Local funk rock quartet bends new rules of busy music industry in its own favor
Friday, September 9th at Faultline North. Opening acts Hubba Bubba and The Permians will kick things off at 8pm. Tickets to this all ages show are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Doors at 7pm.
Aspiring funk rock group, The Bent Bones, are in the beginning, yet grounded stages of taking their once leisurely music project to that ubiquitous next level from right here in Bozeman, Montana. A special musical synergy erupted when band members Cody Lindblom (lead vocals), Anthony Gaglia (guitar), Hunter Hessian (drums), and Kurt Binder (bass/backing vocals), started playing together. What they’ve created in their short but successful tenure is being described as non-standard pop music everyone can enjoy. Each member is a music scholar and perfectionist. Their sound is crisp, clean, and tight. It sits just right in the pocket. Your body moves when their sound is in the air. The energy and musicianship is undeniable—and they’re a blast to see perform live. Crowds are electrified and captivated by The Bent Bones performances. The boys will debut their latest release, Seasons EP, at an event concert to be held Friday, September 9th at Faultline North. Opening acts Hubba Bubba and The Permians will kick things off at 8pm. Tickets to this all ages show are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Doors at 7pm.
In anticipation of their performance, the Rolling Zone sat down with Cody, Anthony, and Hunter to talk ever-evolving sound, audience retention, and making their music their way. RZ: Before we get all into it, let’s talk about your sound. How does The Bent Bones define “funk rock”—or whatever you’d like to call it—and how does this group put a unique spin on it? AG: Our sound is definitely always changing, all the releases that we make. It’s still our sound, but there’s a little bit of a different twist on it depending on what’s been inspiring all of us when we’re writing those songs. I think what makes us a little different from other funk rock bands is Hunter and Kurt’s background in metal, their ability to do things and approach them a little bit differently. A lot of times when I write things first or have an idea, it’ll be pretty straight funk, and they bring a heavier aspect to it. CL: Yeah. Our diverse backgrounds definitely give it a unique spin, kind of our own unique flavor, which is pretty cool. RZ: Gotta have that. For those who haven’t been, and for those planning to attend the Faultline North show, what can people expect from this or any Bent Bones performance? CL: First of all, any show at Faultline North is going to be awesome, it’s a wonderful place. It’s clean, smells good, sounds wonderful, and it’s an all ages venue above all. It’s a pretty cool opportunity for some of the younger kids to go to a concert they might have not otherwise been able to see. AG: From our standpoint, there’s a lot of energy in all of our shows. Kurt definitely does a lot of head banging, which people like. We all just get really into it, and it seems like the crowd usually does too. CL: We’re bringing a couple cool bands, one of them from Billings called Hubba Hubba. They’ve got a feel a little bit like ours, that funky rock. They’re great. They’re fun to listen to, fun to dance to. They’re going to make a big splash here. We’re also playing with The Permians. They’re some high school boys [who are] pretty cool too. RZ: Can you describe the transition from playing local house parties to venues statewide? It happened for you guys in a pretty short amount of time. AG: It’s been great. I think all of us miss house parties a little bit though. Honestly, there’s sort of a feel about a house party that I don’t think I’ve experienced in a venue before. It’s just a little bit more close-knit, people are going a little bit more crazy. Then again, it’s nice not to have beer tossed all over your equipment. But we’ve really enjoyed getting into places with good PA systems where we haven’t had to lug around our stuff to every single show. RZ: How has this group managed to garner a decent amount of success in such a short amount of time? What is it about The Bent Bones? CL: Aside from the music, we all worked pretty hard, Hunter especially. He was our main booking agent, as you’d call it, putting a lot of work in to contact venues and just try to get our name out there. It was a lot of hard work and it paid off quite a bit. RZ: You’re getting your start at this local level. What are your thoughts on the available venues in Bozeman? AG: The venues in Bozeman definitely do a good job of providing good sound. My favorite thing, it seems like quite a few of the venues in town [have] the availability to get live recordings after you play, which is really cool. The Zebra’s really good about that, and Faultline North. RZ: You’ve got quite a bit of original material, the most recent being the to be released, self-produced Seasons EP. How is being produced by someone like Doc Wiley (on 2015’s Drivin’ to the Rhythm) different from going at it on your own? AG: It’s been really awesome. Working with Doc was a really good experience for all of us. Not only for Cody on the recording side, seeing some of the things capable of being done, but also Doc helped us a lot with how we write songs. He never really told us exactly what to do, but he definitely left a big impression on how we write songs. All these songs [on Seasons], I guess a couple of them, were written after that recording process. More than anything, the biggest impression Doc left was our writing style. And Cody’s an amazing