PJ Bond's Blog

Big day! New session up at http://www.nervousenergies.com as well as CD give away at http://www.definethemeaning.com. Check those out and my EP at http://www.theblacknumbers.com

For those of you who don’t know, nervous energies is a new site run by amazing photog and all around great dude, ryan russell. These are intimate performances by bands you love and new ones you’ll be stoked to find. Check it out for sessions by against me!, fake problems, lemuria, and yours truly.

Define the meaning is running a contest to give away one of my albums as well as has a multi part interview with me that seems to have somehow gotten a bit jumbled. Still, there’s some good talk about bands I love and where I come from, musically speaking.

And as always, if you haven’t heard it yet, I’d love if you checked out my new EP at http://blacknumbers.bandcamp.com.

Im finishing up this tour then going to see some friends. After that I’ll be taking a little time off the road to write more and work on my book a bit. It’s about time.

I hope you’re all splendid.

I am now three quarters into my tour with koji and our buddy pete, and it’s been great. Last night we played a bit of a marathon show with five bands and four acoustic groups in Howell, mi, and it helped instill faith in me in people/show goers. Not that’d I’d lost it per se, but it can get really frustrating sometimes how closed minded people can be. I often return to a train ride I took in Belgium. It’d been the tail end of a near 18 hour trek from southern Germany to groez rock, a festival in rural Belgium. After making a few mistakes on the trains and having to reroute multiple times, I eventually made it to a place where I could tell the prevalence of young kids meant I was close and could ask for help to the festival. This young hardcore/scene looking kid seemed nice enough and when I asked was more than willing to let me accompany him. As we waited for and subsequently rode the train and then shuttle and walked he told me all about their scene and talked shit on just about everything that wasn’t under the “hardcore” umbrella, where he still had strong opinions. When I meet people like this it upsets me because it often leeches into other aspects of their lives. All of a sudden you realize they’re homophobic, xenophobic, or just plain assholes. Not always, but often enough to upset me.

So while listening to this kid slag everyone off, in his odd lisp that sounded of a tongue too big for his mouth, I realized I’d be wasting my time trying to argue with him, so I just tried to offer some other views, politely, then kept quiet until I knew where to direct myself. I soon met up with some great friends, some old, some new and forgot about the long road. The shitshow that the night turned into still could not curb my happiness.

How is any of this relevant? Last night there were nine groups, none of which sounded the same. The first two groups went from beastie boys inspired rock/rap to tongue in cheek soft and sweet female songwriter. It twisted and turned up until the last two groups, koji who played to 120+ perfectly lovely and attentive people who then gave just as much love in the form of sing alongs, dancing and finger pointing to an amazing youth crew hardcore band, brothers, from grand rapids, mi. So in five short hours we ran the gamut of “rock/pop” and had a blast and felt alive and celebrated our unity and differences. Howell, mi, you have my love and respect. This is what it’s about.

Florida was wonderful, it really was lovely to us. koji and I are about halfway through our near 5 week tour. It feels nice to be out now. The first week or so were a bit harder for me, as I had gotten used to being in Asheville for a few months. It’s odd to feel comfortable with such transience, as if a nomadic life were natural. Perhaps it is, from an historical perspective. We, as a people, were probably closer to nomadic in some way or another for longer than we’ve been stationary. At very least i’d assume early peoples needed to travel every few years or so, at least until agriculture was fully realized. So, if traveling meant survival, then my life makes much more sense. Survival of the heart is important, and we need to seek out new and sometimes scary opportunities to find what we need, happiness, love and comfort.

Some highlights of my most recent seekings have been riding rollercoasters at busch gardens with our buddy Ryan, doing some really intense people watching, and then going to Miami and seeing people of an entirely different caliber, but perhaps equally as engaging as a train wreck. Gainesville also was wonderful to me, as I got to see some great friends in the band Spanish gamble, a gritty, melodic punk band. Their neighbor shut down the backyard acoustic show we were throwing, though only temporarily. An aging hippy, she explained that she liked what we were doing but had wake up early for her job, which was monitoring the pesticides that go on our food. It’s always odd when you’re so immersed in a subculture and an outsider speaks to you in their vernacular. Ostensibly we shouldn’t have felt much difference between us, but between age and lifestyle, it seemed we spoke different languages.

Yesterday we played Macon, GA, which seemed deserted and smelled of an old paper mill. However, the small, lovely book store had a perfect little venue in the back and a nice handful of kids came out, making what could have easily been a bunk Tuesday night turn out quite beautifully. As a whole, while the shows haven’t been huge, we’ve had a really positive tour so far. I’m hoping it maintains or improves, but either way it’s feeling cool.

