Music From Every Night at 8 > Tracy Bonham
Artist: Tracy Bonham
MOVIE QUESTIONS
- MY FAVORITE MOVIE:
- Faraway, So Close! (1993, director Wim Wenders)
- A MOVIE SHOULD:
- Feed your soul... or just take you on a vacation from yourself.
- FAVORITE MOVIE SCENE:
- The planetarium scene in Manhattan (between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton).
- MY FAVORITE ACTRESS:
- Diane Keaton
- MOVIE CHARACTER I'D LOVE TO BE:
- Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday(1953) .
- FIRST SCREEN CRUSH:
- Cary Grant
- MY FAVORITE ACTOR:
- Christopher Walken
- FAVORITE MOVIE LINE:
- "It's just a flesh wound" - Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
BIOGRAPHY
TRACY BONHAM
blink the brightest
With blink the brightest (Zoé/Rounder), Tracy Bonham cements her status in the first rank of contemporary singer-songwriters.
Recorded in L.A., where she's lived part-time since 2003 (she splits time between the West Coast and Brooklyn), Bonham's third album is musically sophisticated, whip-smart, teddy-bear tender and utterly genuine.
Its centerpiece is her remarkable vocal instrument, which ranges from a sonorous alto to a soaring soprano, the opening track, "Something Beautiful," for example, begins with the former and climaxes with the latter in a glorious chorus. What's more, this multitalented young woman plays most of the instruments on the album: violin, piano, a variety of other keyboards, guitar and vibes. She's a classically trained violinist and pianist and an untrained guitarist, but she finds that both extremes have their place in her music. "Guitar-wise I have a certain style that I can't seem to get any guitar player to mimic, and it's because they're good and I'm bad," she says with a self-deprecating laugh. "And I don't mind. There's a way I want to hear it, so I just do it myself."
On blink the brightest, Bonham makes full use of a palate containing far more colors than you'll find on those of most writer/artists. "This record comes from the music that I really love, incorporating classical influences, rock and pop, sometimes an R&B or soul flavor," she says. There's no equivocation in her assessment of it, either. "It's my best work yet," she asserts. She uses these varied stylistic elements to create consistently inventive arrangements that transcend genre conventions and are bound only by the needs of a particular song.
Bonham co-produced the bulk of the album with Greg Collins (U2, No Doubt, Matchbox 20); Joey Waronker, who has drummed for R.E.M. and Beck, co-produced four tracks. Along with Bonham, the players include drummers Waronker and Butch (eels), bassists Sebastian Steinberg (Soul Coughing, Neil Finn) and Davey Farragher (Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow), guitarists Joe Gore (Tom Waits, P.J. Harvey) and Dave Levita (Alanis Morissette, Jewel) and keyboard player Mitchell Froom (Paul McCartney, Los Lobos).
Unlike Bonham's first two albums, which were underwritten by Island, her former label, Bonham paid the recording costs of blink the brightest herself with money she'd made from selling copies of her EPs while touring with the Blue Man Group in 2003 (she previously appeared on the group's album, The Complex). Those organic circumstances fit the nature of this album, which is the first one she's truly made for herself.
"I think this record was blessed, in a way," she says. "All this inner work I've been doing with my personal life kind of transferred over into the recording process too. I surrounded myself with better people, people who cared, and my friends and some others who just did it because they liked the songs. And I was able to do it myself; I co-produced and executive-produced this thing. Nobody was telling me what to do, and it just felt good."
A native of Eugene, Oregon, Bonham began singing at age 5 and playing the violin at 9. She started writing songs in 1994 after moving to Boston and proved to be a quick study: her 1996 major label debut, The Burdens of Being Upright, went gold, spawning the hit single "Mother Mother," and leading to a pair of Grammy nominations. The follow-up, Down Here, was released in 2000 and since that time she's continued her career as an independent artist, playing her music around the country, as well as growing as an artist and person.
When asked about the maturation of her songwriting, so dramatically in evidence throughout blink the brightest, Bonham replies, "I think I stopped trying to prove so much to people. I went inward and realized that being honest and not being so veiled and cryptic can actually touch more people. In the past, I wanted to be deep, but then I went too far and was over-thinking everything. Now I just write from the heart."
While touring to promote blink the brightest in the US and in Europe Tracy performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, A&E's Breakfast with the Arts and The Late Late Show. In the fall of 2006 she joined up with Blue Man Group to tour as the featured vocalist and violinist in their "How To Be A Megastar version 2.0" playing arenas all over the US. She also sang and played violin on The Who's classic hit "Baba O'Reily" with Blue Man Group on the summer 2006 edition of the hit NBC television show America's Got Talent. Bonham released a self produced EP entitled In The City + In The Woods, a compilation of live songs performed in Holland in 2005 and new recordings.
Tracy's hit single "Mother Mother" was recently performed on the network television show, Rockstar Super Nova.
