Bonnie Bloomgarden of Death Valley Girls: When Music Becomes Your Story

Bonnie Bloomgarden of the Death Valley Girls was Tower Record's very first guest for the Instagram Livestream shows that launched shortly after our online store opened. She thrilled us with a fascinating tour of the items she likes to collect, including magazines and spooky earrings, and told us stories of the road.

For those who are new to Death Valley Girls, they are a "California Doom Boogie" band, blending a wide range of Rock, Pop, and Psychedelic influences, with a shiny black heart behind it all.

Bonnie Bloomgarden graciously agreed to do a follow up double-interview with us and in our first sitting, she talked about her "paper addiction" manifesting in a collage-fuelling magazine collection, and some deeper ideas about what it means to be human right now in quarantine. [Read that interview right here!]

Now in the second of our double-interviews, we talk about how quarantine might have affected her views on the music life, what kinds of performances might appeal to her in future, and the all-important question of youthful influences. 

Hit the gas for the second of our double-interviews!

 

Hannah Means-Shannon: I want to ask you: Do all these thoughts and new perspectives impact you in a way that makes you see your life as a musician and performer differently? Or is just more about being human right now?

Bonnie Bloomgarden: They are both so connected that it would be hard to tell. It’s not like, “Let me save this thought for writing.” We were always on tour, every month of the last year and a half. And we knew that this was going to be the biggest, longest break anyway, from December to March. And we knew that would be the longest break we’ve had in four years.

HMS: Wow. Four years.

BB: We all knew we were going to have to start to look at breaks differently. And we knew we had to record. So, my goal was the really try to change. Before that, we were on the road 24 hours a day, with no silence, just in it. Just channeling energy, giving out energy, being there. Then, we’d go home and just be resting, and not listening to anything for a month. But those were the two different ways of living for four years.

But I thought to myself, “I can’t spend four months in silence. That would be a total waste of time.” So I had already kind of prepared for the idea of thinking about life differently. And also about the record we wanted to make. Which was about the idea of wanting to perpetuate joy and make people feel better, and make ourselves feel better. So that when we toured with it over the next year and a half, it would be almost like chanting. Something that DID something, like a spiritual record, a Gospel record.

HMS: Wow! You were already planning that before the pandemic.

BB: This was a’brewing already! I felt lucky about that. And yeah, we finished the record right before this stuff happened. Like two days before the city was locked down.

Then there was a lot of fear, I think. And grief. But I think we’ve learned a lot about a lot of things. Even just stuff like “neural plasticity”. That you should put stuff in front of your face that makes you want to achieve more and greater things. Don’t put stuff in front of your face that makes you worse, just try and get better. Or if you need to relax, do that too, but don’t forget that your just relaxing.

I look at time differently. And I spent two months just trying to see time, potential, abundance and all these things in different ways. So, this all continues along that path, it’s just a pretty extreme thing to go from a few months off to, probably a year off.

It provides an opportunity, though. And also, I don’t think the music industry was really working. Overall, the music industry was doing great for itself, but the way it was working for Rock and Roll bands of our tiny size meant that we needed to start getting creative and thinking of new ways to do things. I don’t really like to sit around and complain about things that aren’t really working, but now we have time to sit around and fix things.

HMS: To think about what might make life better for musicians?

BB: Totally. People are sad that things are so fast, and come and go, based on the internet. That’s one way of looking at it, but how do we find a way to think about how to make it matter for longer? I don’t know the answer, but rather than it being, “EVERY DAY MOAR CONTENT, MAKE PEOPLE CARE!” It’s like, “Okay, I’ve heard you say that for like three years. It doesn’t seem to work.” You can’t really fight reality, but now we have time to think about how to work within a different system.
HMS: I’ve worked mostly on internet-related things for a number of years now, and it is this constant stream of information, with a constant demand for new information, including music. So, the pressure is put on bands to crank out new singles or new albums at certain times, or else risk being forgotten about, when they shouldn’t be. Or, you have to do the constant touring, as you were discussing. Even if you love it, it’s constant, to keep your name in front of people, to keep your music in front of people. I can definitely see the problems there.

BB: For us, it’s almost like a religion. We have to go around and spread the good word. And that’s cool, but if you were to put our business model in front of any business school, it would be crazy. Like, “Okay, it takes five people to drive around, at least six hours a day, bringing the albums with them to sell to people. Now, it’s going to be a limited number of people, 500 people at most. Probably ten percent will buy something…” The math on it is pretty dumb, but that’s what we like to do. That’s the way we make money.

