INTERVIEW: Nashville Rocker, Bones Owens

One of Nashville’s coolest rockers, Bones Owens, has a new album out today, Love Out Of Lemons via Black Ranch Records/Thirty Tigers. The release party is tonight at the East Side Bowl in East Nashville and the public is invited. It will be a great show for sure.

Recorded at The Smoakstack here in Nashville, and produced Paul Moak, Love Out Of Lemons hits on topics about love, self-preservation, and new beginnings. Owens’ self-described chameleon-like approach has not only played a pivotal role in his own music, but the ability to collaborate with artists across all genres, having worked with Yelawolf, Mikky Ekko, and Grammy-nominated, Jelly Roll.

The 11-tracks feature co-writes with Henry Brill on “Born Again” and Austin Jenkins on “Higher Than I Wanna Be.” Drums throughout were played by Julian Dorio, with all other instruments handled by Owens and producer Moak.  Listen to the first single “Get It On” above.

Owens had planned to make a solo trek around the Midwest on his Harley Davidson to coincide with the release of Love Out of Lemons. Originally planned for last November, the trip was postponed after Owens struck a deer on his motorcycle the day before he was due to leave.

Owens took a little time to talk to Nashville.com about the new single, the album, deer collision and more below:

 

NASHVILLE.COM: So how did you end up in Nashville

OWENS: I was traveling here every month or two, still living in Kansas City at the time. And yeah, came here over the course of six months or something a handful of times, and got an offer for a publishing deal. And so we moved here 2005, and I thought that I would go back and finish school probably after it all fell apart. And then here I am like 19 years later.

NASHVILLE.COM: Love the new single “Get It On,” can you tell us about it?

OWENS: It was the first, we’ve got three singles out now, but that was the first one. It just felt like it had an immediacy to it. Like you say, it’s a rock uptempo thing, so sort of a barn burner, and that was, we wanted to come out swinging with the first single on the record. So it’s just kind of the record as a whole, to me, sort of feels like for the most part, it’s kind of a feel good summertime type of record. So works out well that it’s coming out in the middle of July. But yeah, man, that’s just kind of a end of the day, end of the week. Let it all hang out type of mentality to that song.

NASHVILLE.COM: Do you do the whole co-write thing a lot like Nashville writers do, or do you like to write by yourself? Tell me about your songwriting process a little bit.

OWENS: Yeah. When it comes to my own music, I primarily write it by myself, but there’s occasion where I collaborate. For instance, I forget, I think there’s like 12 songs on this record, 11 or 12. Two of them are co-written, and the rest I wrote by myself. Like I say, it was a publishing deal that brought me here. So I’m familiar with the ways of the Nashville write five days a week kind of thing. Maybe write two songs with different people in the same day. I’ve never exactly done that. I have friends in this business and here in town that are very successful at doing it that way. But when it comes to my own stuff, I take a more, I dunno how to describe it, but probably more of a hippie approach. I’m just waiting for the songs to come to me. I’m not meeting any hard deadlines or setting any boundaries on it like that for myself. I’m just kind of trying to create from a place of inspiration and not desperation, if you will, but I do write for other people, so I will do the co-write thing for other people’s stuff more often than my own.

NASHVILLE.COM: Have you had cuts by other artists?

OWENS: Yeah, probably nothing really, really crazy. Actually. There’s a song that just came out today that I co-wrote, a guy named Austin Snell. He’s got a new record out, and I wrote a song called Let Me Burn with him. It just came out today. But yeah, I’ve had a handful of things, some things that have, not so much in the country world, but some rock things that have charted and the rock charts and things like that.

NASHVILLE.COM: Austin Snell? Okay, I’ll check it out.

OWENS: Yeah, yeah, it’s cool. It’s kind of a rock country thing. But yeah, man, like I say, a lot of my friends in this town are songwriters that have old friends that used to be in rock bands and things like that, that now find themselves having a lot of success as writers like Jaron Johnston from the Cadillac three.

NASHVILLE.COM:  I love those guys

OWENS: And we write together occasionally, but he’s an old buddy and Carrie and Nathan Barlow, they were in that band, Luna Halo a long time ago here in town. Carrie’s a big country writer and Nathan plays for Keith Urban now, and he’s a writer as well. But yeah, I go way back with a lot of dudes that have ended up becoming very successful writers in town.

NASHVILLE.COM: So have you ever thought about doing a country album because you got a very, a country rock kind of sound. Have you ever thought about doing a full on country album?

OWENS: I never really have. I’ve never really thought about it. I just kind of make the records that I want to make. I’m sure I could be making records that would have more commercial appeal if I tweaked a couple things, but whatever it is that I’m doing, it’s just kind of what comes naturally to me. So I just keep, that’s what I do.

NASHVILLE.COM:  So tell me about the motorcycle collision with the deer. What happened there?

