Bully
Bully
Minnesota has a history of producing influential and great alternative rock bands: Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Babes in Toyland... and now, there's Bully, whose music somehow has elements of all three. Is it something in the water? We called up Alicia Bognanno, whose solo project has steadily become one of the more buzzed about new rock bands in the last decade, and is on tour for this year's album Lucky for You. It's out on the storied record label Sub Pop, a pivotal home to bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney.
Now based in Nashville (where the initial band was formed), Bognanno’s sound distills '90s rock, punk, and grunge energy with melodic hooks and her signature vocal wail—her lyrics are so direct and vulnerable, delivered like an adrenaline shot to the heart, that they often have to be screamed. She spent her formative years in Rosemount, and credits an audio engineering class she took with the School of Environmental Studies, located at the Minnesota Zoo (AKA the Zoo School), with putting her on this path in the music industry: she's since worked on records for other bands, and has even composed music for film (the Elisabeth Moss-starring Her Smell).
Lucky for You, Bully's fourth album, is Bognanno's most expansive-sounding yet, with the project venturing in exciting new directions with help from producer J.T. Daly. Opener “All I Do” celebrates three years of hard-earned sobriety, she gets more political than ever before on songs like “All This Noise,” while “Days Move Slow” was written shortly after her longtime dog, Mezzi, died. The best Bully songs are introspective, scrappy, and root for the underdog, and this collection hones in and expands on what has made the project so exciting: Like the unconditional love a pet dog can show their human, Bognanno's radical openness in her music is disarming, and powerfully empathetic.
She's back in town on Friday, with her first headline show at First Avenue, and we caught up with her from her home right after the first leg of this tour. Bognanno was thrilling to talk to—she's creating some of the most urgent and honest scorchers today, and lays it all out on the table: she goes deep about what it means to grieve a pet, her mental health, coming out of the closet in song, and not getting into the Academy of Holy Angels because of her “attitude” (for what it's worth, Paul Westerberg dropped out from there his senior year).
I saw a post on your Instagram stories that you lost your wallet, which you bought from “the little boys section of Target,” and didn't have it for the last month or so on tour? What happened?
I left it in a bathroom, like two days in. [laughs] It was actually this funny bit, because my tour manager Lisa had a bunch of merch cash, so I had to ask Lisa for money. So there were points when I was at Sephora or something and I had to call her and I was like, Hey, I don't have enough money. Can you bring me money? Because I was just only using cash because I didn’t have any of my cards. And then there's a few shows at venues that wanted my ID, but I was like, I don't know what to tell you. I don't have it. And there's a show tonight, so, it's up to you, I guess. Do you want to let me play? [laughs]
You left Minnesota for Middle Tennessee State University, then famously interned at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio in Chicago, then went back to Tennessee to Nashville, and you never moved back to Minnesota. So I'm curious what your relationship is like today with our state.
Minnesota has a very big space in my heart, but I don't have any family there anymore. And I'm honestly kind of bummed I don't have a reason to go back, because I feel like there's so many things about that city that I didn't really get to experience when I was living there, because I was in a suburb outside of Minneapolis. But I love it. And I really love everybody that works at First Ave, 7th St. Entry, Fine Line—that whole group of people have always been really good to me, ever since the start, and so even just from a venue perspective, I have a lot of admiration for it. On many different levels, I love Minneapolis.
What was your upbringing like in Rosemount? What did you do?
I moved a lot as a kid. I lived in like eight different places before I graduated high school. I was actually born in Germany (because my dad was in the army), and then I moved to Plymouth, Minnesota, and then I moved to Maple Grove, and then Naperville, Illinois, and then back to Minnesota. I was there from mostly, like, 13 to 18. And I was a really bad kid. I was a very bad student. I didn't understand much at all, but now I'm older and I know it's just because I'm neurodivergent, so I learn differently, and I was in the public school system.
I was supposed to get into a private school—Holy Angels—and I was told that they’d let me in when I got a better attitude. [laughs] After that I stuck with Rosemount public school, but I loved music. I definitely didn't really have any access to it. I didn't come up in a musical family, and my senior year we got to take electives at the Zoo School, which is just like five minutes away from the public school, and they had an [audio] engineering class. For the first time in my life, I got As in something and was doing really well, and I ended up just being there all the time.
To be totally honest, I was partying in high school. I don't drink anymore, and I feel like I started pretty young. I was a very complicated child. I wasn't excelling in many things. So it felt really good to put so much work into one thing that I'm totally passionate about and excel in something.
Why do you think you succeeded so well taking this class, where maybe in other classes, they didn't grip you the same way, and you weren't necessarily as focused on them?
Just 1,000% because I was so passionate about it. I have pretty bad ADHD. So when I am able to find something that I love, I can completely devote my whole self to it. But if it's something I'm not interested in, it's like, kind of in one ear, out the other. When I was seven, I would write lyrics and have my friends who had a really good voice sing them. [laughs] So this was my dream, like I had been waiting for this opportunity. I think I was just like, I can't believe I even have access to see how a studio works, or be in one.
