“Man who is born of woman is few of days and full of trouble.”
-Job 14:1, Holy Bible, English Standard Version
“Lyrically, it’s a dark EP,” Christian Barnett says of his band Blond Bones’ new EP Few of Days. The band plans to release the EP on Saturday, February 27 at Flow: A Brew Parlor. Its companion piece, a forthcoming EP titled Full of Trouble, completes the verse from the biblical story of Job, perhaps one of the darkest tales of unrelenting suffering known to mankind.
“It’s very Faulknerian,” Barnett and his bandmate Joe Rebrovick say, almost simultaneously.
The two go on to explain that, like the seminal Faulkner work The Sound and the Fury, their conceptual EP centers around the stories and voices of several members of a Southern family that has seen better days. “It’s not obvious,” Rebrovick says. “[The songs] relate to each other in thematic ways,” Barnett elaborates. The band is a fan of “cryptic phrasing,” as he puts it, and Rebrovich echoes that sentiment in talking about the topical elements of some of the songs covering life on the road, something they’re both familiar with, saying “you have to write about what you know but also find a fresh way to write about it.”
The EP is shimmering, gorgeous stuff, densely layered with hook-laden, reverb-soaked guitars and vocals. While their stripped-down folk sound is very Simon and Garfunkel, the electric stuff channels Father John Misty. Barnett played drums, some bass, and guitar, along with contributions from Joey English. Rebrovick came in on mandolin and vocals. Ben Sisco played bass and on “Tula’s Song,” Bonnie Simmons of Jubal contributed vocals.
“I’m stoked to be playing for them,” said English. “It’s a nice change for me to step away from the mic and contribute to the music as a guitarist rather than a writer. Christian and Joe are both great writers, both in lyrics and music. It’s nice to play for a song I believe in. It’s got a western vibe, mixed with tales of woe…right up my alley!”
“It’s just a catchall to get the name out there,” Barnett admits. The Blond Bones band roster can ebb and flow and comprise a full band of lots of folks or shrink back to the folk duo of Barnett and Rebrovick singing plaintive folk on acoustic and mandolin in a coffeehouse.
“It’s two completely different things,” Rebrovick says of the electric sound. “There’s a lot you can do in terms of walls of sound. There’s a lot of emotions you can do.”
“The reason we did this full band thing is we want it to be accessible,” Barnett says.
And perhaps it gives them a chance to see what they can do with their friends, in a musical community. “The best songs are made in a community,” Rebrovick says. “It’s a small enough scene that everyone knows about each other or what each other are doing.”
Within that, an even tighter, smaller scene exists between Blond Bones and their almost sibling band, Jubal. Even smaller still, within Barnett’s apartment, which he shares with Jubal songwriter Taylor Kress. He says they write almost in perpetual contest, friendly competition that drives both bands to create more material, each retreating to his room to work on something and then storming into the other’s to show it to him. “If your friends are doing it, it gives you incentive to do it, to write for each other,” Rebrovick says. “Plus,” Barnett adds, laughing, “you want to be the best songwriter in the group.”
Barnett is finishing up a jazz guitar program and UT and Rebrovick recently finished up with a theatre degree. The jam group that formed around Kress, Barnett, and Rebrovick’s college parties, which lovingly became known as Knox Jam’ n’ Jelly Sessions, started as a small picking group with 4-5 folks and grew to as much as 40 drunks slamming through whiskey and wine and old-time, folk and gospel standards. Sometimes it would end with everyone in the group singing a standard together in a meditative state that got downright spiritual.
“It was the most religious experience I ever had,” said Rebrovick.
Another interesting community collaboration that Blond Bones collaborated on stemmed from Barnett’s and Rebrovick’s theatre connection. He is a member of theatre troupe Yellow Rose Productions, and Blond Bones and Joey English wrote and recorded a full conceptual soundtrack album for Princess Cuts, a production the group did based on a local girl’s actual experiences in a sex trafficking ring. The guys were able to go up to the New York International Fringe Festival with the production and experience big city gigging.
As far as ambitions for the current and forthcoming EPs, the group is playing around town in multiple iterations and plans to do some touring when the summer hits and then when Barnett’s program is over.
“We’d like to book the hell out of it,” Barnett says. He also mentions a standing deal he has with Kress that if either get famous before they other they have to record a cover album of the other’s material to bring him up into the limelight with them.
Barnett expressed playful envy at Kress and Simmons’ male-female dynamic and the simplicity of their staying full-time as a mobile one-acoustic, two-voice unit. Rebrovich talks about how their Blond Bones EP took 15 hours just to mix, while Jubal did their entire album in a night at a cabin on Simmons’ parents’ land in Clinton. “They were done and then they got drunk that night,” he laughs.
But when it gets down to it, Barnett insists the desire for opportunities doesn’t affect the way the band writes, just that promo shots and social media become necessary to get the music out once it’s done being created. “I think for us all the promotional stuff is the required process for promoting anything you do,” he says. “But on the music end of things, just putting out things we’re proud of. You have to do these weird music business-esque things.”
The characters in their songs may be “few of days and full of trouble,” but Blond Bones itself seems to have a strong plan, solid material and a bright future ahead of them.
Blond Bones will play with Jubal at Flow: A Brew Parlor on Saturday, February 27 for the official Few of Days EP release show. They will take part in Knoxtacular, a benefit for Knoxville Mercury, WDVX and The Knoxville History Project, at the Bijou Theatre on March 5.