mixer, producer, engineer. I’m really excited about how this album sounds. HH: If you listen to the Seasons EP, Cody has done a lot of really cool layering. There are a lot of really professional, advanced mixing concepts and production ideas going on. I’m extremely proud of the work he’s done on this album. I think it sounds amazing. The next one, I know is going to be a step up. We always just try to top ourselves. It’s cool. There is a certain production quality to this EP that’s different than the other ones, to where the songs are attractive. You want to listen to it again. You’ll probably listen to it seven times and hear something that you didn’t hear before. AG: Those little subtle differences. HH: I feel one of the greatest benefits of being able to self-produce, nobody else is putting pressure on us. At the end of the day, we’re only answering to ourselves. It’s this cool little time period where we’re able to create cool music and make it the best that we can right now. It’s just really special. I feel that energy really comes out on this album. RZ: Awesome. Is this EP part of the beginning stages of a full-length or is this just independent? AG: No, I think we like the idea of releasing EPs, less music at the time. There’s just so much music released nowadays. It’s nice to give something to the people that they can listen to one breath almost. It’s three songs, but one idea. HH: The music industry is really starting to come full circle in a lot of ways. At least personally, I’m always trying to figure out how I can stay one step ahead. This approach to just releasing an EP dates back to when people first started to put music on vinyl. That worked really well then, and I think we’re getting back to that point where we’re regressing from releasing full albums. Very few people will actually sit down and listen to a full album any more. Everybody has their music on their iPods and it’s all digital. I’m guilty of it as anybody else, but when you have 1000 or 40,000 songs, it’s hard to even make it through one song anymore without pressing your ‘next’ button. RZ: Totally. HH: So we’re taking this approach of keeping it really short and simple and releasing EPs. Our goal right now is to continue to release probably two EPs per year. That will hopefully help promote those three songs. Drivin’ to the Rhythm had six tracks. If you look at the track listen counts, you see the first had the most, the second had the second, and so on. By the time you get to the sixth song, which is still a great song, honestly one of our more marketable songs we put last on that album, has the least amount of listens. It doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the song, but it has to do with where people’s attention span lies. Taking all of that into account and having Cody able to record us, we can start to rewrite our own book on how we are putting music out there. It’s really really cool, really fun. RZ: Will Seasons be both a digital and physical release? HH: We are going to do some hard copy. We’ll probably end up giving a lot of those away at the show. But I think we’ll push this as a digital release pretty heavy. We’re working really hard on being able to do digital downloads directly from our website and get into the ears of as many people as possible. The other really cool thing about doing these two EPs a year, we get to do these really big shows were we have this new product, more or less, we’re releasing. Yeah, it’s a Bent Bones show, but it’s a Bent Bones show where we’re releasing new material. RZ: They’re event shows. HH: Exactly. RZ: You’ve taken your music regionally, but are you thinking of taking it further than Montana in the future? HH: Yeah, I think our goal is to dominate the world. [laughs] We can’t really afford to fly ourselves to Europe very often right now, so we’re banking on the digital market. The digital releases will help get us out, hopefully throughout the States. Our goal would at least be to hit the Northwest pretty hard. It would be great if we could tap into some larger metropolitan areas, places more accessible to us. We can’t just start huge right away. [And] we’re still learning. We still have a long, long ways to go. We’ve had a good run these last couple years and we’ve got a lot done, but we’re not even close to where I would personally like us to be. We’re all pretty young and we’re all pretty hungry. RZ: Word of mouth does a lot, and has done a lot for you. HH: The most powerful you can do as a band or as a musician is play shows. There is nothing that will ever substitute for that, no matter how dialed in you are with your digital releases or videos or media. Whatever it is. There is nothing that takes the place of a live performance. RZ: The live performance of a song seems to anchor that experience more than just listening to a recording at home. HH: Oh totally. It’s the neural pathway in your brain, where it’s that association with [an] actual physical event. You remember that. CL: I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t remember the first song I heard on a radio. I certainly remember the first live show I ever saw, the first time music really grabbed me. It wasn’t a recording, it was live. It was a real show. It takes that sometimes to really grab some people. We want to bring that to people because that’s what made us all want to play music to start with. RZ: Well you’re doing the work. Best of success with the new album and the show. It should be awesome! ALL: Thank you. For more information about The Bent Bones and to listen to some of their music, visit www.thebentbonesmusic.com/. •
