Hate, Sodomy, And Models

Photo by Ben Rayner

We first came across Mike Bones while he was playing guitar with one of our other favourite singer-songwriter guys of all time, Cass McCombs. He then turned up playing with yet another band we have a big crush on, the Sian Alice Group. With those credentials and a background in the Lower East Side scene centred around the Social Registry label and much-missed all-hours spot The Tonic, coupled with several albums of unreleased melancholy gems, we couldn’t help but want Mike all to ourselves. So we decided to snaffle him up and put his new record out through Vice. A Fool for Everyone might just be the downer hit of the year. Vice: How did a punk kid with Johnny Thunders lyrics all over his arms become a singer-songwriter? Mike Bones: To me it’s the same thing. It all comes from the same place. It’s just that the songs are slower now. That guy was huge to me, though. That contradiction of being so fucking dumb and yet so brilliant. There’s a lot of hate in your songs. On a scale of one to ten, how misanthropic are you? How can you not be a hater? You have to comment on the things around you and it’s hard to write an upbeat song. I’m not interested in writing a catchy tune or a melody, I just want to make sure that the words are as good as can possibly be. Do you still have time to teach guitar? Sure, I’ve been doing that for years. In New York you get a lot of models that want to play guitar and be in a band so my students are often these crazy model types. That, or people in bands. I’m not gonna say who but you’d be amazed at some of the people in big New York bands who’ve emailed me and asked for a lesson. Some of your numbers read more like novels than songs. Have you got a book in you? I’d love to write a novel. There aren’t any other singer-songwriters around I’d rip off but there are plenty of novelists and poets: James Salter, Denis Johnson, and the Marquis de Sade. De Sade was an amazing writer. You should read Philosophy in the Bedroom, it will give you a fucking hard-on. I was reading it on the plane the other day and I thought they’d take it off me; it’s full of sodomy and these insane rape scenes. The basic premise is that these two men and a woman turn this 15-year-old virgin into a subservient sexual slave. It makes you pretty glad to be a guy. All the fucked up stuff in de Sade happens to the girls. JUNIOR KNIGHT
A Fool for Everyone is available now on The Social Registry in the US and Vice Records in the UK. myspace.com/littlemikebones