Bonzie figuring it out on her own
Bonzie’s second album, “Zone on Nine,” could be described as a coming-ofage album, an ode to freedom — personal and artistic — and the struggle to fend off those who would deny it. It’s an art-pop jewel, written, performed and coproduced by a self-sufficient artist who weighed offers from record labels before deciding to put the album out herself on her own Beevine label.
It should come as no surprise for a 22-year-old artist who has always forged her own path. Her parents weren’t particularly musical, and the town where she grew up — Racine, Wis. — offered few role models for a kid who taught herself to play guitar and was writing songs by the time she was 9.
Bonzie — whose real name is Nina Ferraro — was 12 years old when she showed up at a local coffee shop and persuaded the manager to let her perform. She aced her audition and ended up playing weekly for a year. A few years later, the teenage singer booked her first big-city show, at Taste of Chicago. She began making train rides into the city from Wisconsin to play clubs, even though her parents didn’t necessarily approve.
“I figured it out on my own,” Ferraro says. “When I first started writing songs and playing shows, I didn’t tell anyone about it. I wanted to perform, but I did it under the radar and used a different name. To connect with people, you have to drop a lot of your preconceived ideas of who you are. … I did a lot of things my parents didn’t know about, but there was a certain point where they were like, ‘I guess we can’t tell her to stop playing music.’ It wasn’t a thing that people I knew did. There are a lot of people in the world who are creative, but they live in a place that doesn’t support that. So many of them create in isolation.”
Left unspoken is that a lot of these bedroom creatives go unheard. But Ferraro wasn’t having it. Her collaborators have included Steve Albini, John McEntire, the Milk Carton Kids and, for “Zone on Nine,” Portishead’s Adrian Utley. That diversity reflects her omnivorous taste, which includes the solo work of Jim O’Rourke, the soundtracks to Hayao Miyazaki movies, Tchaikovsky and Joni Mitchell.
“Every time I listen to the records I rotate a lot, I hear something different,” she says. That same genre-free approach characterizes her songwriting, which usually begins with Ferraro creating a foundation and then allowing herself to stay open to any and all possibilities. That approach was apparent on her 2013 debut album, “Rift Into the Secret of Things.”
Meanwhile, Ferraro was mapping out an album with transcontinental ambitions. She touched based with California-based producer Jonathan Wilson and U.K. producer Ali Chant to help her flesh out her vision.
But for all the sonic expansiveness of “Zone on Nine,” the core remains Ferraro’s songs.
“I was careful how I sequenced the album and how the songs connected,” she says. June 25 birthdays: Actress June Lockhart is 92. Singer Carly Simon is 72. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 70. Actor Michael Sabatino is 62. TV chef Anthony Bourdain is 61. Actor Ricky Gervais is 56. Actress Angela Kinsey is 46. Actress Linda Cardellini is 42.