Grammy Girl

Part 3

by Matt Ashare

Hard work and focus may not be qualities generally associated with alterna-rock types, but Bonham isn't exactly typical. Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, she took up classical violin at the age of nine and began aspiring to be a professional musician. (She once even dreamed of playing violin in the Boston Symphony Orchestra.) At 17 she was accepted by the prestigious Interlochen Arts Camp. A music scholarship from the University of Southern California followed, though in 1987, as a junior, she transferred to Berklee College of Music, in Boston, where she settled in as a voice major. (Incidentally, Tori Amos, who is also nominated for this year's Best Alternative Music Performance award, is a classically trained pianist who converted to rock.)

Bonham never graduated from Berklee, but she used her skills to enter the fringes of the local music industry, paying her rent by singing jingles for local car dealerships and doing cover songs at weddings and other functions. She was invited to play violin in the orchestra backing Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and Robert Plant on their 1995 reunion tour. (No, Tracy isn't related to their late drummer.) But Bonham's background has had a more important underlying impact on her music.

"A lot of her classical training may be sublimated," says Timothy White, "but I think it helps contour the way she plays and the choices she makes in songwriting. I think that someone from her background making a left turn by deciding to go into rock and roll, rather than deeper into classical, brings a fresh edge to what she does. And I think people respond to that."

On a practical level, Paul Kolderie notes that as "a naturally musical person, she can play lots of different instruments with emotion. Recording vocals with her is easy. She can listen to a few takes, isolate any problems, and go in and correct them. When you're working with someone who has the kind of musical talent she has, it makes the whole process a lot easier."

Bonham has a holistic view of her years spent studying music. "I did a lot of hard work when I was younger. Even if it was on another path, I think it was all leading to this. Twenty years ago, when I was practicing violin in my bedroom for four hours a day, I definitely never thought that I was going to be in a rock-and-roll band. But in a way I think that, and studying voice, were all different paths leading into one. I'm not even sure that the rock-and-roll band thing is the ultimate pot of gold at the end of that path. I think I've got other places to go with music. I'm not there yet, I'm not even close. But I do think that all the hard work and studying that I've done have paid off."

On stage at the Paradise, headlining the Safe and Sound benefit on February 1, Bonham came across as a performer who's grown gracefully into the role of featured attraction. She carried her own equipment on stage, a small act that said a lot about her willingness not just to play an event, but to be a part of it. Early in her set she remarked, "It's an honor to share the stage with the other people who have played here tonight," meaning Kay Hanley, Jennifer Trynin, Tanya Donelly, and Juliana Hatfield. More important, she was confident enough to go out on a limb by opening with a few minutes of avant-improvisation on her violin and then segueing into a mariachi-styled solo number before inviting her band out to the stage.

It was a long way from the nervous, unsteady Bonham who wrestled awkwardly with an oversized Hagstrom guitar on the night back in '94 that James Dowdall and Rose Noone saw her at Toad. And she knows it.

"I remember that I could barely play the guitar that night," she says. "But we've played together so much now," she continues, referring to her band (now guitarist Phil Hurley, bassist Drew Parsons, and drummer Shane Phillips). "Early on, there were times when I'd actually be giving the band dirty glances when things went wrong. But as that lifted, I started to be able to focus on my own performance, to relax and get comfortable."

Bonham, who at one point also tells me that one of her biggest regrets from the past year is that she wasn't always friendly to people, really does seem to know something about the burdens of being upright. She may be her own toughest critic. In fact, she rarely listens to Burdens for fear of picking it apart: "It's my perfectionist side."

But not everything about the album has been a trial. "We played in Mexico City," she recounts, "and it was an amazing show. We had no idea that Mexico City was ready to hear Tracy Bonham, that people would know the words to the songs. After the show we went out dancing until 6 a.m. and I ended up dancing with this guy who had no idea who I was. At one point, `Mother, Mother' came on and we just kept dancing. I was dancing with him, he was singing along with the song, I started singing the words, and we were both jamming out. He didn't know it was my song. I didn't tell him. And we never saw each other again. I thought, well, that was an experience."

More recently Bonham caught one of her songs -- "Sharks Can't Sleep" -- on the radio on her way home from a club at 2 a.m. When the DJ came on the air and mentioned "Grammy nominee Tracy Bonham," it got to her. "I almost started crying," she admits. "All I could think was, `Man, this is great.' "

Tracy Bonham discography

Matt Ashare can be reached at mashare[a]phx.com.