Bonnie Whitmore has been singing and playing music since she graduated from diapers. She was born into a family of musicians with her mom being trained as an opera singer, dad a folk singer, and her sister Eleanor sings and plays violin as one half of The Mastersons. The running joke in the family was in order to be a Whitmore, you had to be able to sing and play an instrument. She learned to play cello, bass, and rhythm guitar often competing with Eleanor and was playing professionally in bands by the age of 15.
Nashville became the spot for Whitmore to hone her songwriting skills and now an Austin native, her artistry is as authentic as the most rugged divey honky-tonk in town. Whitmore does not shy away from a difficult conversation and turns feminist frustration into a spiked up rock spun with explosive anguish and a blackened whirl of garage explosiveness. Yet she also has a Linda Ronstandt type sheen that graces listeners with a big voice that sways effortlessly on the melodic.
Whitmore released her debut album Fuck with Sad Girls in 2016, and it received multiple accolades. Last Will & Testament is the follow-up album set for release on October 2 and it remains as provocative as her first record. The first single from the album is “Right/Wrong” that she wrote with her co-producer, Scott Davis. She quipped in another interview that she was thinking of Mr. Rogers when she wrote the song. Glide was able to catch up with Whitmore and here is how it evolved.
You have a new album about to be released on October 2 and a new single record out now. How exciting is that for you in the middle of a pandemic?
It’s really nice to have something to look forward to right now. I feel like I have a purpose and it has kept me in a better mental state during some of this stuff. It’s a record that I am really, really proud of. I’m glad it’s making its way and getting some love.
Are you still living in Nashville?
I’m living in Austin now but I did live in Nashville for a few years. I got a lot of good connections out that way and I met some really good musicians and songwriters there.
I got to meet you when you came to Tucson opening for James McMurtry.
Oh, yes, I remember meeting you. We had such a good time. I also met Dan Stuart from the band, Green on Red. I’ve been a huge fan of his for a long time. When they told me he was going to show up, I almost lost my mind cause I was so excited. I was having a very dreamy night that night.
Let’s talk about the album first. There seems to be one cover song on the record. Did you write the rest of the songs on the album?
Wrote all the songs with a few co-writes. The cover is a Centro-Matic song written by Will Johnson. Called “Flashes & Cables.” My first single is “Right/Wrong.” It’s a co-write I did with my co-producer Scott Davis and we decided to write a song together before we went into the studio. It seemed to be a good introduction to the album since many of the topics on the album are heavy. The single is a way to open the door to the rest of the songs. It was a way to introduce people to the record as a softer, folksier side to the record. It also has a more rock ‘n roll side to the record. It’s a cohesive piece.
The song “Last Will and Testament” is the opening track to the album. That’s about as heavy as you can get. Even that song has a rock vibe that you can imagine being in the soundtrack of a Quentin Tarantino movie. That said, all of the songs deal with many personal issues from suicide, rape, and terrorist attacks. Is this the world that you live in every day?
I’ll take a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack for sure. (Laughing). Seriously, I think it is a world we live in everyday. What I’m really hoping to do with this record is to create a space to have these types of conversations. A lot of these subjects are not new to each individual, but there is a lot of fear and shame around a lot of it. It keeps us from actually being open about it and wanting to talk about it. The underlying theme for the entire record is a need to access why we continue to maintain patriarchy and also bring out the discussion for mental health. The subjects need to stop being taboo. It’s something that affects us all especially right now. Many people wouldn’t have any idea that they would have depression until they go through something like this. It’s something I recognize and something I’ve seen. I want to try to help that conversation to happen. There has to be a way to allow people to heal from this or at least have a way to find some solace and peace.
When you read someone like Margaret Atwood who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, that she wrote 30 years or more ago about this dystopian future that is all too realistic to me. When you actually see the steps that are being taken to turn us into a society based on injustice, it just scares me. I’ve just read this amazing book that I am sort of obsessed with about women’s sexuality called Come as You Are written by Emily Nagoski. It breaks down a lot of things that never really occurred to me before. Our culture is based on patriarchy. That’s our understanding and our learning. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense to keep perpetuating on it. The toxic masculinity is a root to a lot of the issues we are seeing. It stems into our culture, into gun violence, and racism. I can’t abide by these things anymore. Nagoski describes your sexuality as being like a garden. You don’t always get to choose what kind of garden you have. You do get to choose what gets planted, what is sustained in your garden and what you don’t want sustained in your garden. I love that imagery.
