Happy 4th everybody! We just wanted to remind everyone that we're taking this holiday weekend off for a much needed vacation. We hope everyone has a great weekend and please be careful out there. We'll be back next Thursday for our show in Huntsville and then on to Knoxville and Tinmouth, VT for Solarfest. Keep an eye out here, at www.myspace.com/boneponystomp and in your email inbox for updates on Diehard 9, new dates on our west coast run and Kenny's new CD "Family Album".
Stomp 0n!
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For those of you who haven't heard, the Duck Inn has re-opened with new owners and management and we'll be doing our first gig there on Saturday, March 22nd. We just want everyone to be aware that the shows will be starting quite a bit earlier this time around; We plan to be on stage around 9:00 p.m. Just a heads up so all of you don't stroll in for our usual 10:45 start time. A good time will be had by all and green bottles will still be served. Come on out and stomp with us at the "New" Duck Inn!
Also, check out this great review of Celebration Highway.
ROAD WARRIORS COME HOME ON CELEBRATION HIGHWAY
By Rev. Keith A. Gordon
Feb. 19, 2008
A live performance by Nashville’s Bonepony is always a treat — as close to a true Bacchanalian celebration of life, love and music as you can put on in public and avoid getting arrested these days. Thus, it is only fitting that the second live album of the band’s lengthy, eighteen-year career should be titled Celebration Highway (Super Duper Recordings).
This hard-working trio has earned its well-deserved reputation as a live band by hitting the highway and performing some 200-plus nights annually for years on end. Along these many miles, they’ve attracted an ever-growing audience of loyal fans every bit as rabid as those you may find at a Phish, DMB or Widespread Panic show.
Celebration Highway was recorded on both audio-and-videotape during a March 2, 2007 performance at The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville. For this landmark show, Bonepony beefed up its normally muscular three-man wrecking crew of Scott Johnson, Nicolas Nguyen and Kenny Wright with friends like fiddle-player Chris Carmichael, bassist Jason Dunaway and drummer/percussionist Mickey Grimm. The addition of these backing players fattened the band’s typically raucous sound and allowed all of the Bonepony guys to come up front now and then to showcase their multi-instrumental talents and natural charisma. Sounding unlike any band you’ve ever heard, Bonepony’s unique hillbilly stomp is a hard-hitting, energetic blend of Appalachian folk, roots rock, Piedmont blues, East Tennessee hill country Gospel fervor and reckless country soul.
Performing live, frontman Scott Johnson’s vocals are an impressive mix of Texas twang, Mississippi Delta drawl and a fast-paced, tongue-twisting, gnarled Southern auctioneer patois that rivals the verbal skills of any street-bred rapper. Guitarist Nicolas Nguyen, a veteran of local Nashville hard rock outfits like Prodigal Suns and the Social Kings, is a vastly underrated string-bender that also holds his own on banjo, fiddle and mandolin. Drummer Kenny Wright, another familiar face around town for his work with Scarlet, Prodigal Suns and the late Max Vague’s band, as well as Nguyen’s partner in the Social Kings, is another of Nashville’s unheralded talents, a powerful presence behind the kit but also a skilled guitarist and mandolin player. All three guys lend their voices to create joyous waves of harmony.
A two-disc set with one audio CD and a full-length DVD, the audio portion of Celebration Highway offers up highly-spirited performances of fifteen well-drawn Bonepony songs pulled from across the band’s four studio albums. It’s fitting that Johnson wears a Ramones T-shirt throughout the show, as his band brings a fervor and energy to its performances that rivals any punk band’s restless edge. The Bonepony guys just give themselves up to the music, and much like true believers caught up in the holy spirit at a church revival, they just go where the music and the audience takes them.
It’s the songs on which Bonepony hangs its collective hats, though, and beneath the electricity of these largely-acoustic tunes lays a deceptively complex lyrical heart. The spry, energetic “Home,” from the band’s recent Feeling It album, is a celebration of both those left behind and the brotherhood of the road, the joy of “singing in a traveling band.” A high-octane hoedown, “Voodoo Banjo” is an instrumental raver that Johnson’s growling vocals skate and slide across like a New Orleans jazzman hitting a high note. “Bayou Sky” is a beautiful, country-styled song with soulful vocal harmonies and enchanting string work — and I could go on and on, because in truth, it’s all good here. The material presented on Celebration Highway is road-tested, tried-and-true, and will rock your stereo speakers nearly as hard as it did on the stage.
The DVD disc offers Celebration Highway – The Film, a concert documentary of The Belcourt Theatre performance intercut with band interviews. Capturing the band’s explosive onstage vibe, the professionally-shot, albeit low-budget film also does a fine job of showing Bonepony’s relationship and interplay with its audience. The DVD also includes bonus features like the “Day In The Life” mini-doc, a video biography of the band, and music videos for their songs “Lonely” and “Sweet River” — the former an acoustic-based sagebrush-blues that expounds on the joys of bachelorhood even while bemoaning the lack of female companionship, the latter a folksy conceptual love-goes-sour tale of young parenthood and coming-of-age far too soon.
Bonepony is one of Nashville’s lesser-known treasures, a talented and creative band that, while perhaps unfairly pigeonholed as an alt-country or Americana outfit, nevertheless rock with the energy and passion of any punk or metal band. Celebration Highway is a solid documentary, both a souvenir for the faithful fan and a fine introduction to the charms of this deserving band for any newcomer looking for honest, sincere and entertaining music. There’s plenty of room under the Bonepony tent for everybody and, as Scott Johnson says, “music should lift you up,” perfectly expressing the band’s musical philosophy when he adds “if it doesn’t make you smile, then it’s missing something.” With Celebration Highway, there’s plenty for both the band and its fans to smile about. |
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Order Bonepony's new CD, "Feelin' It" right now ... because it is the right thing to do.
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