Masts Of Manhatta, Tracy Bonham’s first full-length album in five years, will be released on July 13th on Lojinx LJX024 CD & digital in the UK. Produced by Bonham, the album was mixed by Tchad Blake (Tom Waits, Los Lobos, Lisa Germano) and features the Brooklyn-based Smokey’s Roundup, a trio led by guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits, Beck, Norah Jones), as the backing band.
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Read about Tracy HERE and about the songs on "Masts Of Manhatta" HERE.
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Tracy Bonham
When Tracy Bonham set out to make her fourth full-length record, a lot had changed. She'd move back to Brooklyn, after spending three years in Los Angeles, had fallen in love and gotten married, and watched as the record industry cease to exist. "I had no idea how or when I was going to make my next record, let alone release one," says Bonham. "I started writing and it took shape organically." Bonham got together with guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits, Beck, Rufus Wainwright) and his "Roundup" trio in a Brooklyn studio and began cutting tracks that reflected the changes in her life in an honest, open way. "It was the most fun I have ever had making a record because I didn't have anyone looking over my shoulder," admits Bonham. "It was so liberating to do this totally on my own, without the pressure of a record label. I didn't care about things like radio anymore. These rules were so far behind me and, in a way, I felt like I was pushing myself to tread new ground."That freedom comes across on Masts of Manhatta, Bonham's best and most personal record to date. Recorded both in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY (where the singer alternates between residencies), Masts suggests the dichotomy surrounding the two environments, the singer's own personal journey as well as the changing rules of the music industry. “The city versus country theme threads through the record,” says Bonham. “This is my life at the moment: the balance of nature and the big city. Longing to be surrounded by nature, to get back to a quiet and balanced life, but also loving life in the city and being inspired by it.”
The title is taken from the Walt Whitman poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," which she'd read on vacation in Mexico while taking a break from recording. The author is in a state of wonder, feeling connected to all things as he crosses the East River on a crowded commuter ferryboat. He looks back at the lower Manhattan skyline as if they were masts on a ship, commanding them to stand tall in celebration of their beauty. "This poem summed up these new songs for me," says Bonham. "It's about maintaining a sense of peace and stillness, of connectedness to all in nature, while living in a bustling New York City."
Masts reflects the singer's peripatetic lifestyle, moving between tango-influenced rhythms ("Devil's Got Your Boyfriend"), Tom Waits-inspired Klezmer folk-punk ("Josephine") and pastoral country ("We Moved Our City to the Country") with multiple pit stops in between. On the latter, Bonham recalls the initial feelings that come with moving from an urban area to a rural setting. "It's about transposing that city mentality into country life and finding the humor inherent in that," says the singer. "Musically, it's a little schizophrenic and reflects my attempt to piece together disparate feelings while still maintaining a sense of balance with the duality."
Bonham retains her unique ability to make the prosaic poetic and on Masts, has worried less about how her lyrics may be perceived. "From a writing point of view, there are certain lyrics on Masts that probably don't make sense to anybody else. The old me might have said, 'That's too specific. It's going to shut everybody out.' But now, this is who I am now. Take it or leave it."
As on past efforts, romance, love and heartache make their appearance, but where Bonham's early vocal efforts displayed a rebellious snarl, the singer nowadays takes a softer, if no less direct, approach. Her wry wit, however, remains, conjuring up a mix of humor and despair on "Reciprocal Feelings": "I'd like to be my own best friend/Turns out there's no reciprocal feelings/What a total snob."
A native of Eugene, OR, Bonham began singing at age five, playing the violin at nine and piano at age 14. After earning a violin scholarship at University of Southern California, she transferred to Berklee College of Music to study voice and began writing and recording her own material. On her 1996 debut The Burdens of Being Upright, Bonham established herself as a brash rocker with ironic nods to the emerging music of punk grrrrl bands. With blunt, direct observations on love and loss, the album went gold and earned the singer Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Vocalist.
Critics took notice as well. Rolling Stone noted "this classically trained Boston singer-songwriter sets meandering Aimee Mann-like melodies over bright electro-pop folk with string-laden atmospherics." "Mother Mother", her first single, became a nationwide anthem and earned the singer an MTV Video Music Awards nomination. From the late 1990s to the mid 2000s, Bonham steadily recorded and performed both individually and with numerous groups, appearing with everyone from Blue Man Group and Aerosmith and to Ron Sexsmith and Juliana Hatfield. Following 2005's Blink the Brightest and the 2006 EP In the City + In the Woods, the singer took some time to focus on other things, earning a yoga teaching certification while learning to live a more balanced life, not realizing initially that her non-musical experiences would be fodder for what would eventually become Masts.
"Making music is what I will always do," says Bonham. "I realized I didn't have to divide it into 'career' and 'not career'. I make music. I needed the music business machine for a minute. Now I realize I don't. Every record before this, I had some expectation for how the record should do commercially. But now, it's a wide open slate and I'm okay with that, as long as I can create new opportunities and grow from them. Life is so good right now; how could I go wrong?"
