Bonepony | The Beachside Resident

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Bonepony

“It makes you feel good inside.”

That’s the catch phrase Nashville’s Bonepony use to describe what they do, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s seen the band that didn’t agree. They’ve been making people feel good inside for years as they crisscross the nation, stopping in every big city and out-of-the-way town in America to bring their unique brand of “Stomp Rock” to audiences with all the fervor of a traveling tent revival and arena-rock spectacle.

“We play our hearts out” says Bonepony frontman and founding member Scott Johnson. “I don’t know any other way to play these songs.” The band: Johnson, Nicolas Nguyen and Kenny Wright, tour year round and have developed a large and devoted following. Bonepony have toured with acts like Bob Seger, Santana, and ZZ Top, played countless open-air festivals like Farm Aid and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and have rocked every theatre, concert hall, club and roadside honkytonk in the United States and Canada. “That’s the best part of being on the road. We’ve made friends in every small town and major metropolis around”, says Nguyen.

Their sixth release, Feeling It, hit the #1 spot on XM Radio’s X Country chart; no small feat for a band without label funding or radio promotion. The music itself is a melodious hybrid of rock n’ roll, folk, country, bluegrass, and soul, driven home with foot-stomping four-on-the-floor beats crowbarred into four-minute musical masterpieces that make it impossible to enjoy while standing still. Their live show is more of the same, with the band tearing through their unscripted set with unconscious abandon, each band member playing a different instrument on every song, and using every limb available to do so.

March 2007 saw the band film their show at Nashville’s historic Belcourt Theatre for a two-disc live DVD/CD package. Celebration Highway documents the band’s performance in both CD and full-length concert film formats. The film includes not only the Belcourt performance, but also follows the band on its seemingly endless tour to bring their music to the masses. The Belcourt show was filmed as part of “Diehard Week,” an annual gathering of Bonepony fans (or “Diehards,” as they’ve dubbed themselves) from all over the world who meet in a planned city and travel in groups for a series of shows. Indeed, the band’s relationship with the people who follow them is unique and a huge part of what keeps Bonepony making music and touring 200-plus nights a year. As Johnson often says wryly during the course of a show, “You guys are our record label.”

The band have been in DIY mode since parting ways with Capitol Records after touring the U.S. in support of their debut album Stomp Revival. Though heralded by many critics as “the future of music,” Capitol were unmotivated to market the band, and did nothing in the way of promotion. The band split from the label and all subsequent releases have been on their own imprint, SuperDuperRecordings. Undaunted by the fact that mainstream success thus far eluded them, Bonepony forge on.

Bonepony will appear at Milliken’s Reef (683 Dave Nisbet Dr., Port Canaveral; 783-0100) June 18 and 20. To learn more about the band, visit www.bonepony.com.