Another of the reasons why we didn’t do a lot of my solo stuff was that I think a lot of people were thinking it was gonna be like ‘Kevin Shima’s band’ and we wanted to dispel that immediately, and now pretty much nobody has any idea that I had that solo thing going before the band.

Q: How does the Homunculus creative process work?

Kevin: Some songs, like the songs that I bring in, are very completed. They already have all the sections done and all the lyrics and the melody, so those are pretty strict, but other times we’ll just be jamming and come up with a little idea and then expand upon that together. We’re trying to work together more, we’re trying not to have one person bringing in a song completed so that everybody else can learn, we’re trying to have somebody bring in an idea and then we all develop it together, and that’s very difficult to do most of the time. We need to learn how to work together better. The songs on this first CD, it’s very much like three or four of the songs are mine, three or four of the songs are Matt’s, and three or four of the songs are Ben’s. The individual styles are so apparent that although I like the songs a lot those aren’t really band efforts. There were a couple of tracks that I felt happy with but we need to learn how to take our strong points and combine and magnify them before I’d really be proud enough to send it to record labels and stuff like that. The playing has got to improve a lot, my personal musicianship is still not where I’d like it to be; I’m not proud enough of my playing to let a lot of people hear it. I could be wrong, I could just be being too hard on myself, but I’d like to wait at least a year before we do any more recording. Our songs are changing so drastically, so fast, it’s like buying new computer equipment: you don’t want to buy anything now, because a year from now it’ll be obsolete.

Q: What are your plans for the next year?

Kevin: We all just graduated except our bassist Gil; he’s not gonna be done until May 1998, so we’re gonna wait. After that the plan right now is to move to Cincinnati. I like the idea because we know some people there and we’ve played there and been very well-received. I definitely want to get out of Bloomington; I love it here, but it’s definitely not the kind of place I’d want to stay for more than six or seven years. I feel that if we stay here any longer it’s gonna start to eat us up. It’s not so much from a musical perspective as it is from an emotional perspective; there are so many memories around here it kind of freaks me out and haunts me once in a while. I love the Bloomington music scene and I love playing here, but for some reason we don't feel connected with a lot of other bands in this town. It’s not that we’re better or worse, it’s just that the music we’re doing isn’t very common here. Quite frankly I get a lot of bad vibes from a lot of other bands in Bloomington about us and our music, which puts me off quite a bit.

Q: Will all the members of the bands stay together for the move?

Kevin: Yes, that’s the plan. I want to last, I want to make music my career. I don’t feel qualified to do anything but play music.

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