May 24, 1996

By PAUL CANTIN
Ottawa Sun

 Forget that she's just released an acclaimed debut album -- Boston-based singer Tracy Bonham's anxieties have already leapfrogged over her.
 She's already worried about how she'll follow that impressive rookie effort, The Burdens Of Being Upright.
 "Second album. It's so stupid," says the gamine-like Bonham while nibbling on a snack at The Black Tomato.
 "I always find something to worry about, and that's it: Second record. I haven't even had my first album come out yet, and I am so petrified. I know that no matter what happens with this album, people are going to be more critical.
 "If I flop, or the first record does well but the second one doesn't, woosh, I'm down. I know how fickle and scary and topsy-turvy it can be."
 So does she have a survival plan?
 "Take over the world," she deadpans.
 "Actually, my plan is to do something totally different (for the second album). Like just a hand clapping, so I can't get trashed. I'm just going to try and enjoy it."
 Bonham has good reason to chill. The Burdens Of Being Upright is brimming with incisive, funny, charming songs. And it rocks righteously. See for yourself when she performs at Barrymore's tomorrow with Tripping Daisy.
 "The songs are not really complaints, but they are little observations. They're human. Life and death, this and that. It just felt like the image of a person with a whole bunch of burdens trying to remain upright, sturdy," she says of the title.
 "At least I'm not doing what I do on my back."
 Bonham started her musical career as a classically-trained violinist who relocated to Beantown from her home in Eugene, Ore., where she grew up with seven older brothers.
 "I started writing songs because I was sick of recreating other people's music. I wanted to say something myself."
 She still picks up the fiddle occasionally. She played in the string section during Page And Plant's reunion tour (Kashmir, Black Dog and Dancing Days) and can rip through a hoedown version of PJ Harvey's 50 Ft. Queenie at her own shows.
 The starvation period between her decision to abandon classical music and slog it out in the clubs is hilariously and poignantly documented on her current single, Mother Mother.
 "Am I lonely, heavens no ... Just a phone call to ease your mind," she soothes, before exploding: "I'm hungry, I'm dirty, I'm losing my mind, EVERYTHING'S FINE."
 Recalls Bonham: "One day in particular, in Boston, I was definitely in the worst relationship ever. I had $3 in the bank, so I couldn't even go to the ATM to take out $5. It was my 21st birthday.
 "But when my mom called, I told her everything was great, because I didn't want her to worry. I think everybody does that, absolutely."
 Navy Bean has nursery-rhyme simple words but actually deals with the painful memory of a humiliating relationship.
 "It's a memory of me not being able to say f-- off at that time. Totally caged and furious. Now I look back like a bigger sister, saying 'How could I have let that ass---- do that to me?' "
 When I compliment her ability to edit her lyrics down to essential, spare language, her jaw drops.
 "That's a funny thing, that you would say that. My real father, who died when I was two, was an editor. It's neat to think, because I never got to know him, but I always wonder what I got from him.
 "I am really into words, the way they sound. I have to speak it out loud, sing it out loud. It is everything. It is like a painting, it has to flow. It has to work together like a machine. When it works, it is awesome."

March 20, 1996

By JANE STEVENSON
Toronto Sun

  Tracy Bonham's major-label debut is called The Burdens Of Being Upright, but it might as well be called The Burdens Of Being Called The Next Alanis Morissette.
  Like every current female singer who's not afraid to spill her guts musically, the fast-rising Boston singer-songwriter has been lumped in with the Ottawa-born, L.A.-based Morissette.
  "There was one gig in Ottawa where I had to stop and say something 'cause I felt I was turning into her, because people were looking at me as if I was her," said Bonham, 28, on the phone from her apartment in a Boston suburb.
  "And I had this weird sensation of like, `Oh, my God. All of a sudden I sound like her and I'm acting like her.' "
  But unlike Canada's female alterna-rager of the moment, Bonham is a classically-trained violinist who wrote all the melodic pop-punk material on Burdens, including the searing first single, Mother Mother. The album, which has won her raves in both Billboard and Rolling Stone, is in record stores today.
  "All I know is that we're both female. People are just quick to judge or something. It's weird. When I first heard that, I laughed. It doesn't make sense to me at all," says Bonham, who began playing the violin at age nine and later dropped out of Boston's Berklee College of Music.
  To make matters worse, Bonham - who recently backed up Spacehog before a sold-out crowd at Lee's Palace - may actually run into Morissette now that the band Loud Lucy is scheduled to join the next leg of her tour. (Morissette is rumored to be seeing Loud Lucy guitarist Christian Lane.)
  "It's funny because of that rumor I've been talking to people, and we realize that we had to can the Alanis Morissette jokes while we're out with Loud Lucy," said Bonham, who will in fact return to Toronto to play with the band on April 9 at the Horseshoe.
  The biggest difference between Morissette and Bonham may be that Bonham actually speaks to Canadian reporters.
  In fact, she apologizes for cancelling an interview when she was in town earlier because she had a cold. She was also upset at a Toronto article that suggested she was being strategically groomed to be the next Morissette.
  During her Toronto performance, she lambasted the article's author as "one of the most shallow rock critics" she had ever met.
  "Now it makes me laugh, 'cause I can look back and go, `Oh, my God that's hilarious,' but at the time I was like, `What is going on?' I thought that was the tackiest thing I've ever seen," said Bonham. "I didn't like the tone of it. It was so malicious and so rock snobbery like `Oh, she's not an indie girl anymore.' "
  Bonham, who won best local new artist and best local female vocalist in the 1995 Boston Music Awards on the strength of her EP, The Liverpool Sessions, says there has also been some backlash at home.
  "It's been a weird time in Boston - the fact that I came out so suddenly, like I was just kind of starting to play and after a year somebody came to me and offered me a record deal. So a lot of people were pissed off. And then also there's some definite like terminally indie-rock people that think that everyone should stay in that little bubble."
  Bonham's clearly burst through.