So when I caught up with our former contributing writer, Homer Marrs, it’s no surprise to hear he’s released a hilarious new EP called “Prom King” or performed a song on Jimmy Kimmel Live via webcam. The Chicago-based Marrs writes fun, catchy music that sounds like Jonathan Coulton read David Sedaris all weekend and then wrote an EP.
“The band I'm most often equated to is They Might Be Giants, which I take as a huge compliment,” Marrs said. “My personal tastes run darker and heavier, which surfaces sometimes in covers I'll do live, like ‘Iron Maiden’ or ‘Danzig.’ Sometimes people think I'm joking when I do them, but I'm not.”
He might not be joking about his love of metal, but he is joking a lot of the rest of the time. In addition to music, he’s also a talented comic, writer and actor. He’s worked for Second City in Chicago, written for magazines in Las Vegas, and maintains a hilarious monthly column called “Marrs Attacks.” Marrs adds, “I’m a little embarrassed of the title, but at this point I’m very happy to have a regular outlet to keep that muscle going.”
For now though, music is Marrs’s focus. “Getting ‘Prom King’ heard and performed is taking up a lot of my energy. Since this is my first effort in music, I'm a newbie and so it's very tough to get anyone to listen to the EP or to want to have me play at their show. But I'm used to persistence and rejection from the other arts, so I'm patient.”
Marrs is also — surprise! — gay. “I feel fortunate to be an openly gay artist in a time when so many barriers have already been broken,” Marrs said. “I can incorporate being gay into my work without having to make it the focal point of my work. In 2012, you can be out and proud without having to write every song about gay rights or how it felt to be marginalized as a child.”
If you check out “Prom King,” there are a lot of hilarious pictures of Marrs dressed up as a sad/angry/generally emotional prom king. Fantastically, Marrs was, in fact, prom king in high school. “The older I get the funnier that becomes. I think of a prom king as an all-American clean-cut jock with a future in finance, which I was not.”
Marrs will be performing in Seattle at XL Weekend Bear Run over Labor Day weekend and often plays clubs and variety shows in the Chicago area. You can check him out at homermarrs.com, facebook.com/homermarrsmusic, and @HomerMarrs on Twitter. Download his EP, “Prom King,” at homermarrs.bandcamp.com at your own risk — I’ve had his “Facebook Song” stuck in my head for three days now.