Haley Bonar
Listening To Adversities And Bracing
Feb 13, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Green Eyed Boy
original version appears on Big Star
I started writing this song about four years ago and abandoned it until it suddenly came into my head again. It's your typical story of 'love fools', falling hard and fast and one day realizing that you've become something entirely different from the romantic and ethereal feeling you had in the beginning -- when the reality of love sets in. This one is one of my favorite songs I've recorded from my new record Big Star. I love the swell of the bass and guitar and the urgency of the drums.
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Big Star
original version appears on Big Star
I wrote this song toward the end of my recording of Big Star. I was originally going to call the record Mayday, but when I wrote this song and recorded it last minute, it resonated with me differently. The idea of those two words is so vague, but have this strength to them when applied to fame. The two words are something that musicians hear differently, depending on your status. Someone on "American Idol," for instance, strives for it, hungers for it, feels the oppression of fame in a far different way than the struggling artist from north or South Dakota, playing in bars for 20 drunk people, only trying to sing above the noise, hoping that one person will hear it and relate. The idea of fame in our society is intoxicating. It seems that everyone wants so badly for a moment in the spotlight and it's easy to achieve I suppose, if you have the right thing and the right time in front of the right judges. But also this song represents the other side of the musician, the partner of one who is on the road a lot.... I know many people who sit at home with the kids and the laundry while thier significant other is gaining momentum in the music industry. It's not necessarily a positive or negative view on it, though I'll admit there is a little tongue-in-cheek bitterness upon the bridge of the song, "I can't make you happy, I can't make you money, I can only fold your laundry," and a true love's wish for their partner, "You're gonna be a big star, waiting, on a big wish that I'm making."
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Bad For You
unreleased
At the Daytrotter session, this song was incomplete, as I just finished it last week! But I wrote that about a month ago, amid my frustration for the constant live feed of news telling us what's bad, better or best for your health, wealth, and confidence. pretty self- explanatory and obviously a tad sarcastic!
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Highway 16
original version appears on Big Star
Is about the highway in the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I grew up. I wrote it in my math class in high school right after I recorded my first album, which was recorded right off that highway in a farmhouse by Hill City, SD.
Haley Bonar walked into the studio back in the fall wearing galoshes, or a pair of something in that same family. They were big, looked extremely warm, comfortable and woodsy. On the cover of the Minnesotan's latest album, Big Star, the orange-haired beauty is getting her close-up, with a furrowed grimace (that might be depicting a wry sense of boredom or dumfounding sour luck) and a furry hooded winter parka pulled over her resting hair. She's pulled off the look of a woman who has to endure the elements and knows the precautions that should be taken to not freeze ears or toes off in the cruelest northern winter. She could survive blizzard conditions if the task were put to her and she would likely even be willing to soldier through one if she needed to get home at night, to her own bed. It's almost as if she might be loyal to those adversities that her current state and the one where she grew up - South Dakota - dole out when the season slides into the shortened days of whipping winds and flurries coming of their ears. There is much pride taken by anyone who lives somewhere that's not always prime for vacationing. A From her dress and her songs, one can infer that she refuses to be taken weakly. She has a resilient country and western quality to her voice that makes her sound as if she's got her own destination under control - or at least her protagonists do. There is a heavy twinge of self-confidence to all on her new album - a reliable collection of observations and real lifelike stories of those needing truths and confirmations - as well as a sensibility of innocence, where there are mistakes to be had. It's mostly her demure and charming lilt that brings this across, but it's not necessarily submissive, not flat out on its back waiting for a hand up. Bonar, who has contributed to Andrew Bird recordings, knows the tendencies of some of her peers and maybe herself sometimes are to find a tree of a man and cling on, to serve dinner and raise the babies (as she details in the title track for the album) and then go along for the unfulfilling ride of a lifetime. She writes about these tendencies of those people chasing certain things, such as fame and fortune, and others on the other side of the dirty truth, who remain suspended from ability to make anything better show itself. The life that she gives to the people and the music on this album is the same helpless life that a farmer or a gardener gives to the tilled soil when they toss a seed into it. The best intentions are always there and they're tended to with diligence. The weeks are sprayed or pulled and all of the recommended fertilizer is applied to make whatever is going to grow prosperous and plump. But there's no accounting for droughts or rainstorms. There's no accounting for rootworms and vermin dashing the growing power of a fruit or vegetable newborn. Bonar, in her soft and appreciative way, respects these adversities in the people whom she encounters and then uses as footnotes to later writer about. She respects the adversities in her own turbulent thoughts bent to fury when everything's bad or wrong for a person, an insinuation that she has no time for. She just croons out like a morning glory or a buttercup and throws the furry hood over her orange hair and put her weather-resistant boots on and lets it splash and howl around her.
Haley Bonar Official Site
