Kid Mammoth and the Case for Doing It Yourself Anyway

There’s no label backing this. No publicist blasting inboxes. No viral TikTok. Just a burned-out side project that clawed its way into becoming a real band: slowly, obsessively, and on their own damn terms. Kid Mammoth didn’t explode onto the scene; they built it brick by brick, layering guitar takes, wrangling four different drummers, and refusing to let go of a song until it meant something. Their new EP, Past, Present, Future, isn’t some breakout moment. It’s the sound of years of stubborn momentum.

The project started as a kind of quiet purge. Kerry Henderson was writing obsessively during lockdown: 125 song sketches, rough ideas, barely-contained sparks. But when he sent a track called “Kid Mammoth” to bandmates Dean and Eric, something shifted. “What they sent back for ideas kind of blew me away and was very different and better than what I had imagined in my head, ” Kerry says. “At that point it dawned on me that we had struck a great creative combo.”

Kid Mammoth may have started as a one-man outlet, but it didn’t stay there. From the jump, Kerry made a conscious decision to ditch old band habits. Gone was the rule that songs had to be fully fleshed out in a room together. “While I do love that process, it can severely limit how many ideas you create.  It just takes longer,” he says. “And in this case I found it was beneficial to throw a ton of ideas at the wall knowing most of them would not stick.”

It sounds chaotic. And it is. But somehow, through that chaos, clarity started to form.

“It’s a challenge to create in the same room together, so it makes the need for focus, when we are together, all the more important.”

The songs that made it onto Past, Present, Future, six total, rose from a sea of maybe-hopefuls, guided by three simple questions. “Do I get goosebumps listening to the song when I’m thinking about playing it live to an audience?  The next question is do I love the lyrics?  And the last question is: Do I feel the song structure is complete?” Kerry says. “By the time I answer all those questions it has eliminated most of the tunes.”

Despite how rich and cohesive the EP sounds, the band is physically split across Ohio and California. That distance introduces friction, but the right kind. “It’s a challenge to create in the same room together, so it makes the need for focus, when we are together, all the more important. And then it also gives us room to work out ideas on our own, along with a need to be able to record ourselves at home most of the time.”

The result is music that sounds geographically unpinned. There’s rustbelt grit and west coast haze. Basement recordings that ache like road trip memories. A kind of timelessness that owes as much to southern guitar heroics as it does to 2000s indie urgency.

“I’ve always loved southern rock and the guitar work of that era,” Kerry says. “That penchant for a straight ahead melodic guitar solo never goes away. And indie just has so much feeling built into the chord progressions and vocal melodies. It’s upbeat but keeps some chord changes with a bit of youthful yearning. Hopefully that combo keeps either thing from being tired.”

“I’ve tried the more traditional routes with music in the past and didn’t like the lack of control and all the gatekeeping,

And while many bands just find a drummer, Kid Mammoth seems to collect them like secret weapons. “Each of the dummers on this record are each so talented, and they all have their own style that fits certain songs like a worn shoe. I just tried to ask each guy to play on songs that play to their strengths.”

That instinct, the ability to cast a song, not just write it, comes up again and again. Whether it’s shifting vocal melodies or imagining alternate versions of tracks, nothing feels precious. “I think ‘Kids at the End of the Line’ done in a sort of slow Boygenius meets Alison Krauss way would be a fun experiment,” he says. Then he laughs. “Actually, can we get Alison Krauss on that track? Does anyone have her fax number?!”

Even then, it’s the band’s collective instinct, not some label’s marketing plan, that decides what lives and what dies.

That independence isn’t about gatekeeping cool. It’s about freedom. “I’ve tried the more traditional routes with music in the past and didn’t like the lack of control and all the gatekeeping,” he says. “We’ve sort of fully embraced DIY. But I have always thought this music would do well on the festival circuit. Hopefully if this project stays self deprecating and humble, it can feel personal, too.”

They’ve recorded vocals in closets. Mailed out free CDs. Built the whole thing out of muscle memory and belief. “It just feels more fun and like having a pen pal for a brief time,” Kerry says. “On streaming you have no clue who is listening, and it’s been a way to break that barrier down a bit and have an interaction that’s somewhere between merch table and Columbia House!”

It helps that the songs themselves feel lived-in. Whether drawing on small-town Ohio memories or imagined characters that “felt like a good story to take me on a ride,” there’s a gravity to these tracks that doesn’t need explanation. It just lands.

Not that he leans into cryptic lyrics. “I don’t think I’m very good at mystery in songs,” Kerry admits. “I tend for literal things that are perhaps said in a clever way? At least that is the goal. I just want a line or two to really hit me when singing the song.”

That unflinching simplicity carries into how they collaborate. “I think the unspoken rule is that we just put energy towards the ideas that are working,” he says. “But we’re open about presenting alternative ideas to parts. I try to just trust the other guy's instincts.”

Instincts don’t always lead you where you think. Kerry still jokes about waking up after a late-night writing binge and asking, “What was I thinking?!? This is so, MEH.” But that humility, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes dead serious, fuels the project. “perfection is the enemy of good. Some songs just work. The others you chase and chase and most of the time they get away. I don’t think I do a very good job of knowing when to quit on a song. It usually just beats me into submission.”

So what is Past, Present, Future then?

It’s not a debut. It’s not a rollout. It’s not a brand. It’s a record made by people who needed to make it. Who didn’t wait. Who trusted each other just enough to keep going. It’s the sound of a band realizing they are a band, no matter how long it took to get there.

And in a world addicted to overnight success, there’s something kind of perfect about that.