MeatDraw

"...stomp-and-holler oompah hoedowns to light a fire in your colon when you’d least expect it. Occasionally the album brings to mind something you might hear at a gypsy camp in the Balkans, but more often I’m reminded of a rootsier Flaming Lips, or portions of The Violent Femmes’ Hallowed Ground, albeit - if you can imagine - a little weirder. And that’s a very good thing. "
- Devon Cody - Nerve Magazine

Meatdraw are huge! Not just physically large, but they sound huge. My friend, and I go to MeatDraw's "all-ages" shows and dance harder than any of the old foils. Ken and I went to their photo shoot cause he's like friends with them and they hang-out and stuff, so we did another Q&A thingy but it;s like shorter cause of the space and stuff, I don't know, anyway.

Japhy: What kind of music would you say you play? It's kind of hard for me to say when people ask...

Marco(who sings in) Meatdraw:
We've been describing it as an exorcism dance band. I'm surprised people will keep dancing to songs with such slow, tempos. I'm going to keep slowing the songs down and see what people will dance to.

Japhy: Am I your biggest fan? I have this friend who really likes you guys, but he can never come to your shows...

Marco:
YES!

Japhy:
How did you get to be so freakishly good?

Lily (who plays saw in MeatDraw):
I make awesome juice! It has a few secret ingredients, the hardest one to collect is rainbows.

Japhy:
How did you go on tour and not break up?

Marco:
We broke up nightly. But we would realize that there was no way to get home and everyone just got back in the van.

Japhy:
When are you going to put out another album, cause we know the lyrics to all your songs. Except the title track "Meatdraw'' that's like, impossible to remember. Unless you were the guy who wrote it...

Marco: We're shooting for March-ish. Right now we're working on another video.

Japhy:
Well then, when's your next show?

Marco:
We're doing a big free fan appreciation show at the Fernwood Inn. We've had a few cancelled shows this year and this will be our big F-U to death, miscommunication, sickness and the police. Most of all to the police.

Japhy: I like your video for "I don't want to be your ghost" What's with all the white suits? is it because you're ghosts?

Marco:
"BOO!"

Japhy Japhy is 11 and Ken is 33. Together they are 44 awesome.

- The Metropolitan

Picture this: you are hanging around and chatting with some friends when you hear the dirge of a New Orleans funeral precession going by. It’s similiar to that scene in Live and Let Die. If the movie is fresh in your mind, you may be briefly worried that you will be assassinated. Do a double take. You are not in New Orleans, nor are you near a graveyard. You are at Vancouver’s Ukrainian Hall where MeatDraw’s sorrowful procession passes, dressed all in white on their way to the stage. Tonight, the band is opening for Victoria’s Immaculate Machin.

MeatDraw brings together a wide variety of influences: the household-object instruments of junk bands, the jazz and gospel of New Orleans, the twangs of country, and the shouts and profanity of punk. Fusing them together effortlessly, they quickly pull forward the startled Immaculate Machine fans, slightly cynical concert-goers standing far back from the stage in order to better enjoy conversation and beer, giving space to the energetic interpretive dancer who has taken over most of the floor.

Dressed in white and giving an energetic performance of their music, MeatDraw is aptly described as “stomp-gospel dirges, post-apocalyptic crooner ballads, mythic power anthems, and ghostly car-chase jazz suites.” They are not only talented musicians, but they are performers as much as musicians.

You could say they pull influence from the Arcade Fire’s spectacle-driven concerts, but it is more likely that their true influences lie with Lily Fawn, girlfriend of bandleader Marco Bozenich and her other band, Hank & Lily, best known for their exotic storytelling centered around the adventures of Hank Pine and Lily Fawn.

Hank typically shows up wielding a garbage bag containing a dead girlfriend, gas mask in full effect, while Lily wears antlers and steals babies. They incorporate their fictional alter-egos into their live performances with costumes and an ensemble of friends, who play the roles of minor characters in their adventures. MeatDraw leans towards the baffling bizarreness of the Hank & Lily numbers mostly in lyrics with notable songs about Siamese twins, ghosts, and centaurs from Narnia. The spectacle of their performance is still there, but they appear as the storytellers as opposed to the cast of the story. The influence is strong though especially because in their mind, a performing band must create music, but equally importantly, entertain its audience.

The band name is more self-explanatory than it looks: a meat draw or meat raffle is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Having grown up around these lotteries this seems obvious to me, but speaking with Marco, it is apparently not as obvious outside of southwestern BC. While touring to various parts of North America, Marco found himself needing to explain not only why he’d chosen the name of his band, but also what his band name meant. Meat draw participants buy tickets and have a chance at winning large portions of meat from local meat dealers who usually have donated meat in order to support some sort of charitable endeavor. They usually happen at the local Legion. The name for the band was chosen out of members identifying with a blue-collar purpose to experiment with recording. Marco ruefully admits that this tended not work as well as he’d hoped—he needs to explain it by intellectualizing the whole thing.

MeatDraw has existed in many incarnations for almost two years, and currently consists of Marco, his brother Stefan, Lily Fawn, Marek “the Miraculous”, Sara Hart (of Rantmusic), Grayson Walker and Megan Boddy. They currently have a self-titled album on release, but are working hard to put forth a new one. It will apparently be a little bit more country-tinged than the last one, and it showed in their performance. Marco claims he has been listening to a little more Hank Williams and Roy Orbison these days.

MeatDraw hasn’t played many previous gigs in Vancouver, which is surprising for a Victoria-based band that has done a considerable amount of touring. When asked why they’ve skipped out on Lotusland in the past, Marco points to the lack of interesting small venues in Vancouver. I had a hard time arguing with him on that point, but suggested Hoko’s as a good possibility for the future. Either way, MeatDraw will keep on keeping on, hopefully making a stop here soon—at least to promote their new album. - StreetHawk Magazine

A "meatdraw" is a promo gimmick practiced by questionable bars throughout the English-speaking world. Everyone goes to the bar on meatdraw night and throws down a little cash to get a ticket. At the end of the night, there is a draw and the person holding the winning ticket gets to take home a pile of steaks, chops, sausages, and patties. It looks like we pulled the winning ticket. Singer/songwriter Marco Bozenich has brought together a shambling pawn-shop orchestra to play his tunes. They have a sound palette reminiscent of The Silverhearts: banjos, musical saw, accordion, trumpets, and twangy guitars. Meatdraw goes to the "bad place" more often than the 'Hearts. I think First Loves Last Rights is about incest, but I'm not sure. Alternately reassuring in its use of traditional sounds and then disturbing in its subject matter or moments of dissonance, Meatdraw provides an interesting collection of goodies to gnaw on. - Erik Weissengruber
- Broken Pencil Magazine