Why Bonnie finds comfort in memories of home on Americana influenced '90 In November'
Originally published by Alt Citizen
Leaving home to follow one's dreams is a difficult and common first step on life's journey into the vast unknown. Removed from the comfort and familiarity of the people and places that defined the earliest stages of growth can make overcoming new challenges dauting, but also redefines each increment of success as a tremendous personal victory. Blair Howerton of Why Bonnie understands this all too well, channeling experiences of moving away from her Texas home to ultimately arrive in New York into an album that fondly looks back while bravely pushing forward into a bright, if uncertain, future.
You’re based in New York currently?
Blair Howerton: I live in Ridgewood. Apparently it was voted by Time Magazine the fourth coolest neighborhood in the world. I can't deny it. Those are the facts. It is the fourth coolest neighborhood in the world.
Probably because you're there.
Blair: Can't deny that either!
And you're originally from Texas?
Blair: Yeah. Born and raised in Houston. I lived in Austin for four years after I graduated college and moved there to start the band. It was a great time, I learned a lot in those four years.
How would you how would you say New York stacks up against Austin? Both have great music scenes, but I imagine they're quite different.
Blair: Definitely different. New York just by nature is bigger, a little more chaotic but in a fun way. Austin is really supportive and there's a lot of great music there. It's smaller, so there's bound to be more of a cohesive sound whereas in New York you get a little bit of everything, which is exciting.
You moved to New York to really get the band started. How did Why Bonnie come together?
Blair: When I moved to Austin I was totally green. I had never been in a band. I had recorded some music on Garage Band and had songs and just really wanted to hit the ground running. I knew that Austin was a good place to do that, and Kendall (Powell) and I started playing together. It was us two and then a few different members who are no longer in Why Bonnie. We were called Ponyboy and the Horse Girls, so definitely a totally different vibe!
Through playing with that group and evolving as musicians and evolving our sound we eventually changed the band name. We rearranged the lineup, so there were a few different iterations of band members until we landed on this current Why Bonnie lineup. It's just been upwards and onwards since then.
I feel really lucky to have found these people. Anyone can tell you who has been in a band that it is really hard to find a dynamic that works. We've been lucky.
Why Bonnie’s sound expands beyond indie rock to incorporate some elements of country music as well. Being originally from Texas and forming the band there, do you feel that country music is an inherent influence?
Blair: I think country music, being from Texas, is always going to be a part of me and a part of all of us who are from Texas that are in the band. It felt natural to write songs in that style and with that influence, especially since the subject matter was about Texas and more abstractly about home. Those kind of sounds feel very homey and grounding to me because that's where I'm from.
So it's something that you consciously incorporated into the sound of Why Bonnie as opposed to being an unconscious influence.
Blair: It started off pretty unconscious. The first song I wrote for the album in that Americana/country style was “Galveston,” and I really liked the way that it sounded. Once that song was written, I just dug my heels deep into that. I wasn't even thinking so much “country,” but more like Americana and 90s alt stuff like Sheryl Crow, who was a huge influence on this album and someone that I really look up to and I was raised listening to. Her music kind of has that country edge, but it's also not straight-up “country.”
In the 90s country music really crossed over into the mainstream. Sheryl Crow, Shania Twain, Garth Brooks - it was everywhere. It’s sort of happening again a little bit nowadays but differently. Orville Peck and Angel Olsen, for instance, approach country music with the sensibilities of indie rock and Why Bonnie seems to take a similar approach. Do you think Why Bonnie’s sound would fall more under the country-crossover style, or more modern alt-country?
Blair: I like to leave the door open in terms of genre, I don't like to [put] us into one box. A review recently labeled us “Shoegaze Americana,” which I really like because it was something I hadn't heard before but felt fitting. I don't think we're outright alt-country, but we definitely teeter on that.
Why Bonnie exists outside the bounds of traditional definitions!
Blair: While sounding like Sheryl Crow, somehow!
You’ve mentioned that being from Texas is a source of inspiration. Where else do you find inspiration? Does it come from people, specific places or experiences, or a combination of all of these things together?
Blair: I start my songwriting process off usually with lyrics, and when I'm writing lyrics I like to start small. I like to start with images or textures or sounds or feelings or smells. Very minute experiences and then build off that to create an image which I think is a lot more personal to me instead of just being like, this song is about this one person. I like to incorporate very concrete and specific textures into the imagery. I think it's nice to start small and build outward from there.
Do you have an overarching objective in mind when you're writing, or is the process more about the journey rather than the destination?
Blair: It depends on the song, honestly. Some songs I'll have written the music for and not the lyrics, and the music will incite or evoke certain emotions in me that I will then want to write a song about. Other times when I'm working from the lyrics onward, I really like to be surprised about where the song, [and] the theme goes. It depends on the song.
90 In November feels very intimate and personal. Do you think good songwriting needs to be personal in order to connect with an audience?
Blair: Honestly, no, I don't. As much as I love and very much appreciate very personal songwriting, I think that songwriting is beautiful in the way that it can be interpreted in so many different ways. Songs can mean so many different things to different people, and it doesn't matter quite how you get there as a songwriter. As long as someone is feeling something from it, that's all that matters.
Would say then that conceptual or fictional writing doesn't necessarily have less of an impact than songs based on true stories?
Blair: Absolutely. Yeah.
Each of the songs on 90 In November are like vivid narratives. Do you approach your songwriting with the objective of writing songs or with the objective of writing stories?
Blair: I think writing songs to an image, to a specific place in time is inevitably going to give the listener a story to hold onto, and that could be a different story for each person, but I do like using songs as storytelling. I think it's a really emotive and sincere way to connect with the listener.
Based on the themes and the topics in 90 In November, would you say that on some level it could be considered a concept album?
