BY LISA CRYSTAL CARVER
PHOTOS BY KEITH NEWELL
There is nothing interesting about York/There is no life/It’s killing me to be here.
—Bloody Wounds, “York” Bloody Wounds is a strange person, and she makes strange music that is so undefined by conventional genre, you end up finding yourself in it. I hear a helpless, distorted-thinking, ambitious little person up against a vicious town with nothing but music as a shield, because that’s who I was as a kid. The photographer I took with me to Bloody Wounds’s hometown of York, Pennsylvania, noted her obsessive need for control over her environment—the towels folded military-style in threes in her bathroom—because he’s that way. A pop-culture referencer saw William Hung. An ugly, unimaginative woman I know remarked simply, “Hideous!” Well, that’s my whole opinion about that woman too! A guy who grew up overweight and repressed and then, through drug abuse and sex with strangers, transformed himself into someone rich and chic and perfect and now sees potential anywhere he goes said, “She’s so beautiful!” Her open and unusual heart acts as a mirror. Go listen to her here and see who you are. Bloody Wounds: This is Bloody Wounds. Vice: How old are you?
Twenty-six. Do you work?
No. How come you keep missing my calls?
Well, earlier today it looked like we were going to get a tornado, so I had to go to the store. The sky was mad black. I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks!
[offers no explanation] Do you read a lot of books?
Not really. The one book that I would say, if I would ever read a book in my life, the one book would be… it’s by Derek Jeter… Life Lessons for Achieving Your Dreams. Is music like your best friend?
Yeah, it is. It is my best friend. Do you really think Hollywood would be different from York, no “gossip and hate” like you sing about?
Honestly, I think there’s gossip and hate anywhere you go. A lot of times I get messages on MySpace just hating on me, bashing on me, telling me I sound like an eight-year-old with… With what?
It’s… pretty inappropriate. Why do you think they say such things?
I think they’re jealous. If you become successful and move to Hollywood, there would be more people to be jealous and dump on you. So, in a way, the better things get for you, the worse they will get.
Oh, of course. You don’t mind?
No. I think it’s important people don’t let all that hate get to them and they follow their ambition, their destiny. I don’t think enough people out there are doing that. In one of your photos you’re wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt. Do you like the story of a life transformed, after the bite?
I just like the colors. I like King Kong myself. A tragic individual.
I know the Hulk—he’s green. Did you ever attend a rodeo?
No. Did you go to the prom?
No, I didn’t. Do you go to the beach?
I’ve been to a beach… Virginia Beach, when I was younger. Ever witnessed a group of kids bullying a kid and a teacher looking the other way?
Definitely. I was one of them. How so?
Just kicked, punched, beat up. Aw. What happened about it? Did you report it?
Nothing happened. I didn’t tell anyone. Was that in high school?
High school, middle school. Ever been to Six Flags?
I may have, once. Every once in a while you hear about a person whose inner world and outer appearance are so different from your own or anyone you’ve ever met, you don’t know what to think. Remember the first time someone played you the Shaggs? Or showed you a Ligabue painting? Each time I’d come across some great outsider art like that, the artist was either dead, old, and living with their mother, or cured and fat and family-oriented: It was all over. Bloody Wounds is right now! Everyone I introduce her music to goes bananas. All across the nation, people are downloading her songs and emailing her photos interoffice, trying to figure out what is going on. Wooing an article out of her proved difficult. At first she would only speak to me by phone, and then only irregularly, unpredictably. Bloody Wounds: I was kind of worried that you wouldn’t call today. I was waiting it out, waiting it out. Have you ever done an interview before?
Yeah! I actually have. I just did a Flipside magazine interview this morning at 11. That was my first one. Hey! I’m your first!
OK, OK, I’m sorry. You were the first, yesterday. Flipside was the second. Now it’s back to you. How was it? What kind of questions did they ask you?
They asked about my musical influences. [laughs] Flipside has been asking everyone their musical influences for 25 years now, God love them. Let’s do some more “ever” questions. Have you ever done something that needs to stay in Vegas?
