Interview: A.A. Bondy

I’m nervous as shit when I walk into the Regency Hyatt hotel in Toronto for my interview with A.A. Bondy. His first album American Hearts is genius, so I totally idolise him. But during my research for our talk, I came across an interview he did at a radio station where he more or less acts like a bit of a cunt. And seriously, come on, no one wants to meet someone they’re a fan of, only to find out they’re a cock.

My nervousness is increased 10 fold when while waiting in the lobby I realise that all the cool, hipster kids sitting around me are the members of Best Coast and Wavves! Holy fuck! What am I doing here? I keep waiting for someone to come up and tap me on the shoulder and tell me to “Get the fuck out!”

Luckily I see a familiar face in Zack from Mini Mansions, whom I’d interviewed the previous day. I wander up and start chattin’ and we’re shortly joined by Michael Shuman, co-member of Mini Mansions, bass player for Queens Of The Stone Age, and all round super-nice-dude. He high fives me and I get a boner. He asks “What’s happenin’ man?” I tell him I’m here to interview the Bondster and he politely informs me he’s just behind me. I spin around only to see him whisked away by some short ass blonde douche for another interview. CUNT! I some how grow a pair and quickly intervene.

“Mr Bondy, my name’s Rav. I’m here to interview you.”

“Oh shit, this guy got to me first. I’ll go out with him and be back with you in a bit.”

FUCK!

Twenty anxiety ridden minutes later A.A. Bondy strolls back up to me. “Alright man let’s do this,” he says with a wicked southern drawl. We head to a quiet corner and get comfy.

He looks nothing like the beautiful voice that fills his records. When I listened to American Hearts and his sophomore record When The Devils Loose, I imagined a pretty boy Sufjan Stevens or Connor Oberst look-a-like. The guy sitting before me however, looks like a geezer from a pre-Madonna Guy Ritchie movie. He has a gaunt face, intensely dark eyes, a wiry frame, spider web veined arms, charcoal hair, and his right T-shirt sleeve is rolled up to reveal a nasty-ass looking graze (the result of a recent motorcycle accident he later tells me).

I say “I’m just gonna get the recorder cranking” and he says, “Cool” but already seems distracted. His eyes shooting everywhere, from the floor, to the ceiling to people walking by, and he seems to be a ball of nervous energy, constantly juggling a spindly cigarette in his hands. I think “Shit, he already wants to get the fuck out of here,” but as the interview goes on, I realise that that’s just the way he is. His mannerisms remind me of a spider, or at least a guy called Spider, who shanks you in the prison yard.

“I was listening to your records before and I was thinking the first time heard you was when a friend actually gave me American Hearts as a present.”

“Right.”

“And I was wondering, how large a part do you think word of mouth has played in your career?”

“Actually, I was in Brooklyn where somebody said that. I imagine it’s a lot of it. I mean, I think that and the internet are pretty much the only conduits I’ve had as far as finding out about stuff. Which is really good. I mean, word of mouth certainly existed before but not in the same way, not as immediate. A band can be nobody and somebody by the end of the week. And that just didn’t used to happen.”

“How have you found the difference between crowds now after your first album and now after your second? Are there more people at the shows?”

“It’s steady it feels like. We’re definitely going to places that we’ve never been before, and they’ve been more people there than expected in the first place. At the same time, I’m not really… I’m still in the process of trying to figure out, I don’t know, that there is anything to figure out – where all this stuff sits. It’s still a weird thing to me that you write these songs, you make a record, you get into your van, drive to a town and strangers come and watch you play these things that you’ve made up. Even though it’s existed for a long time in various forms of entertainment, it’s still puzzling to me. You know? I’ve gone and seen people and been moved by something they’ve done and I don’t know how I’ll get my head around it.”

“As for the rest of this year, will there just be more touring or are you planning on making another record. “

“There’ll be touring and another record. It’ll be both things.”

“For the next record will you be working with the Felice Brothers again?”

“No. Well... They might be on some of it. But I’ve been playing with these two guys that I’ve been playing with now for over a year. So, we’ve talked about, maybe, joining forces a little bit. “

“Has it felt good to play in a regular band for those 12 months?”

“Yeah. I mean, we joke about it. We don’t really refer to ourselves as a band, that’d be kind of weird, but yeah it’s good because for a while I was having to put groups of guys together and you know, it takes a long time for anybody who’s playing together to really see what they’re capable of and develop some kind of language that they all speak.”