Is it true that you didn’t pick up a guitar until you were about 20?
Yes.
I also read that you started out by making hip hop beats for your friends too. Was that born from this course at the School of Environmental Studies?
Yeah, I had a group of friends who rapped—they still do in Minneapolis. It was kind of like my first time I learned how to make loops and how to put sounds together, and it was fun.
You have this rock, guitar-driven sound, but you started out by making these loops. When did you start making this kind of music that might be more punk, a little more grunge influenced, perhaps?
I think when I found the electric guitar. I was trying to do a music minor, but I didn't have any theory. I was really behind, and there was another minor that involved it but was less technical, less complicated, and I would meet with this teacher after class and she was teaching me piano, basically. And I was writing then on piano, I didn’t feel like I could accurately portray how I envisioned my music to be until I found the electric guitar. Simultaneously actually, my friend had one and it was broken, and he said if I could fix it, then I could play it indefinitely.
I got a $30 analog delay pedal off of Ebay, it was like the first time I bought anything off of Ebay, and then I got a distortion [pedal], and as soon as I had those two things, it was like a whole ‘nother world opened up for me. I was able to be a lot more creative, and it was heavier. Everything's more fun with distortion. It's just the best. [laughs] That was really the first time that I was able to write. I wrote ”Sharktooth” in college, and that was maybe one of the first songs I ever wrote on electric guitar. As soon as I got that, I started writing stuff and it ended up much later on being for Bully. So it was really the electric guitar and those two pedals that kind of ended my search. I mean, it's still going, but, that was a moment where I was like, Oh, I found it, like, I found what I want to do. I love this. As far as instrumentation goes.
When you were taking these courses, from high school, through college, then at Electrical Audio, what was the environment like in these studios?
It was like all dudes? Yeah. [laughs] But also through college, I was like the only woman in a lot of those courses, so it was very uncomfortable, a lot of times, but I think that it also forced me to just do things on my own, because I didn't want to be like, overpowered by somebody else in a group project.
In high school taking that class, it was like the most freeing thing that I've ever done. My teacher from that class found MTSU, and like told me to go there, because I could get in because basically anyone can get into MTSU, and they had a bachelors of science in music, which was like a deal that I made with my dad, like You're not going to go to school for music. You gotta get a bachelors of science in something. And so my teacher found MTSU and if it wasn't for that, I wouldn't have gone to college. I didn't really get into anywhere else.
Bully
Bully
The Nashville influence is really strong on the newest record. It's the first Bully album that has an official feature, with Soccer Mommy, and J.T. Daly helped produce it. What led to those choices, to open up the Bully sound and letting these people in?
I think with each record, I just get more comfortable doing whatever I want and less concerned with what people are going to think about it. Stuff like “Hard to Love,” I just did that as a writing exercise. I told myself I was gonna use all the gear that I had never used before. I was only gonna write with stuff that I wasn't really familiar with. I never thought that I would even release a song like that. And then I ended up meeting with J.T. I met him through my management, they had worked with him before, and I was just kind of testing the waters to see if he was someone I would want to work with. And he was so supportive and incredible. I could tell he really cared about the project, and he leaned into me trying new things and experimenting. He was the one who even talked me into releasing “Hard to Love.”
I think with just having done this for so long, it's not fulfilling for me to do the same thing over and over again. I kind of look at the whole thing as a bigger project than just a record, and the way that I feel like I grow is by kind of putting myself out there in new ways that still feel authentic. But also, it's like if I want to lean into a poppier side, I'm gonna do that. If I want to lean into something like “A Wonderful Life,” I'm gonna do that, and just take myself outside of the box I felt like I had been put in. I think it just happens with age too. You’re just like, Yeah, I'm just gonna do whatever I want. If people like it, that's great. If they don't like it, I learned from it.
You also wrote a lot of Lucky for You in the midst of the death of your dog, Mezzi. Sorry for your loss. How have you been mourning him? You have another dog, it sounds like?
I was fostering a dog like three years ago and kind of just ended up keeping him. He was gonna get adopted, and then the person basically took him and returned him. Mezzi had always been very dominant with other dogs. And for some reason, like, when Papa came into the picture, she had no reaction in any sort of dominant way. It was weird. It was like they had some unspoken understanding of each other. And after he got brought back to me, I was like, Yeah, you're just gonna stick with me. He's like 11, but he's a little dog, so he's supposed to live a really long time. I had Mezzi since she was a puppy. She was my first dog and like, my best friend. We just went through the most pivotal moments of my life together. You know, from like, 19 to 32, there's a lot that happens. [laughs]
Yeah! Did that loss inform the writing of this record, too, would you say?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I had met up with J.T., and then we were gonna make the record. I had some songs written, and then she ended up passing a little while into the process and everything else very much changed to being about that loss. I've never really experienced anything like my relationship with Mezzi. She traveled with me. She recorded with me. She was as much of an emotional support dog as she was just a regular fun dog. On a lot of different levels, I feel like she filled a lot of holes. And I was really appreciative that I got to experience that at all.
