Review Fix: Considering all of your travels, do you have a favorite place that you’ve been to?
Tracy Bonham: No, I love too many places. I love New York and I love Brooklyn. Who knows, I may end up here. I don’t know if I can actually say that out loud. I also love California- I love Oregon and some places in Europe. I’d love to be able to live in all of those places, but then I’d just be really scattered and spread out.
RF: How do you think traveling to all of these places has affected you as a musician?
Bonham: There’s one thing that always affects me and that is I always feel like I’m starting over, which is kind of frustrating. Moving to New York was a big step just because it’s such a big city. I do miss the small-town feel of Boston and the scene of the ’90s. I don’t know if it’s still like that. New York is very intimidating and you feel like a real small fish in a big pond. So it’s affected me in a way that I feel that I’m always reinventing myself. I think parts of that are good and the other parts, well, are just me.
RF: You seem to have an obsession with the Blue Man Group. How did that come about?
Bonham: They got in contact with me and said they were fans of mine and we know some people in common. We became friends and then it progressed from there. They asked me to come and sing on their record, when they finally decided to have vocals on their recordings and then it went from there to them asking me to tour with them. Now I’m actually teaching music at their private school. They opened a school, called “The Blue School;†it’s on Houston street and Avenue B in the city.
RF: How does it feel to be a teacher?
Bonham: It’s wild. I think about all the teachers I had growing up and what I liked about them, so I try and emulate that. What I’m finding out mainly is less about structure, technique and hardcore commitment and more about fun and passion. My only hope is that the parents are into this because they’ll peek into the room and see me doing things and hoping that their children are taking me seriously. I just want to emphasize to these kids that they should follow their hearts and not feel pressured into becoming a player. I think the Blue Man Group are great to promote this type of thinking because it’s what their shows are all about. What they talk about is trying to challenge that whole system of rules and conformity. They really encourage being an individual.
RF: You’re an extremely diverse musician in the fact that you sing, play the guitar and violin. If you had to pick just one, what do you think it would be and why?
Bonham: Hmm, if everything else was taken away and I just had to pick one – it would be between the violin and the voice. But before I began to edit myself, I was saying to myself that it was the violin, which is kind of interesting. There’s something about it. It’s very much like the human voice – you can do so many things with it. I’m feeling very connected to it lately, much more than I have in the past.
RF: Why do you think you weren’t connected to it as much in the past?
Bonham: Possibly because of my upbringing. I practiced so much and was so entrenched in that whole world. Maybe I just needed a break, some time to put it down, so the next time it was fresh so I could improvise.
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