Still making plans for my next moves. Got some last minute ideas that I’m going to try to pull together. Hopefully I can work something out.

What do you have going on?

Koji and I are about a third of the way through our month long tour together. It’s been pretty great, despite a few rocky shows. We are in the middle of the biggest drive of the tour, but overall the drives have been pretty easy, especially because our buddy pete is out with us and doing more than the lions share of the driving.

The tour has been pretty wild, but not in a typical way. The first few days I was driving seperately so we were not hanging as hard, and when I finally got in the van with pete and koji it was as if we’d never met. But vans and long drives have a way of bringing people closer, and very quickly we were delving into all subjects, lofty and brash alike.

The things that have been most interesting to me are rooted in situations mostly foreign to me. I’ve toured so much alone or with very closely minded people that I think I’d become a bit stagnant and perhaps bored. Luckily on this tour I’ve met a lot of peope and spoken of a lot of things that while are very close to what I do, have remained on the perifery. Activist groups, highly religious and spiritual people, and trips to museums and into nature. Some things scare me. Some inspire me. Some confuse me. All interest me. I think pushing ourselves to try to understand things that maybe we don’t feel comfortable with or question things we believe have value is of great importance. And there’s been a lot of reflection and discussion on this tour. So, by that alone, I’d say this has been a success.

If you haven’t checked out the tour dates yet, please do. Come hang, share tunes and let’s discuss what inspires or scares you. Or feel free to email me at pjbondmusic at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing from you.

Hi. I’m back. It’s been a while, I know. To catch you up, I was staying in Asheville, nc, working in a kitchen, working in a screen printing shop, writing songs, meeting lovely folks and enjoying being in one place for a short time. But now I’m back on the road. I’m out for a month touring with a great musician named koji as well as our buddy Pete. The last few days took some getting used to after being in place for a bit, and a few of the shows were rough, but last night slayed. We played a house show in oneonta, ny, and it was awesome. Last time I played there it was to seven people in a bedroom and this time was a completely packed living room, kitchen and hallway. People were piled atop each other and the love was palpable. Nights like that plaster a smile on my face and reinvigerate me in a way few other things can. And sure, I miss Asheville and my family and friends, but if moving my heart and songs around the world are what I’m meant to do, or at least think I’m supposed to, well then it’s what I need to do. Hopefully we will keep meeting great people and pushing ourselves and others to make honest, heartfelt decisions that make our worlds bigger and better. Here’s to good times.

Oh, and if you’re wondering to what ridiculous shit I was referring, it is the fact that everyday my email is flooded with fake robots and spammers posting on this site. I need to figure out how to block these bastards, so if in the effort I block a real person, I apologize, and invite you to email me at pjbondmusic at gmail dot com. I’d love to hear from you. And fuck you robots.

I just finished singing songs. I was playing for over an hour on new tunes I’ve been carving out over the last few weeks. It’s interesting to reflect on some of this music and feel like it was never actually written, but in fact that it always existed. Of course, this is not the case, but creating a new song can be rather daunting, and going over a half written one can be rough but way less so than looking at a blank page. But once the songs start to take some serious form it’s almost as if they always were. This is a beautiful but occasionally hard feeling to stomach. Arriving at that near finished feeling is so rewarding but it also is scary as it feels so far away whilst writing new stuff. I do know though that it’s possible and I need to continously push forward.

One of the new songs finds me fumbling through ideas and phrases over a dark, quiet movement, and I keep finding myself gravitating towards the line “while falling asleep in my back seat,” and it automatically brings me back to a night in the not too distant past wherein I found myself without a place to stay, in of all areas, NYC/northern jersey. Enough things happened where it was too late or people weren’t answering my calls or roommates wouldn’t let me stay, that i ended up driving all over and eventually pulling behind the music shop where I used to work and putting my back seats down and trying to sleep in the ever warming early summer heat. The thing that most worried me was the temple next door as their staff once threatened to call the police and tow a trailer I’d left for a few days. Luckily i got a few hours of uncomfortable sleep before sun began to bake me and the people driving past me forced me out of dear old sweet pea. A quick covert piss later I was on my way. Seeing as it was about 8 am, way earlier than my standard waking our, i felt immediately productive. By 10 I’d gotten an oil change, cleaned out and organized my entire car, including my serious merch setup, had breakfast and attempted to sell stuff at best buy. It was a wild series of events.

