RIP To Anomaly
Anomaly behind the boards. Taken from his FB page.
A fixture in the Minnesota music scene just passed away. His name is Jason Heinrichs and for quite some time he was known professionally as Anomaly. Anomaly had a recording studio in his basement in South Minneapolis and a lot of folks recorded some of their first work there (Atmosphere, P.O.S, Oddjobs et cetera). Jason’s biggest impact in music is likely his work in the dance world where he was a force as a DJ and a producer. I always knew he knew what he was doing in the dance world, but I’ve never been very conversant in those scenes. Beyond a couple basslines for other artists, I never recorded at his studio, but when Heiruspecs was strictly a high school band he spent a couple months as our drummer. It was a really wonderful experience for me, and I hope for him. The older musicians (he was probably 23 at the time) who took the time to be a part of Heiruspecs’ story were really important to me and the band.
A solid 70% of being in a band when you’re young is actually just learning how to be an adult being sifted through the process of learning how to be in a band. Some of the stories I’m about to tell you can only really be understood if you remember the information desert that was the world before the internet. If you never survived without the internet, there is a world of things you learned in front of a computer screen by yourself that me and my generation learned looking like complete total losers in front of other humans. Jason was a guiding hand towards me not being a total fucking asshole musician. It helped me immensely.
Jason was the first person I ever interacted with who had roommates. I’m so glad I was basically an adult before cell phones came into my world. I booked my first tour without a cell phone. I booked my first 300 rehearsals without a text message.It was a different time. If you liked somebody’s music you got their phone number, there wasn’t even really email yet. I dug how Jason sounded on drums and he dug what Heiruspecs was doing musically. I asked him if he was interested in doing something with Heiruspecs. I frankly had been thinking more along the lines of him doing a remix or playing one special show with us. He just mentioned he’d love to play the kit more and I was elated. This resulted in me parting ways with our drummer (and my neighbor) Alex in a hasty, rude fashion. But I loved what Jason did on the kit. I wanted to connect.
Jason gave me his house number and told me to give him a call. I called him and a woman answered. I asked for Jason and she ended up just taking down my phone number and letting me know he’d call back. I learned that that was his roommate. A roommate? A woman? In a house? I was blown away. I knew about roommates like in college, but I had no idea that people had roommates in real life post college, I thought that was just in Friends. We ended up connecting and making plans to play music together. But I just remember being in awe of this WHOLE ASS ADULT, who lived with a bunch of people in a house, wanting to play music with me and my ragtag group of friends.
I Didn’t Know That People Drank a Lot on the Night Before Thanksgiving Until Jason Told Me
Jason came from up North in Minnesota, I’m not sure where. We were standing outside before some gig and he mentioned that he’d head home for a couple days around Thanksgiving and offhandedly he mentioned “and I’ll see everyone from my high school on Thanksgiving eve cause there’s only one bar in town”. WHAT? I had no idea. Since he was already in his mid 20s he had to tell me it was overrated, that it wasn’t very fun. But, I asked him if it was cool to come back to Northern Minnesota and be the cool guy who produces records and plays in bands and he said absolutely. He kind of gave me a look like “if you keep on playing music, you’re always going to be the cool guy at the bar the night before Thanksgiving”. He was right.
Jason Taught Me To Loosen Up Just a Little
I ruled Heiruspecs with an undeserving iron fist for the first 8 years of our history. I thought the only way to be a good bandleader was for me to be a relentless asshole. But I couldn’t be an asshole to Anomaly, he was old and he was cool. I would tell him exactly what I wanted him to do on drums and he would do about half of it. And he just didn’t care. He cared sincerely about making good music, but he didn’t care about stopping for a dotted 1/8th note on measure 29 of Felix’s verse. Didn’t care. If he did it, great, if he missed it, who cares? Nobody cares. This attitude was only acceptable to me because he sounded great on drums, he was old enough to have roommates and what the hell else was I going to do about it.
First Time I Played on Stage at the Mainroom was with Jason
The first time I ever played music on the stage of First Avenue’s Mainroom was on January 1, 1999. Rhymesayers had a big ass event called Soundset (obv. later it became an outdoor festival) and they had Heiruspecs play. I can’t remember if we played criminally late or criminally early. But we played to very few people and we played through like two microphones. Since the club thought it was a rap show they hadn’t rented the necessary microphones to accommodate a live band. We made it through and I remember being so elated to be throwing down on this legendary stage where I had already seen some of my heroes play music. That memory was with Jason. I get the feeling like it was far from the first time Jason had ever played the Mainroom but he seemed happy to match our energy.
Jason Flaking on Heiruspecs Was How We Got to Record Our Album Antidisestablishmetabolism
I think pretty quickly the polish of playing in a high school band as someone in your mid twenties wore off for young Jason. He politely quit the band and gave me the numbers of many drummers he thought could fit the bill if we needed. The shitty part was, we finally had studio time booked. We had at first tried to record in a church in Woodbury with some agemates doing the engineering. They couldn’t get keys to the Church on the night we were supposed to record and when we finally did get into the Church their equipment wasn’t working right. Jason was unimpressed with this whole situation and spent the majority of the non-session sitting in his SUV presumably wondering what the fuck he was doing in front of a Church in Woodbury with a bunch of 17 year olds. So instead, Heiruspecs booked some discounted days of the week over at the Terrarium (when it was on Washington Ave). I ended up having to fly my drummer friend from Massachusetts in for the sessions cause we didn’t have a drummer. Conor Meehan, the drummer, was a masterful player and that record is really the sound of a brand new drummer being dropped into a band that was incredibly well rehearsed and then Felix freestyling on top of it. It doesn’t always work as a sound, but man when it does. Check this one out.
My Positive Take on Jason
I don’t know much about Jason’s passing. Felix from Heiruspecs, who stayed in closer contact with him said it might have been an unexpected heart attack. Regardless, my biggest comfort for Jason is that he got to do music professionally for his whole life. I don’t know if he held other gigs, but whenever I ran into him he was talking about licensing music, making new beats and loving DJing. I fielded a call from Zach Combs shortly after Jason’s passing cause he wasn’t sure I knew of his death. I shared with Zach my optimism about Jason and also about myself and so many of my fellow musician friends of a certain age: we didn’t become household names, we didn’t attain the fame we at one point were certain was coming our way; but well into adulthood we were able to make money from making music. We were able to share music with audiences, to record albums, to travel with the music. It’s a beautiful thing and so many people just want that, and Jason got that, and he was damn good at it. And he had a roommate.