Masts Of Manhatta, Tracy Bonham's first full-length album in five years, will be released on July 13th by Lojinx in the UK and Engine Room Records in North America. Produced by Bonham, the album was mixed by Tchad Blake (Tom Waits, Los Lobos, Lisa Germano) and features the Brooklyn-based Smokey's Roundup, a trio led by guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits, Beck, Norah Jones), as the backing band.
Masts Of Manhatta is deeply rooted in the places where Bonham resides and recorded the album - Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. It reflects two circular journeys: one leading Bonhamaway from music only to return to it, renewed, and a second - her trek from city to country and back, creating a loop as she responds to the inexorable pull of the two disparate ways of life.
"The City versus Country theme threads through the record," says Bonham. "This is our life at the moment: the balance of nature and the big city. Longing to be surrounded by nature, to get back to a quiet and balanced life, but needing to be in the city as working people/artists."
"We Moved Our City to the Country" tackles this dichotomy outright. "We find ourselves wanting to get away from the city, getting closer to nature, but unable to really walk the walk and finding most people doing the same: still attached to comforts - and our American suburban conveniences like Home Depot, Target, cell phones and wireless Internet," she observes.
Yet Masts Of Manhatta suggests it is possible to retain a purity of spirit even amidst the trappings of urban life. The title is a nod to "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," a poem by Walt Whitman.
"As Whitman is describing the waters, the birds, the people on the ferry, he looks back at the tall buildings of lower Manhattan and writes: 'Stand up, tall masts of Manhatta!' as if the buildings are masts of a ship," says Bonham. "He's having a moment of wonder and I love that. At that moment he sounds perfectly present, in the moment, loving being alive and connected to everything, everyone."
For Bonham, that sense of connection emerged in the years following the 2005 release of Blink the Brightest, as she fell in love, married and sought to lead a simpler life. To do so might require a career change, she initially thought. A devout student of yoga, she obtained her teaching certification last summer in Woodstock. Spending time in "a little bluestone cottage" there, reading Whitman and Emerson aloud with her husband, she came to realize that she could take her music back to the basics as well. She began writing just for herself - raw, honest songs. In time, friends joined in and Masts Of Manhatta was born.
While it came about in an organic fashion, Masts Of Manhatta is not exactly a collection of bucolic songs. Bonham's trademark wit and wordplay are at work whether evoking the dirt we sweep under the carpet or the kind that gets under your fingernails. She attempts to be her own best friend in "Reciprocal Feelings" - but is at first rebuffed. The sizzling "Devil's Got Your Boyfriend" is every bit as seductive as the temptress the narrator warns of. "When You Laugh" is an exquisite paean to a love "like June and Johnny," but ecstasy cuts and burns on the percolating "Big Red Heart." The gently rollicking "In The Moonlight" recalls a mother-daughter road trip that, years later, reveals an eternal truth.
"Mom's favorite saying was 'to thine own self be true,' a quote from Hamlet," Tracy remembers. "I would always roll my eyes as a teen. I never paid attention to those words until much later in life."
In "Josephine," innocence evaporates when a carnie carries away a young girl. And while the infectious "Angel, Won't You Come Down?" wouldn't sound out of place at a barn dance, elsewhere Bonham's violin brings traces of classical, klezmer, blues, tango and more, all coalescing into a sound that's uniquely her own.
A native of Eugene, Oregon, Bonham began singing at age five, playing the violin at nine and piano at age 14. After attending the University of Southern California in violin performance and studying jazz vocals at Berklee College of Music, she started her own band and began writing songs. Her 1996 major label debut, The Burdens of Being Upright (Island) with the hit single "Mother Mother" was certified Gold and led to a pair of GRAMMY® nominations (Best Female Vocalist and Best Alternative Rock Performance). Down Here followed in 2000 and Blink the Brightest was released in 2005 to widespread critical acclaim. "Bonham sings with a maturity and clarity reminiscent of songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Shawn Colvin, backing her words with self-executed guitar, keyboards, piano and violin," said Amplified. Rolling Stone praised its "tuneful alt-rock" while Entertainment Weekly said, "Bonham was built to last."
She's toured extensively and has appeared on numerous television shows, including "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," among others. Tracy has also released two EPs and appeared as guest vocalist/violinist with artists such as Blue Man Group, Juliana Hatfield, Ron Sexsmith, Aerosmith, Wayfaring Strangers, Latin Playboys, NoBlues from the Netherlands, Soulwax from Belgium, Mark Oliver Everett of The Eels, and Jimmy Page and Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.
