“I feel like everyone needs a redo,” says Tracy Bonham.
The eclectic, classically trained musician known for her 1996 alternative rock hit “Mother Mother,” is responding to a question about “Jumping Bean,” a track first released in 2000 that is getting another life as the lead single on her brand new album, “Sky Too Wide.”
“I’ve definitely had a couple redos,” she says during a recent Zoom call from her studio. “And I think that songs for me are like living creatures as well. That song in particular needed a redo. A couple tracks on this album are from that era, and ‘Jumping Bean’ in particular has stayed with me as something I’ve been performing.”
The new version of the song retains the defiance of the original, but there is some nuance that she feels she maybe didn’t have the experience or depth to pull off 25 years ago.
“I was maybe not fully matured yet, and I feel like this new version of ‘Jumping Bean’ sounds way more mature. It’s slower, it’s got more space around it. And that’s what I mean about do-overs. Some songs just are begging to be done again.”
The idea of restarting, sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity, is a throughline in Bonham’s life. A divorce. Breast cancer. And a reconfigured band featuring jazz musicians Rene Hart, who is also her partner, on bass and Alvester Garnett on drums, which leans into her violin and piano training rather than pushing against it, like she did in her early days.
“The theme on this album, there’s a rebellious spirit about it,” she says. “You might not hear it, but to me it feels completely rebellious because I’m taking things that shouldn’t normally work, like classical, like my my influences from being a young person and a teen playing classical music and then infusing it with my rock songs. And for me, it ties together because I was kind of rebellious child, and I rebelled against classical music, and I wanted to rock or scream, and all of it’s coming together into one piece, one body of work that feels kind of like, I don’t want to follow the rules, like, I’m not going to be that for you.
“And it’s a beautiful thing, getting older and wiser and where you can actually say it and mean it.”
Bonham will celebrate the release of “Sky Too Wide” on Tuesday, June 10 with a show at Joe’s Pub in the East Village. In addition to Hart and Garnett, she’ll be joined by the guitarist Matt Beck and string players “because there’s a lot of strings on the album.”
The show will also feature her old friend the comedian Fred Armisen. A few weeks before the show, she wasn’t sure what exactly he’d be doing, and she wanted to keep it that way.
“He’s going to add levity,” said Bonham. “He and I go way back, like 23 years, and we’ve done some things together. So I do I enjoy our energy together. I think he and I are going to maybe work together on playing some songs together where I’ll just say, the theme might be something like ‘violin has no place in punk rock’ and see what comes from there. He’s so good at improvising, so I don’t want to tell him too much.”
The music video for the “Sky Too Wide” version of “Jumping Bean” features ballet choreographed by Suzanne Haag. Bonham had worked with Haag on a performance that combined her music with ballet and debuted in Eugene in April of last year. Haag as a teenager was a fan of Bonham and reached out to her asking to collaborate.
“I learned so much from her,” Bonham said. “I don’t know how anyone can move bodies in their mind as they’re creating choreography. I can do sounds and I can do harmonies and structures and rhythms. But for someone like her to visualize what bodies will be doing and groups of them and how to organize it, it’s a complete mystery to me.” She said it’s the type of project she would like to revisit.
Bonham started teaching private music lessons 15 years ago “because I needed to make an extra buck,” and during the Covid lockdown launched the Melodeon music education program with Hart, which she wants to return to after her current album cycle.
She said that she is feeling well after her breast cancer surgery and radiation, which was about a year ago. “I didn’t do chemo, luckily, and I caught it early, so I’m so very lucky. I had my follow-up and my breast surgeon was like, ‘I don’t need to see you for a year.’ So it’s a great feeling. I still have residual nerves about it, you know, like, ‘God, I’m really stressed out. I wonder if it’s coming back.’ You know, I think that probably doesn’t go away. I know a lot of other people who’ve gone through this still have that fear of it returning. So I’m just trying to take care of myself. I am feeling pretty, pretty darn good. So thank you for asking.”
Photo by Shervin Lainez
Leave a Reply