Blair: It wasn't supposed to be, and then it definitely turned into one!
Are there any specific ideas or concepts that really bubbled to the surface as you started putting the album together?
Blair: Being away from home and living in New York at the height of the pandemic I had a lot of time to sit and reflect on the past and where I come from, how it relates to where I was at that present moment. I had more time to reflect than I ever really had so a lot of it came out of that. Trying to wrap up what I had experienced in the 27 years up to that point which sounds overly ambitious, and it probably is! Thinking about home and whatever that word means to you or whatever that place is to you is going to be complicated and deserves some thought and meditation.
One of the standout songs on the album is “Healthy.” There's a line that jumps out because you repeat it a couple of times within slightly different contexts: “I'll only leave the house if you dare me”. Especially coming out of the pandemic and the fact that we couldn't leave the house and then suddenly can again has a lot of us questioning “but do we really want to?” In the context of the song this is very striking. How did “Healthy” come together and where does that song stand within the overall picture of 90 In November?
Blair: The music was written by Sam (Houdek), my bandmate and guitarist. He had written that song a while ago and I hadn't put lyrics to it, I hadn't written a melody. It kind of came about very organically and pretty last minute. It was fun for me to be able to write lyrics to a song that I hadn't written myself, and since it was written so last minute, I feel like a lot of the themes of being stuck and isolated because of the time that we were at in the pandemic definitely came through.
How important is collaboration as a part of the album development cycle? Or do you like to keep a lot of the process strictly within your own experiences?
Blair: It's hard to say because I know that all bands work differently. Usually, I'll come to the band with a song and have the lyrics written, and then everyone will write their parts on top of it and we will bounce ideas off one another. That's always really fun because they will think of parts that I wouldn't have thought of. It's a lot more inspiring that way than writing everything yourself.
The album title, 90 In November seems to reference unseasonably high temperatures and the unsettling feeling that something just isn't right. Which is fitting because the album feels like it is balanced on a precipice. Is 90 In November purposely emblematic of this feeling of hesitation and venturing into unknown territory?
Blair: That is precisely what it’s supposed to mean! It's supposed to not only refer to the intense heat of Texas, but also the average speed that a Texan drives on highway. It’s unnerving to hear that it's 90 degrees in November and in that way, I think it’s a coming-of-age story. It's always a little bit unsettling because you don't know what's going to happen next, especially given the state of the world that this album was written in and all of the experiences that led up to the album.
You were really able to effectively convey a macro and distill it down into the micro, a personal experience.
Blair: I really love and respect songwriting that is that way. It’s specific, but in its specificity it evokes some kind of bigger thought.
The album’s title track, “90 In November,” and “Galveston” have a wonderful Super-8 style videos that feel retro and nostalgic and convey an idealized, bucolic existence. The videos for “Hot Car” and “Sailor Mouth” are more conceptual. How do you balance the more straightforward themes in your music with the more impressionistic ideas?
Blair: That’s where these more nostalgic melodies come into play, to anchor you back down into that feeling while still having elements or lyrics or certain sonic choices that we layer on top. Overall, I really like to anchor any song with a good nostalgic melody.
How do you think the songwriting process would change, conceptually, if videos became the primary delivery vehicle, rather than packaging songs and melodies into an album?
Blair: It'd probably be a lot more of the rhythm. Whenever I'm thinking of videos, I think it's really effective when shot changes happen on certain beats. I think I'd be a lot more rhythmically forward. I also think that having like a conception of a story would be super helpful so that you would know exactly what the video was going to be about. It's hard to sometimes think of a non-conceptual video for a song that is so specific. You don't want it to be hand-in-hand.
Who would you consider to be a musical hero or idol, a band or artist that you really admire?
Blair: I really admire Waxahatchee. I think she is an amazing artist. I love her lyrics, I love her voice, and I love that she has taken a unique turn on what is now considered “alt-country.”
Like every other indie person out there, Alex G is a huge influence. He’s just the best to do it!
If you were to sit down with either of them and ask one question, what would that question be?
Blair: Waxahatchee! I’d have to ask her what her notebook looks like, how many scratches it has in it, because she is so lyrically driven that there have to be tons of revisions going on and, if not, I'm going to be blown away! She’s a lyrical genius. I love her stuff.
90 In November is out now. What’s next for Why Bonnie?
Blair: We are going on tour in January to the West Coast, which is exciting because I’ve never been! And then we're going to get back in the studio and start recording our next album, which I'm really excited about. It is going to be pretty different while still having some elements of the same styles. I'm excited!
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In preparation for the band’s upcoming run of tour dates, Why Bonnie has released their latest single, “Apple Tree.” A softly sentimental track with shuffling, brushed percussion and a piano riff that modernizes the jangly saloon stylings of a dusty Texas town lingering on the doorstep of progress, “Apple Tree” doesn’t appear on 90 In November and so channels the compelling curiosity of a quality b-side. For fans and early adopters “Apple Tree” represents a sumptuous feast for the ears and the heart, and for newcomers a tiny sample of the wholesome freshness that pervades Why Bonnie’s affable demeanor with a sticky sweetness that lingers on the lips long after the core has been tossed aside.
90 In November is available now on Bandcamp. Stream the album on Spotify and follow Why Bonnie on Instagram.
Upcoming Tour Dates
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JAN 19, 2023
Valley Bar - Phoenix, AZ
JAN 20, 2023
Zebulon - Los Angeles, CA
JAN 21, 2023
Cafe Du Nord - San Francisco, CA
JAN 23, 2023
Doug Fir Lounge - Portland, OR
JAN 24, 2023
Barboza - Seattle, WA
JAN 26, 2023
Kilby Court - Salt Lake City, UT
JAN 28, 2023
Hi-Dive - Denver, CO