“In terms of songwriting are you a prolific songwriter or do you have bursts of creativity at different times.”

“No. I’m prolific in terms of melodies and ideas and stuff like that but not prolific in terms of words.”

“And do you think being around these guys in the band your songwriting process will change again?”

“It has. We’ve written a lot of things and I’ve seen what they can become by playing with them. I do write differently, more importantly, because of playing and touring with them. The way I play guitar has changed, the way I sing has changed. So it’s been good for that.”

“And have you changed at all as a live performer over the last few years?”

“I don’t talk as much as I used to. I used to feel like because I was just another guy up there with an acoustic guitar that I needed to do something to separate my self and it kind of just turned into like, a half absurdist stand up routine and half whatever the other thing is. But I don’t really say anything now.”

“Who would you say were your musical influences were growing up and who do you find you are influenced by now, or who do you find inspiration in now?”

“Mostly, I remember hearing stuff that my parents would play, records or whatever but, as far as something that I got into. When I was 12 Purple Rain was my favourite record and it probably still is. There’s a lot of people I’ve listened to over the years that I don’t really care about anymore that I was really excited about. I mean there’s still bands that, like My Bloody Valentine, Loveless, that record had a big, ahhh, left a big impression on me. And then before that American Hearts record I just got into all this American, other peoples folk music and stuff like that. I think I’m kinda through that phase.”

“I’ve heard your music described as a whole bunch of different genres.”

“Me too.”

“Do you have any concept of what you would describe your music yourself?”

“Not yet. I mean, I don’t know how you do it. I mean I guess it’s just like rooted in some kind of traditional, American songbook. Not traditional by meaning like folk or blues but traditional in terms of I think there’s little pieces of all American music in there except for maybe like hip-hop or rap or jazz. So when people ask, I’m just at a loss. I’m a horrible self promoter. I mean it should definitely be something that I know. And I also feel like somehow I always leave myself room to go onto the next thing by not saying anything. But I’ve never been able to answer it.”

“Do you think that's what makes you appealing as an artist – the sense that it's hard for someone to put a label on your music.”

“I have no idea. I mean, there’s those people that like to put things in boxes and I don’t know what purpose that serves to a listener. I mean, I guess it’s just an easy way of opening up the subject. It doesn’t help me, in my iTunes I don’t break everything up into genres, you know what I mean. I could very easily listen to a John Coltrane song or a Crystal Castles song. I mean whichever way I feel like going. It doesn’t really matter. “

“So in terms of what the next record is going to be or where you want to go with writing for this record, are you going in without a plan and it’s just gonna come out how it comes out when it’s time to record? Or do you think you’ll continue to fill out the production values like you did on the last record after American Hearts?”

“I’d like to say that I steer it, but it’s more… it’s just kinda like I kinda let the boat go where the boat wants to go and every once in a while I’ll be like, “I don’t like where it’s going” and then I’ll turn it. But the last record, there were actually two, full records of material recorded and one of them is never gonna come out. You know. “

“You don’t like the record or…?”

“I tend to not end up liking any of them. You know what I mean? I mean, I always think at some point I’m actually gonna make one that I like. But I don’t know, if you work on anything that long that it’s about ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. Either this is true or it’s not. And after that, even if this was true, at a certain point in time it’s rare, and only a few songs off each record will be able to travel outside of that box of wherever it was given life. But I steer it and I don’t steer it.”

“Do you think in the future, that this ‘dislike’ that you might have, will drive you to continue to be creative and produce work?”

“It does seem like there’s some kind of period like pain or suffering. Not pain or just dissatisfaction in between records and I think that is a function of time which will change a little bit till the next one. I’m just kind of frustrated or got to the point where I’m frustrated and I just don’t like the way… I mean I feel like the way I sing is my own. I feel like the way I play guitar is my own, but I don’t feel like the structures that I’m doing are mine and that’s a lot harder thing to personalise. There’s just so many different kinds of songs. So I’d like that to become more distinct. “

At this time I realise that that’s all my questions done so I press stop and shake the man’s hand. We head up a flight of steps to the lobby and chat along the way. I ask him about the show he played the previous night and he tells me “It was okay. ‘Cept I wanted to get fucked up and they only had like six beers in my rider, which was bullshit.”

It's great to meet someone you're a fan of, only to find out they're a fucking legend.