HAHAHAHAHAHA! No, actually. Not yet. Not yet! Did you ever meet a famous person? Gone backstage?
No. Never. I wish. I’ll be on my own stage someday! Yeah! Did you ever win an award?
No. Do you prefer mountains, sea, forest, or field?
Some days I don’t go outside at all. Ever been out of the US?
No. Tripped the light fantastic?
What?! I’m asking if you ever did psychedelic drugs.
No. That one was weird, I’m sorry! Ever done something so awful that you know you’re a different person from that moment till the day you die?
Oh, definitely. Are you going to tell me what you did?
No. Will you give me a hint?
No. Bloody Wounds put every roadblock before the Vice bus that was supposed to bring me to her town for an in-person interview. She thought I might hurt her, as I am a stranger. At one point, she got the idea I’d charge her money for the article. Plus, she was always saying she was too busy. After speaking to her on the phone a few times, I now knew a lot of what she wasn’t doing, but what WAS she doing all alone in that room all day? I see on MySpace your songs have had over a MILLION plays.
Yeah. That’s a lot.
Yeah. Did you record the songs in a studio?
Actually I did them myself, on a digital recorder. In your room?
Yeah. Have you ever played a live show?
No. Do you want to?
Oh, yeah, of course I want to! I definitely want to. But I don’t have a car right now. There are a lot of things that you haven’t done yet but will. Listening to your songs and talking with you—in some ways it’s like your life hasn’t started. So as you do things for the first time and sing about them, your point of view is pure. I think that’s what people may be talking about, though they don’t realize it, when they make what they think are nasty comments about you sounding like an eight-year-old. If you flip it around, it’s pretty beautiful. It’s innocent. Not to say your life has been easy, because obviously it hasn’t. But you’re a real dreamer. You know what we should do? Get someone to book you a tour, someone reading this article, and they can just rent you a car since you don’t have one.
I don’t even have a license. You mentioned “the loony bin” in one of your songs. Have you ever been in the loony bin?
[laughs, pauses] That was kind of the flow of the song. [pauses] But yeah, I’ve been there and back. I ain’t going back. Were you there against your will or voluntarily?
Both. What’s your plan for how to stay out?
I don’t know. It’s hard. I think music is going to help. Do you drink?
No. Juice, fruit punch. I’ve seen some pretty bad kids on The Maury Show. I think being the kind of person I was as a teenager, in and out of the places I was—the hospital, and kid places… I think it kept me out of that bad lifestyle. “Kid places”? You mean when your parents can’t keep you, a sort of orphanage?
Yeah. Do you have a better relationship with your parents now?
I don’t know my dad, but my mom—kind of. It’s all right. Do you have any siblings?
No. And I’m fine with that! She agreed to let me come. York, the soul-killing town of her first album, I was surprised to find had a million things going on. I was dying to attend a Fancy Feline cat-tricks show down the street from Bloody’s pad, but she turned it down. A burlesque show later that night, Bob Newhart, and some tap-dancing foreign fellows—she had no interest there, either. I was also surprised at York’s extreme socioeconomic fluctuation in such close proximity, as if it were New York City or something. Walking up and down York’s sidewalks, I saw dilapidated housing and a lot of black people in t-shirts with big bellies looking depressed. I saw one white guy over and over again, riding his bicycle around looking crazy. A four-minute drive, and it’s all posh whites who go to theaters. Bloody Wounds didn’t know or care what I was talking about. What she wanted to do was stay in her room and get the photographer and me to help her put tape doughnuts—26 per poster—on the backs of her new Fall Out Boy posters and mount them, despite the fact that she was going to take them down tomorrow, when the laminating store opened, remove all the tape doughnuts, get the posters laminated, and begin the doughnut process all over again. She talked about her planned trio of concept albums. Her tunnel vision is complete. She sees and lives nothing but music. I kept being interested in other things, and kept getting shot down. What are people’s jobs in York? Manufacturing, tourism…?
Well, the economy in York is pretty bad. I think unemployment is at 95 percent. Wow!
I think it’s at 95 percent. [I looked it up. It’s 9 percent. But I’m sure it depends on the neighborhood.—LC] I would describe the concept of your first album about York as: Gotta get out, gotta get out, didn’t get out.
