The Henry Millers: A Band Worth Knowing

By Beatriz Areilza / January 18th, 2012 in Music / Brooklyn, New York / 478 views

John Mac Callum and Katie Schecter are the duo behind Brooklyn-based band The Henry Millers. After years of jamming with each other, the best friends turned their time together into band practice and, once their friend Philip Nuttle joined the duo to play bass, they decided to make it official and start a new journey as The Henry Millers.

We talked to Katie recently and learned that the story about how they picked their band name, is as spontaneous as how the band started;

The name came before the actual band. John and I were playing music in his kitchen, dealing out random ideas for band names, hypothetically discussing what it’d be like to have a real band. The book Tropic of Capricorn was on the table in front of us. The Henry Millers was born. I swear I came up with it, but so does John…so we’re just sticking to “we” came up with it. Oh and we both love Henry Miller—his outlandish honesty [is] inspiring and crazily comforting, to say the least.

Their musical influences range from The Beatles and Bowie, to Modest Mouse, Phish and Smashing Pumpkins, and John Mac Callum’s wild brain is responsible for most of the songs.

John’s musical taste is far broader than my own. I tend to dig pop songs, you know, nothing over four minutes, really formulaic and precise like the early Beatles etc. John’s been into everything, he’s really a music merchant at heart. He’s definitely opened my mind up in terms of sound. We really like the band The Vells—who our dear friend Darrin Weiner produces—and Morning Teleportation, comprised of our buddies, is a crazy awesome band that has been incredibly inspirational.

This video was done in collaboration with Land of Nod. The Henry Millers met director Robert Kolodny through Emilie Ghilaga, a mutual friend. Robert is the founder of Land of Nod and had shot a fashion video with Emilie, in which Kate featured.

We met Robert Kolodny, director and founder of Land of Nod Inc. through our friend Emilie Ghilaga who was shooting her fashion video with him. We were struck by his poise and taciturn work ethic. He’s a real genius. He also shot a music video for our song Diamonds which is premiering soon! We were upstate shooting the music video when he filmed us jamming on Feefahfatulah in the barn. The man just never stops making films. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to work with them forever

We wrote Feefahfatulah years ago, before we were officially a band. John had come up with the lick and I formed a melody and words over it. At first I sang the words Beebopalulah…but we heard that it’s been done already.

The band has released a five song self-titled EP and according to Katie, Feefahfatulla will definitely be featured on their upcoming full length album.