But we’re not going to be able to do that now. So how are we going to be able to live without touring? Well, we’ll figure it out. Just haven’t yet.

HMS: I guess if you and other bands figure some of this out, it could provide a stronger foundation for doing things in the future in case the industry gets unstable again.

BB: Yes, everyone will figure things out. It’s interesting. It’s so futuristic, too, to take away that element of doing things in person. It’s so silly, but so important. It’s one of my favorite things in the world is to see fans, playing live. But it also is funny because it is so necessary but somehow shouldn’t be?

HMS: It’s very archaic! And I’m saying that as someone who goes to a ton of live shows. It’s like the oldest thing…

BB: It’s not futuristic at all! We can’t really do that thing where people play on Zoom. It doesn’t really work that way for us. It is about an energy exchange, but finding out how to do that may be the key to the future of music. Because the future is us all in our safe pods, with vegetable drips into our arms or something. It’s like, “How can we mix that and the live music experience? Hmmm…”

If you figure it out, let me know, okay?

HMS: You’ll be the first to know.

Would you all do drive-in concerts? What do you think about that? They are starting to talk about concerts where the cars drive in and park on the field in front of the stage.

BB: I think that that’s cool in a dystopian way. Like a cool music video.

HMS: You’re used to smaller venues, packed in.

BB: Yeah. Who knows? That seems cool. I would go to see someone. That would feel too trippy to me [to play]. That would feel like the end of time to be playing to cars. I’d have to consult the other guys but…

[Laughter]

HMS: You’d probably feel like you were in a movie or something. Because you’d definitely be filmed. It would be streaming, too.

BB: That’s something that people don’t totally think about regarding musicians. That there’s someone always filming your face. At shows, at least you can see the people filming you and look at the film later. But if you can’t even see the people filming you, that seems scary. That seems like it would be hard to get over. I’m pretty shy in an odd way.

I like the moment things are happening, and the energy in the moment. I don’t even watch our old shows or anything. Maybe it’s me that has to change. I gotta figure this stuff out fast.

HMS: Plenty of bands would totally agree with you on all this. It’s different for everyone, I guess. And people are going to adapt differently, too.

Before we sign off, I wanted to ask you about our Tower motto, probably again, since you would have done it on the Live show, but the motto is No Music, No Life/Know Music, No Life.

What does that phrase mean to you?

BB: I can’t remember what I said before! It will be a fascinating study in goldfish memory. It’s a crazy thing to try to answer. Everyone needs music. Maybe .5% of people say they don’t need it. You need it. It’s yours and becomes your story. The first music I ever heard became part of my story that was my band. It was Black Sabbath. That is such a part of who I am, when I was 11 years old, hearing their first record. That’s such a part of me, alongside anything I’ve ever accomplished.

Everyone has songs like that, that are theirs, and took them through times or out of times. Or that they shared with someone and turned someone else on to the music. To me, it’s the most important thing in the world. You find the music that you relate to. Sometimes you find the music you don’t relate to. But everything is music.

HMS: Sometimes when you hear music, you feel like you’ve heard it before. You recognize something. And then you love it. But it gets incorporated into you, and you’re not the same person anymore, but maybe more of the person you want to be.

BB: Totally. Like in high school, if you have no friends, you find the people who like the same music as you. Which is funny, because when I think of some of the friends I had in high school, we don’t have anything in common now. But we had everything in common then because we liked Nine Inch Nails. And, also those are the people you’re friends with forever. That’s how you define yourself. That’s how you separate yourself. Especially when you’re a teenager, the most important thing is to separate yourself by the music you listen to. And that informs the rest of your life.

Yeah, I don’t know pretty much anyone for whom, as a teenager, music wasn’t their world. And that’s the dreamiest time, being a teenager. Even though mine was horrible! But it was also awesome, because music was there for me.

HMS: It’s nice to hear someone give such a heartfelt and wide-ranging answer to that. Thank you. Especially with everything that’s going on right now. It’s good to be reminded.

BB: There are always going to be kids just finding out about music. It’s so cool. And trying to figure out how to play guitar along to like, AC/DC. And that rules!

HMS: Did you hear about that, that musical instruments are really selling right now? That people are trying to learn to play or going back to playing?

BB: It’s cool! Well, it feels good. Making noise feels good. It becomes addictive. Your fingers are just like, “Can’t talk to you, gotta go touch those strings!”

HMS: Thank you so much.

BB: You too! I hope I get to see you one day.

HMS: Me too. Maybe down on Sunset.

BB: YEAH!!