It was pretty much about a kid in a town and she had the biggest heart full of dreams. Do you have friends here?
No. Do you want some, or are you happier alone?
Happier alone. Do you want to get married?
Probably not. Would you like to live in sin?
Live in what? Sin. Live with someone without marrying them.
Oh, no. No. Just me. I’m single and I like it that way. Not a lot of people are satisfied with their situations. Single people want to be married, and the married people wish they were single. But you know what you want. Do you have a favorite philosopher?
What’s that? Nietzsche, Plato…?
I don’t know what a philosopher is. Do you have a favorite painter?
No. Do you have a favorite color?
Red! What kind of red? Cherry red, blood red…?
Blood red, yeah, definitely. [really, really long pause] One thing about me is… I’m not a fancy kid. After that statement, there are 15 seconds of silence on the tape as Bloody Wounds stared at nothing and slowly leaned toward me, totally freaking me out, until she jabbed my recorder off. There were at least two more minutes of silence and staring after that. The photographer had gone to the store, and it occurred to me that Bloody Wounds had been afraid I would hurt her… Why would she get an idea like that unless violence was already in her mind? Just then, the photographer came back and broke the spell, and we all left for the fancy restaurant, her very first one: the Left Bank—where, if there were any dispute about Bloody Wounds being a fancy kid or not, asking the waiter if he could take her $12 side of carrots away and bring back some canned ones resolved it. Further, she was disturbed by the cloth napkins. “They look like teepees,” she said, “Well, more like tents. Why would anyone do such a thing?” Looking back, I think there was something she wanted to communicate about her lack of fance, what it meant to her. She wanted to get it perfect—the idea—and it overwhelmed her and she went into some fugue state. I surprised myself with how flustered I got just from silence. I’ve interviewed addicts, murderers, famous people. I never got scared before. It was just so… different. NO ONE gets silent and stares for three whole minutes around other people. But maybe we should. Maybe people SHOULD figure out what they want to say, and say that; and figure out how they want to live, and live that; and not a whole bunch more just to be filling up space.
—Bloody Wounds, “York” Bloody Wounds is a strange person, and she makes strange music that is so undefined by conventional genre, you end up finding yourself in it. I hear a helpless, distorted-thinking, ambitious little person up against a vicious town with nothing but music as a shield, because that’s who I was as a kid. The photographer I took with me to Bloody Wounds’s hometown of York, Pennsylvania, noted her obsessive need for control over her environment—the towels folded military-style in threes in her bathroom—because he’s that way. A pop-culture referencer saw William Hung. An ugly, unimaginative woman I know remarked simply, “Hideous!” Well, that’s my whole opinion about that woman too! A guy who grew up overweight and repressed and then, through drug abuse and sex with strangers, transformed himself into someone rich and chic and perfect and now sees potential anywhere he goes said, “She’s so beautiful!” Her open and unusual heart acts as a mirror. Go listen to her here and see who you are. Bloody Wounds: This is Bloody Wounds. Vice: How old are you?
Twenty-six. Do you work?
No. How come you keep missing my calls?
Well, earlier today it looked like we were going to get a tornado, so I had to go to the store. The sky was mad black. I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks!
[offers no explanation] Do you read a lot of books?
Not really. The one book that I would say, if I would ever read a book in my life, the one book would be… it’s by Derek Jeter… Life Lessons for Achieving Your Dreams. Is music like your best friend?
Yeah, it is. It is my best friend. Do you really think Hollywood would be different from York, no “gossip and hate” like you sing about?
Honestly, I think there’s gossip and hate anywhere you go. A lot of times I get messages on MySpace just hating on me, bashing on me, telling me I sound like an eight-year-old with… With what?
It’s… pretty inappropriate. Why do you think they say such things?
I think they’re jealous. If you become successful and move to Hollywood, there would be more people to be jealous and dump on you. So, in a way, the better things get for you, the worse they will get.
Oh, of course. You don’t mind?