Oddly, I compare this to busking (read: playing on the street for money), in a way. I find the most nerve wracking parts of busking to be the setup and the breakdown. Other than occasionally seeing cops or grounds patrol, I don’t worry or feel intimidated or upset or anything. I have fun and hope it works out. Similarly, when i once slept in the park and broke into a college building to sleep in their lounge, the moments of most hightened fear were pre and post, the obvious discovery moments. But overall, the sleeps and busking were and have been great and it’s interesting that so much anxiety can pervade these mostly harmless actions. However, every time I do something of this nature I feel slightly less scared. I also am fully aware that none of my situations were or are remotely close to those that a homeless person or someone steeped in poverty might experience. I don’t know their troubles and wish them the absolute best in improving their situations. But, I do feel that in some small way that mini fear I experienced might lead me to beginning to understand the life that some face and hopefully allow me to work toward helping them. And at very least, they definitely make me appreciate my home, warm food and friends all the more. I hope you’re warm/cool tonight, among loved ones and feeling amazing. I send my best to all of you.

Furry little guy keeps eatin my dang ‘maters. That’s southern for tomatoes. More delicious fresh tomato sandwiches on homemade bread. Amazing. Also, I found that by pouring store brand juicy juice into natty ice you can totally cut the disgusting factor drastically. Pretty amazing discovery.

Currently I’m writing loads and trying to set up big plans. I have 28 new songs so I’m just past halfway to my goal of 50 tunes. From there my hope is to whittle it down to 10 barn burners for a new lp and 7 or so jams to record with a hodge podge band here in Asheville for a potential interweb ep. I have some good photos and stories to accompany the tunes and hope to make it happen.

I’ve also been working on the book version of the year of a thousand roommates which will be wrought with all dirty and juicy tidbits I felt unwilling to share on the web.

All of this while working near 70 hours a week and also trying to have a social life. Somethings gotta give and I’m thinking is socializing cause this is a small town and I’m bound to get myself in trouble.

Tonight I had a feast of tomatoes from the garden. I spun stories with my sister in law and drank beer I made with my amazing older brother. Earlier today i sang songs i wrote about people I love. I’m fighting to create and support the world I believe in. I truly hope you are doing the same.

Happy birthday, amerika.

The past two Friday evenings I’ve taken to the streets of Asheville with my friend Lauren and we’ve attempted to combine our loves of playing music, forcing people out of their social bubbles and making beer money by busking downtown. Lauren is in a local favorite band, Sirius bsirius b., which also happens to contain my older brother, in which she plays among other things, the musical saw. So, please imagine if you will, a town known for unicyclists, drum circles, crust punks, stilt walkers and more, still being surprised and excited when witnessing a girl walking down the public street with a saw and a bow. Much to peoples amazement, when we sit and start playing, I do my best to treat people to a mix of familiar and new, leaning heavily on Americana, while Lauren bows her way through drastic slides and smooth, sweet warbles. Both nights we turned some heads and made a few bucks, though admittedly, not enough to cover the prebusk drinks and snacks, but having only played 20-30 minutes each time, that’s not so bad.

The things that strike me the most during these sessions are the many different ways in which people take us in, or don’t, as the case may be. Asheville becomes floode with tourists in the summers and their mix of wonder and disgust for street performers amazes me. Young kids look on with wide eyes and you can watch how in a few small words from mom or dad you might see this childs future. The kind mother who slows her walk and points the saw out to the child with a smile is doing a good job. Well done mom. The one who pulls her child close and steelily stares forward is only helping to produce more of the people like those who look at us with utter contempt and with no attempt to conceal it, as if we are somehow unable to see them. But some people dance, and some people throw in money. Others try to participate either by clapping or banging a drum or just sitting beside us and trying to get peoples attention. Being fairly new to all this I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it all. If it’s real and out of happiness or enjoyment then I love it. It feels wonderful to bring joy into peoples lives. But if you’re dancing around like an idiot essentially to take the piss out out of us, well I could do without you. But still I relish the challenge and it makes the successes all the better. The wide, excited eyes and smiles bring me way further up than the clowns bring me down.

One other really fun part is the post song interaction. Perhaps a 60 year old couple will recant a tale from their youth of a saw playing friend or some duo they loved. Relaxing in their summer chinos, silver hair combed perfectly, my bearded, tattooed self beams back at them whole heartedly. Or maybe is the jam band kids telling us to check out buckethead and incorrectly labeling him as the new frontman for guns n roses. But the most interesting last night? A young kid approached us and said he was new in town as wondered if we knew anything about the school systems. Confused I asked to what he was referring, the colleges? He said, no, the high schools, to which I apologized and said having just moved here I knew nothing of them. As he walked away I commented to Lauren that this was an odd interaction, that some teenager would be curious about the quality of the education system of Asheville, especially on a Friday night. I then said it almost seemed like I was incredibly dense and not picking up on some sort of code or reference. I began packing up my guitar and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I laughed and looked up at Lauren. High school.