Bonepony
It makes you feel good inside.” That’s the catch phrase Nashville, Tennessee’s Bonepony uses to describe what they do, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who has seen the band that didn’t agree. They’ve been making people feel good inside for years, criss-crossing the nation, stopping in every big city and wide-spot-in-the-road town in America and bringing their unique brand of “Stomp Rock” to their audiences with all the fervor of a traveling tent revival mixed equally with arena-rock spectacle. “We play our hearts out,” says Bonepony front man and founding member Scott Johnson. “I don’t know any other way to play these songs.” The band: Johnson, Nicolas Nguyen and Kenny Wright, tour year-round and have developed a large and devoted following. Bonepony has warmed the stage for acts like Bob Seger, Santana, and ZZ Top, played countless open-air festivals like Farm Aid and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and rocked every theatre, concert hall, club and roadside honky tonk in the United States and Canada. “That’s the best part of being on the road. We’ve made friends in every small town and major metropolis around,” rhapsodies Nguyen. Their sixth release, “Feeling It,” has just hit the #1 spot on XM Radio’s X Country chart, no small feat for a band without label funding or radio promotion. The music itself is a melodious hybrid of rock and roll, folk, country, bluegrass and soul, driven home with foot-stomping four-on-the-floor beats and crowbarred into four minute musical masterpieces that make it impossible to enjoy while standing still. As one writer scribed, “If Bonepony doesn’t make you move, you’re made of lead!” The live show is more of the same, with the band tearing through their unscripted set with unconscious abandon, each band member seemingly playing a different instrument on every song and using every limb available to do so. March 2007 will see the band film their show at Nashville’s historic Belcourt Theatre for a two disc live DVD/CD package they plan to release in the summer. The show will also be part of “Diehard” weekend, an annual gathering of Bonepony fans (or Diehards, as they have dubbed themselves) from all over who meet in a planned city and travel in groups for a series of shows. “We’ve got the best fans in the world,” remarks Johnson. Indeed, the band’s relationship with the people who follow them is unique and a huge part of what keeps the band making music and touring 200 plus nights a year. As Johnson often says wryly during the course of a show, “You guys are our record label.” The band has been in DIY mode since after parting ways with Capitol records before releasing their second album. Subsequent releases have all been on the band’s own imprint, SuperDuperRecordings. Undaunted by the fact that mainstream success has so far eluded them, Bonepony forges on. With 2007 shaping up to be a busy year, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Says Wright, “We’re together 52 weeks a year.” It’s a real family vibe, and I think it comes through in the music.” Pausing slightly, he reflects, “It really does make you feel good inside.