No. I think it’s important people don’t let all that hate get to them and they follow their ambition, their destiny. I don’t think enough people out there are doing that. In one of your photos you’re wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt. Do you like the story of a life transformed, after the bite?
I just like the colors. I like King Kong myself. A tragic individual.
I know the Hulk—he’s green. Did you ever attend a rodeo?
No. Did you go to the prom?
No, I didn’t. Do you go to the beach?
I’ve been to a beach… Virginia Beach, when I was younger. Ever witnessed a group of kids bullying a kid and a teacher looking the other way?
Definitely. I was one of them. How so?
Just kicked, punched, beat up. Aw. What happened about it? Did you report it?
Nothing happened. I didn’t tell anyone. Was that in high school?
High school, middle school. Ever been to Six Flags?
I may have, once. Every once in a while you hear about a person whose inner world and outer appearance are so different from your own or anyone you’ve ever met, you don’t know what to think. Remember the first time someone played you the Shaggs? Or showed you a Ligabue painting? Each time I’d come across some great outsider art like that, the artist was either dead, old, and living with their mother, or cured and fat and family-oriented: It was all over. Bloody Wounds is right now! Everyone I introduce her music to goes bananas. All across the nation, people are downloading her songs and emailing her photos interoffice, trying to figure out what is going on. Wooing an article out of her proved difficult. At first she would only speak to me by phone, and then only irregularly, unpredictably. Bloody Wounds: I was kind of worried that you wouldn’t call today. I was waiting it out, waiting it out. Have you ever done an interview before?
Yeah! I actually have. I just did a Flipside magazine interview this morning at 11. That was my first one. Hey! I’m your first!
OK, OK, I’m sorry. You were the first, yesterday. Flipside was the second. Now it’s back to you. How was it? What kind of questions did they ask you?
They asked about my musical influences. [laughs] Flipside has been asking everyone their musical influences for 25 years now, God love them. Let’s do some more “ever” questions. Have you ever done something that needs to stay in Vegas?
HAHAHAHAHAHA! No, actually. Not yet. Not yet! Did you ever meet a famous person? Gone backstage?
No. Never. I wish. I’ll be on my own stage someday! Yeah! Did you ever win an award?
No. Do you prefer mountains, sea, forest, or field?
Some days I don’t go outside at all. Ever been out of the US?
No. Tripped the light fantastic?
What?! I’m asking if you ever did psychedelic drugs.
No. That one was weird, I’m sorry! Ever done something so awful that you know you’re a different person from that moment till the day you die?
Oh, definitely. Are you going to tell me what you did?
No. Will you give me a hint?
No. Bloody Wounds put every roadblock before the Vice bus that was supposed to bring me to her town for an in-person interview. She thought I might hurt her, as I am a stranger. At one point, she got the idea I’d charge her money for the article. Plus, she was always saying she was too busy. After speaking to her on the phone a few times, I now knew a lot of what she wasn’t doing, but what WAS she doing all alone in that room all day? I see on MySpace your songs have had over a MILLION plays.
Yeah. That’s a lot.
Yeah. Did you record the songs in a studio?
Actually I did them myself, on a digital recorder. In your room?
Yeah. Have you ever played a live show?
No. Do you want to?
Oh, yeah, of course I want to! I definitely want to. But I don’t have a car right now. There are a lot of things that you haven’t done yet but will. Listening to your songs and talking with you—in some ways it’s like your life hasn’t started. So as you do things for the first time and sing about them, your point of view is pure. I think that’s what people may be talking about, though they don’t realize it, when they make what they think are nasty comments about you sounding like an eight-year-old. If you flip it around, it’s pretty beautiful. It’s innocent. Not to say your life has been easy, because obviously it hasn’t. But you’re a real dreamer. You know what we should do? Get someone to book you a tour, someone reading this article, and they can just rent you a car since you don’t have one.
I don’t even have a license. You mentioned “the loony bin” in one of your songs. Have you ever been in the loony bin?
[laughs, pauses] That was kind of the flow of the song. [pauses] But yeah, I’ve been there and back. I ain’t going back. Were you there against your will or voluntarily?
Both. What’s your plan for how to stay out?