Masts Of Manhatta - Track-by-track
Devil's Got Your Boyfriend
This is a song that came out of nowhere. I don't know who it's about, probably some residual stuff from past relationships, ugly stuff. Thankfully whatever this was is behind me. I was inspired by Mishell Ndegeocello's "If That's Our Boyfriend" (it wasn't last night). When I first wrote the song I immediately assumed I would give it to another artist to sing. It didn't feel like my writing. But it made it's way onto the record and I can't imagine it without it. It is one of my favorite recordings from the album.Your Night Is Wide Open
This song is about a text message that changed my life. We were on tour. We had a 20 hour drive ahead, from Minneapolis to NYC and there was a full moon. I was in a foul mood, had bad PMS and really didn't feel like being in a van for 20 hours with 4 other people. My guitar player, Jon, was in the back seat entertaining himself with a cooler full of Labatts Blue. He was the only one having fun I think. I had sent a text to my friend, who is now my husband, complaining about the trip. He wrote back "Your night is wide open" and my heart opened up. He had called me on my shit, and it said everything: this life is what you make it. I hadn't thought about him romantically until that very moment. It was the smartest and most poetic thing anyone had ever said to me, and it was in a text message. The next day we saw each other and I fell in love. The verses are vignettes on our travels together early in our relationship.
Big Red Heart
A song about how excruciating dating and falling in love can be.Josephine
A close friend surprised me by ending our friendship abruptly. We had started to drift a bit when our lives became more complicated. She chose to shut down all communication without explanation. I was so hurt and confused, in trying to figure it out, I had made up a story that she was abducted by a traveling circus.
We Moved Our City To The Country
Having a cute little cottage in the Catskills. It is our getaway from New York City and all of its craziness. For years and years people did the same thing for the same reason. Utopian societies and artist colonies were built in the early 1900s. People were escaping industrialism for a quieter more natural life. However, for many, the city life still held allure. The utopian societies collapsed in competition with each other, and there is only one artist colony to speak of in Woodstock, NY. However, people still come up to the country to escape the city, but I found that you can't truly escape because you are surrounded by other city folk like yourself. 70 % of homes in Woodstock are second homes. It's super easy to get to a Home Depot or a Walmart. And even in the Midwest, or other parts of the country we see Walmarts, Home Depots and Starbucks everywhere we go. It's hard to find a place in this country that doesn't have these things. The first tempo change represents the people in the early part of the 1900s on a train up the Hudson (a hint of "Simple Gifts" is heard in the violin line) and the last tempo change represents the way it feels when you get up there and you are staring up at the big blue open sky. I added recordings of real birds, and our dogs during a stay up there.
When You Laugh The World Laughs With You
This is a song written for my husband and a tribute to the wonderful life we have created together living part time in Woodstock. I am so in love with him that I truly believe when he is happy the rest of the world feels more happy, even if they don't know it.
Reciprocal Feelings
My struggle with insecurities and low self worth makes it hard to be my own best friend at times. Becoming aware of the negative thought patterns and perspectives I create in my head is the first exercise in personal healing. I don't really know who is speaking in this song. Is it the Ego? Is it the Conscious me complaining about the Ego? Or is there a third party? The observer? The last lines: "when you realize love is not a trophy, you illuminate bright the stars are close, we are very close, we are one" means when you finally realize that love is not something separate from you, that it is not something to reach for or be attained, you will illuminate like the stars because you, me, and the stars are all love, we are one.
In The Moonlight
Stepping back in time, this is a road trip song about me and my mom making the drive from Los Angeles to Eugene Oregon where I grew up. She would come down at the end of my school years at University of Southern California and drive me 1,000 miles to our home. Up the I-5 we drive through Kettleman, otherwise known as stinky cow town, and Corning, CA where we thought we had car trouble but it turned out we had just run out of gas. We spent all day at a Texaco station trying to figure out what was wrong with the car. Bartles & James wine coolers were very hip then and this may have had something to do with our malaise. Mt. Shasta and her image will always be a fond memory. But, the biggest message in this song is the eternal wisdom my mother tried to impart on me as I was growing up, falling on deaf ears. She would quote Shakespeare's Hamlet by saying "to thine own self be true" and I had the gall to roll my eyes. I hated it because I didn't get it. People pleasing, to a fault, had been my game. That little nugget, tucked away like a squirrel hiding a nut, was just waiting to be found. Fast forward to today…. nut successfully found, shell cracked and I am still in the process of removing the casing.
You're My Isness
A love song. Memories of being in different places with my husband, driving home from Woodstock on a Sunday with Phil Schapp's Birdflight program about Charlie Parker on the radio. Driving up I-5 once again toward Reading, CA stopping at the Indian reservation Casino, near where Merle Haggard has a home.
Angel, Won't You Come Down?
This is a song written for our future child. We are adopting a child and the process has taken a lot longer than we had expected. It has given us too much time to think and talk and wonder. Words don't help, they are like scarecrows. We have no idea what it will be like until it really happens. We found ourselves praying to whatever god even though we were are not destitute, calling out to our child "Angel, wont you come on down?" we are happy with our life, but it sure would be better if you were here already.
I Love You Today
A song for both my husband and for our future child. Loving someone in ways you never thought existed.
**This album is dedicated to the memory of Matthew Hanson, my spiritual guide and teacher who died suddenly Feb 17, 2009. I believe the work we did together made all of this possible.