I really enjoyed your Talkhouse conversation with Bob Mould, another Minnesota music legend. What was it like talking with him?
So incredible! I mean, going back to what we were saying about wishing I was able to experience Minneapolis a little bit more, or know a little bit more about the Minneapolis music scene back in the day. The Replacements are one of my favorite bands, but I just didn't find the bands that I felt like I really loved until I went to college and was around other people that were listening to them. I’m a huge Bob Mould fan, and it was really incredible. I got to read his book like a few days before that interview, so I had learned so much about him and his story just days before, so I was just so excited to pick his brain about everything.
Minnesota has historically been fertile ground for producing these sorts of punk-leaning bands, like Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, Babes in Toyland, and Bully to an extent. But you weren't really connected to the music scene at all while you lived here. Were you going to shows at all in the Cities, or at First Avenue?
No, I only knew of like one band that was in my high school. I was a freshman, and it was like four seniors. In Nashville, it's like people grow up going to house shows. Everybody's doing that at like age 15. I was just listening to whatever was on the radio. It's like, everyone wants to hear this story that I found my dad's old punk tapes or like my brother’s whatever. And I'm just like, Oh, no, I was so uncool. Like I had no access to that. I wouldn't have even known where to look for it.
I'm curious then, you know, Nashville is known for its country songwriting community. Have you interacted with many people in that scene? What's it like living out there?
It's really great. I have been kind of wanting to move for like eight years. [laughs] It's like this ongoing thing, but Nashville, as much as it's in Tennessee, in a red state… It is an easy place. I mean, it was—It's not even so much anymore, because the cost of living has gone up so much since Nashville became way more popular within, like the past eight years. But I can rent a house. I can keep my van, a trailer, have a backyard, all these things and the space that I need to be able to make noise that I wouldn't really have in any of the other cities that I would be interested in. And aside from that space, I mean, there's like endless gear, endless people making music. There's like three music shops a five-minute drive away. Everything is easily accessible here, from that aspect, too. It's an easier place to be a musician than somewhere like New York. I also foster dogs, and that is just like something since Mezzi passed that has provided me so much joy, and I deeply love doing that. And that's also a big reason why it's hard for me to leave because, in New York or LA or whatever, I don't think I would be able to have this space or that flexibility.
You've been open in interviews about your sobriety and mental health journey, and you've used Bully as an outlet to reveal these inner parts of yourself. How does it feel to be that vulnerable in your music?
It feels really cathartic. I don't know how I would exist in this world without being able to make music. It's just a form of therapy for me. So much of it is an outlet. I'm doing it for that reason. And it just feels good. I feel like sometimes, I have a difficult time communicating my emotions, or what I'm feeling inside, and being able to put it into a song instead of, like, trying to feel understood through a face-to-face conversation, has been so beneficial for my sanity. It's like, I can make this thing and be able to let out all these feelings that have been stuck in my head. And to a degree I am expected to explain myself, especially in this world with social media, and how everybody wants like every little detail of everything. But to a certain extent, I get to pick what I want to talk about, a little bit, and I get to keep some of it for myself. It's just a good way for me to work out what's going on in my head.
When you write the song, you can kind of set those terms for how much you're willing to reveal and the way in which you do it, right?
Yeah, and before you go into a press cycle, or whatever, it's like everybody’s looking for a story, but at least you can have the freedom to be like, I’m uncomfortable talking about this. I'm not comfortable talking about this. I can just have songs that everybody might think are about one thing, but they can be about something else. And that's like a little secret that I have to myself. [laughs] Yeah, it's cool.
You've said in interviews that you “basically came out” through Bully. It’s been almost 10 years since the song “Trying” came out, but it's kind of become a queer anthem with a life of its own, in a way. What was writing that like? What were your thoughts going into that? Were you nervous to put that out there?
Yeah, I was so scared. [laughs] I was very, very nervous. Because it's also talking about a lot of other really personal things. I feel like it's the first song that I wrote where I was kind of putting it all out on the table, and accepting myself for who I am, and not really holding back. I was terrified. Like it's about my period, but then like, coming out. So I hadn't talked yet to my family or anything about it, which I did after. It was like the first time I put it out in the world. And at that time, I was very confused about my sexuality. And it felt great. I mean, it was nerve-racking, but I also feel like through that song, I have been able to connect with a lot of people, and get support from it and be not only accepted, but almost like celebrated in a way. It was incredibly nerve-racking. Very stressful, but worth it.
Would recommend?
Would recommend.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