I don’t know. It’s hard. I think music is going to help. Do you drink?
No. Juice, fruit punch. I’ve seen some pretty bad kids on The Maury Show. I think being the kind of person I was as a teenager, in and out of the places I was—the hospital, and kid places… I think it kept me out of that bad lifestyle. “Kid places”? You mean when your parents can’t keep you, a sort of orphanage?
Yeah. Do you have a better relationship with your parents now?
I don’t know my dad, but my mom—kind of. It’s all right. Do you have any siblings?
No. And I’m fine with that! She agreed to let me come. York, the soul-killing town of her first album, I was surprised to find had a million things going on. I was dying to attend a Fancy Feline cat-tricks show down the street from Bloody’s pad, but she turned it down. A burlesque show later that night, Bob Newhart, and some tap-dancing foreign fellows—she had no interest there, either. I was also surprised at York’s extreme socioeconomic fluctuation in such close proximity, as if it were New York City or something. Walking up and down York’s sidewalks, I saw dilapidated housing and a lot of black people in t-shirts with big bellies looking depressed. I saw one white guy over and over again, riding his bicycle around looking crazy. A four-minute drive, and it’s all posh whites who go to theaters. Bloody Wounds didn’t know or care what I was talking about. What she wanted to do was stay in her room and get the photographer and me to help her put tape doughnuts—26 per poster—on the backs of her new Fall Out Boy posters and mount them, despite the fact that she was going to take them down tomorrow, when the laminating store opened, remove all the tape doughnuts, get the posters laminated, and begin the doughnut process all over again. She talked about her planned trio of concept albums. Her tunnel vision is complete. She sees and lives nothing but music. I kept being interested in other things, and kept getting shot down. What are people’s jobs in York? Manufacturing, tourism…?
Well, the economy in York is pretty bad. I think unemployment is at 95 percent. Wow!
I think it’s at 95 percent. [I looked it up. It’s 9 percent. But I’m sure it depends on the neighborhood.—LC] I would describe the concept of your first album about York as: Gotta get out, gotta get out, didn’t get out.
It was pretty much about a kid in a town and she had the biggest heart full of dreams. Do you have friends here?
No. Do you want some, or are you happier alone?
Happier alone. Do you want to get married?
Probably not. Would you like to live in sin?
Live in what? Sin. Live with someone without marrying them.
Oh, no. No. Just me. I’m single and I like it that way. Not a lot of people are satisfied with their situations. Single people want to be married, and the married people wish they were single. But you know what you want. Do you have a favorite philosopher?
What’s that? Nietzsche, Plato…?
I don’t know what a philosopher is. Do you have a favorite painter?
No. Do you have a favorite color?
Red! What kind of red? Cherry red, blood red…?
Blood red, yeah, definitely. [really, really long pause] One thing about me is… I’m not a fancy kid. After that statement, there are 15 seconds of silence on the tape as Bloody Wounds stared at nothing and slowly leaned toward me, totally freaking me out, until she jabbed my recorder off. There were at least two more minutes of silence and staring after that. The photographer had gone to the store, and it occurred to me that Bloody Wounds had been afraid I would hurt her… Why would she get an idea like that unless violence was already in her mind? Just then, the photographer came back and broke the spell, and we all left for the fancy restaurant, her very first one: the Left Bank—where, if there were any dispute about Bloody Wounds being a fancy kid or not, asking the waiter if he could take her $12 side of carrots away and bring back some canned ones resolved it. Further, she was disturbed by the cloth napkins. “They look like teepees,” she said, “Well, more like tents. Why would anyone do such a thing?” Looking back, I think there was something she wanted to communicate about her lack of fance, what it meant to her. She wanted to get it perfect—the idea—and it overwhelmed her and she went into some fugue state. I surprised myself with how flustered I got just from silence. I’ve interviewed addicts, murderers, famous people. I never got scared before. It was just so… different. NO ONE gets silent and stares for three whole minutes around other people. But maybe we should. Maybe people SHOULD figure out what they want to say, and say that; and figure out how they want to live, and live that; and not a whole bunch more just to be filling up space.