A lot of medical terminology is based specifically on men. If it was based on women, it would actually be inclusive to men as well. I could go on a tangent on this because sexuality is so interesting and fascinating to me. In the past 20 years, we’ve seen how gays and lesbians have been normalized into our culture where it’s no longer taboo. We spend so much time labeling things as black or white or one or the other. It so often needs to be approached like a spectrum. Like where do you fall in this? Do you feel more like this or do you feel more like that? There are a lot of people we can be alienating. There is a lot yet we have to learn about ourselves. I guess we have gone into a totally different direction (laughing),
When were the majority of the songs on the record written?
It’s a mix as far as a timeline. “The Last Will & Testament “ is a sequel to my previous record, Fuck With Sad Girls. It was meant to be provocative as shown by the title. Maybe not always a good kind of attention, but what I realized when I put out that record, was me bearing more of my own personal vulnerabilities like dealing with depression and what I consider masochism. Partly because this is what I choose to do with my life. I basically write about heartbreak. In order to put myself through this sort of scenario, I have to have a lot of love for what I do and I have to balance the amount of anguish that goes into it. Those were the kind of things I was coming out within that record. I didn’t get negative feedback from that recording. I was actually given more opportunities because of that record. Fuck with Sad Girls was heard by James McMurtry and that led me to be his opener on the road.
It was a way of opening up a door. “Asked for It” was written in response to hearing Todd Adkin’s “Legitimate Rape.” He’s a representative from Missouri. I got so angry. The first time I actually played that song a The Continental Gallery, it was before #MeToo got in the forefront. I could feel that the air got sucked out of the room. That’s what it felt like. It wasn’t that I got a negative reaction. It was that people were so gobsmacked. I threw that song in their face. The people didn’t know how to react. Now, I do that song as an audience participation. It makes a huge difference.
This is my own therapeutic experiment into it. It’s one thing when you think something is in your mind. It’s another thing when you speak it out loud. It becomes a totally different thing when you are being heard saying it. You are now dealing with the reaction of people from your commentary. This is something we miss a lot in social media. We vent ourselves but we don’t actually have to deal with the consequences of sending that information. When I am asking the audience to participate and asking them to repeat the phrase “Asked for It,” over and over again. By the end of the song, there are two groups of people. One group of people is enthusiastic till the end of the song because they understand and they feel it is an empowering sentiment for themselves because of their own personal experience. The other group may have somebody who has said it before and don’t want to say it again. They don’t want to sing along anymore. It’s getting into their head or their psyche. That’s what I feel is happening.
A lot of my songwriting of late is more therapeutically driven. I don’t want to preach or tell people they should think like I do. I want them to understand why I think like I do. I want to understand them. I want them to listen to it here and I want them to answer my questions for themselves. I want to create a space to discuss these questions. It doesn’t have to be heated or angry as the issues are discussed. We need to move conversations forward.
The song “Time to Shoot” was written after The Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida. I was in high school when Columbine happened and it changed the way we did school. We were no longer allowed to wear trench coats to school for example. We were watched at the entrance, metal detectors were being used and school became much more imprisoning. That was over 20 years ago and nothing has changed. We’ve only seen it escalating. The violence is more frequently happening more often and it’s not just in schools. When hate gets to a breaking point, it has taken the romanticism of violence to a whole another level. It has become intoxicating for these individuals. With the easy accessibility of guns, it makes it easy for these people to destroy other humans. It’s a very rare occasion where they actually capture the shooter. Their intention is to essentially commit suicide. They just want to do it as a grand gesture. That’s the psychological aspect that we keep perpetuating in our culture. This is happening in the United States specifically.
We’ve gotten very heavy here.
I can’t help it. If you give me the opportunity, that’s what I want to talk about.
I’m amazed that you and James McMurtry share a common ground in your observations and opinions of what is going on in this country.
I find him to be an amazingly fascinating person. Knowing his history as well and he is so educated, I love having conversations with him. He only speaks when he has something to say. It is fun to have those kinds of conversations with him because he will bring up things and say things that I have never thought of. It’s always a very educational conversation. He really understands humanity. If he likes the subject, he will talk about it. He does what he wants to because he loves it.
Can we talk about your background? It seems like everybody in your family are musicians.
That I do. We used to say the running joke was that in order to be a Whitmore, you had to be able to sing, play an instrument and fly a plane. Those were your requirements.
Do you really fly a plane?
Yes, my sister, my mother and myself have our pilot licenses. My father flew for Delta for a number of years until he retired.
Dad had a love for flying. He specifically loved antique airplanes. The weekly residency in Austin included me superimposing my guests every week in the front seat of the Travel Air which was an airplane I had growing up. It’s a cool little biplane. We would travel by way of plane to different places. We would also play gigs as a family.