OWENS: Yeah it was a small buck. And yeah, I was leaving for a trip on my bike on Halloween, last Halloween, and I was going to ride out to California out to Palm Springs for my birthday, which is a cold time of year to be going on a bike ride. I mean, the mornings are still cold. And so we had hit a cold spell and the mornings were going to be in the forties, which in the wind going 70 or 80 is really cold. So I had gone and gotten some cold weather layers and stuff like that, and I was testing ’em out. And I live in Whites Creek, so I’m rural just outside of Nashville on the north side. And so it’s a two lane country road out here. And I was testing out my gear and I was like, I’m just going to rip up the street real quick and get up to speed and see if I’m going to stay warm.

And yeah, the deer, the deer are in heat at that time. As you know, deer season is happening. They’re moving for a lot of reasons. And so they’re thick out here in my neighborhood, and I should have known, should have been smarter. But this one wasn’t like standing in the road. It literally ran across the road. There’s no visibility. There’s tree line on both sides of the street and hardly a shoulder. So it ran out basically right into me. And yeah, I fractured my ankle. It could have been a lot. Oh man, obviously a lot worse, but it still sidelined me from the rest of the trip and put me out for the rest of the year anyway.

NASHVILLE.COM:  Wow, that’s crazy.

OWENS: Yeah, yeah, it was nuts. It was one of the most surreal things that I’ve experienced in my life. And like I said, I just got back from a long hike this morning. I feel very fortunate to be, it’s very hilly and curvy and stuff out here too. And I actually walked, it was only about a mile from my house where I hit the deer. I just walked past that spot today and there’s still a couple of his bones laying in ditch. And it’s pretty wild. I have his antlers. My buddy went and cut his antlers off and brought ’em back to me. Have a little memento. A little memento of the experience. But yeah,

OWENS:  Okay. So tell me just a little bit about your influences.  Who made you say, “I want to do this for a living”?

OWENS: I talk often about credence. Clearwater Revival, I think isn’t one of the first John Fogerty stuff is some of the first stuff that I heard from my dad’s record collection that made me think like, all right, this is are good songs. These are memorable songs. But also the music’s cool. And I grew up with his record collection a lot of people do with their parents’ record collection. It kind of informed some of the early stuff that might inspire you or influence you. It was like Steely Dan Pretzel Logic record and CCR Born on the Bayou and Steve Miller Band. It was kind of stuff like that, which Steve Miller Band is just another that I think incredible songs, great musicianship and timeless, it’s classic stuff. And then right around the same time though, I was kind getting a taste of what was hip at the time that I was also into, which is like we’re talking about the nineties, whenever I was learning guitar and I picked up guitar at age 10, so mid nineties alternative and grunge rock and all that was big and Nirvana and Sound Garden and things like that.

So a lot of that became influential to me as well. And I think my sound today is still kind of a hybrid of the classic rock thing with some alternative elements.

NASHVILLE.COM: Tell me about working with Smokestack Studios.

OWENS: Yeah, my friend Paul Moak, he’s, he’s incredible producer and multi-instrumentalist himself, multi Grammy nominee. And he’s a buddy. We may have actually met through motorcycles before we did any music stuff together. I can’t remember. But I, it’s his studio. He’s had it for about 15 years. It’s in town over in Berry Hill area, just up the street from Blackbird and all that stuff, house of Blues and everything. But it’s incredible, man. It’s a cool, I forget what the studio was originally built Building was built as a studio. I can’t remember what it was before, who had it or what was done there, but man, it’s just a great space. I’ve made my last four recordings there, two full lengths and two eps I think there. And so nearly for the last 10 years, that’s where I’ve been making albums. And it just feels like home. And he’s got all the old equipment and this music, like I say, it’s influenced by old stuff. And I don’t want to just do it all the modern day in the box, so to speak, kind of way straight into the computer and stuff. We record stuff through an old tape machine, and he still has a giant, I don’t know, 64 channel console or whatever it is.

And the same type of equipment that my favorite records were made on all the way from the sixties and seventies through the nineties. So yeah, man, and it’s just my favorite place in town, and I’ve gotten to work at a lot of the big studios in town over the 20 years I’ve been here. But his just feels right, feels like home. And working with him is great because we seem to have a kind of synchronicity that works well. And so, like I say, he’s done a lot over the years, but his current thing, he’s back on the road also playing guitar and keys and stuff with Hart Anne Wilson, he played with her for a while, and then Hart has been doing a reunion tour, so he’s been on the road with them. Nice. But anyway, man, whenever he’s home, when we’re both home and we tend to get in the studio and start cooking something new up. So it’s a lot of fun.

NASHVILLE.COM: So do you have a full-time band? Do you bring in a band or do you use studio guys for love out of lemons?

OWENS: So like I said, Paul Mooch, he’s a multi-instrumentalist. He and I both can kind of cover most anything outside of drums. So there’s a drummer named Julian Dorio that I’ve worked with that he used to play live with me, but he’s played on my last full length record and on this record now as well. He’s a great drummer and has great instincts. And so I used him on this record and Paul and I played everything else on the album.

Don’t forget to check out Bones tonight at East Side Bowl in East Nashville. You’ll be glad you did!

–Jerry Holthouse

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