“If anyone has any problem with us calling Mike Bones this generation’s Harry Nilsson, Leonard Cohen and J.J. Cale all rolled in to one, they can take it up with our complaints department.” - Vice

“Bones is a guitar hero inside and out, master apprentice of a steel-eyed, determined blues first informed by punk, not the sallow, honeyed agony seeping out of our most emotionally isolated singer-songwriters.” - Dusted

“A man from New York whose literate, heartbreaking songs of love and hate are the most exciting transmission from Planet Scruffy Cool Guy With Guitar And Leather Jacket since everyone fell in love with that loveable scamp Cass McCombs” - NME

“An inimitable songwriter.” – PopMatters

I grew up in New Jersey, in the same city as the talented and critically-acclaimed songwriter and performer Ted Leo.  May I suggest then, that I am proof that even in a vast cesspool like New Jersey, there is nothing in the water.  I taught myself to play the guitar and I achieved a Catholic high school education.  At first chance, I moved across the river to New York City where I still live. 

I got a place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with a friend from home.  The mid to late Nineties, as history has clearly shown us, was a creative time for that particular neighborhood, where many bands that are celebrated today got their start.  Sadly, I didn't see or play in any of those bands.  I used hard drugs daily and played the guitar a bit.  I wasted hours pondering anything.  I rarely left my block.  Sometimes I slept with women. 

Having survived the peculiar and troublesome existential dilemma that is late adolescence, I got my shit together and wound up living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which I preferred to Brooklyn.  I started playing in bands and writing terrible songs.  I managed to have relationships that lasted longer than a few months.  I had a mildly interesting job that paid well and sent me to nice places.  I bought clothes by Ralph Lauren.

Then I got serious about writing songs. 

I had to give up the job.  A frustrated girlfriend left me.  The clothes have holes in them and the rent is late.  The usual.  But I suspect the songs have gotten a little better.  Things are looking up.

-Mike Bones, Fall 2008