My mom is a classically trained opera singer and she also taught voice . My dad was a folk singer. The two of them met at Six Flags Over Texas. My dad was an accompanist and my mom sang Broadway showtunes they would do back in the day. My dad ended up going to Viet Nam as a pilot. He did three tours there and was given the opportunity to get a job at Delta. He makes a joke that Jimmy Buffet stole his life and he stole Jimmy Buffet’s life because both of them applied to the Navy and Buffet didn’t get in because he had ulcers, some medical reason. I think though that music was part of the reason he got the job with Delta. They had a talent show on the Navy aircraft carrier. He made up a song that included the skipper. The skipper thought it was hilarious. They met and the skipper let my dad leave the ship to interview with Delta. I felt that music was the reason my dad got to pursue the life that he did.
It was always important to him and that was the reason me and my sister started learning to play music when we were little. Eleanor was about four when she picked up the violin. I started on violin but Eleanor was too good at it. I didn’t want to compete so I went with bass guitar and cello and orchestra. Eventually I came around to rhythm guitar. That made it easier to accompany myself. Bass is my first love. When I was 15 I started playing professionally with other people. I’ve gotten to tour with Hayes Carll, Modern Science, and Justin Townes Earle. I’ve been a bass player for other people for a long time.
I’ve been a songwriter since I was a teenager. I moved to Nashville to learn how to write songs.
Have you worked in any other fields besides music?
Yes, when I lived in Nashville, I worked at a place called The Family Wash. I became a baker. They needed deserts and I liked doing it. I dabbled into being a baker. I have worked quite a bit over the last few years as being a nanny. In this profession, it is difficult to have a family. I really love kids and I think it is important to be around their spirits. It’s amazing what you can learn by slowing down and getting on their level, remembering what it’s like to be child-like. It’s a really good, healthy place to go. I think musicians tend to live in a Peter Pan world a lot. It’s nice to be around kids, hang out with them and get to play.
What’s the worse job you’ve ever had?
I worked at this coffee shop in Nashville where you have to start at the bottom. I started as a dishwasher. I thought I hated dishwashing until I moved up to the second tier and worked as a busser. Basically, you do all these things without any interaction with the people. Like a waitress without being tipped out. It’s just a lot of work, physical labor. I actually got fired from that gig because they didn’t feel like I was putting in enough effort. I was like ‘I’m sorry I don’t want to break my back to get a giant jar of pickles and carry it up a flight of stairs.’ I was in a really dark place at the time after really bad break up. It was one of those 24-hour places and I was working from 11 pm till six in the morning kind of scenario. It was a rough job.
My parents shipped me off to summer camp and we had a friend with an outfitting business in Colorado. They put me to work. It was very hard work. I was literally shoveling shit all the time. I loved being around the horses. I didn’t mind doing any of the chores as long as I could go riding horses at the end of the day. Sue was my mentor there and she taught me many things like tying a rope and how to interpret horses. I got to go every year and hang out with them and be in the beautiful mountains of Colorado.
If you weren’t a musician what would you do?
I’ve thought about that. There is a part of me that realizes there is so much ego that goes into playing music. The constant talking about yourself, promoting yourself, and it’s always me, me, me. There’s a part of me that wanted to go help build houses in poor communities or like when Puerto Rico was devastated. I wanted to go down there and say ‘What can I do.’ I think I’m more prone to pursue something along those lines. I do know how important and how healing music can be and to be perfectly honest, it is the only thing I know how to do really well.
Who is your biggest musical influence?
My mom and dad for sure, but the first records that I was really infatuated with are Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Add the first Traveling Wilburys record to that list. The Tom Petty/Roy Orbison/George Harrison vibe was something I fell really hard for. Phoebe Snow is another singer that I am just fascinated with.
That’s all a good baseline of what music that I have come to. They were so many songs that my dad would play in our family band that I didn’t realize were cover songs. A couple of years ago, one of the songs he was doing was a cover that I had never heard the original (Ian and Sylvia’s “Some Day Soon).
What’s the best advice you have ever gotten?
When I first started writing songs, I had a break up with my best friend. I was brokenhearted. I had a mentor whom looked at me and said ‘I know Bonnie, you are hurting right now. I know it’s not a fun feeling, but I always want to challenge yourself to keep your heart open. What your friend did to you doesn’t change who you are and should not have control over you. You need to remember to keep your heart open.” It really helped me through a tough time back then and I come back to it often. Every time my heart gets broken, I have to still leave myself open to accepting, receiving, and giving love. Doc Wasson, a player in Tommy Alverson’s band back in the day, gave me that advice.
