A.A. Bondy Set To Unleash "The Devil"
By Craig Rosen

Some bands wait seemingly all their lives for their big break. Sometimes when it comes, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Verbena, a Birmingham, Ala.-based grunge-era act featuring Scott Bondy on vocals and guitar, was one of those acts.

After issuing a debut EP and album on Merge, the band caught the ear of Capitol Records and Dave Grohl, who signed on to produce the band's next album. Recording their major-label debut with one of their heroes behind the board must have seemed like nirvana, but not all dreams come true. Despite decent reviews and some MTV play for "My Baby Got Shot," 1999's Into The Pink and its follow-up, 2003's La Musica Negra, sunk like stones.

Bondy, however, didn't crawl behind a rock and die. Rather, he dusted himself off, stripped his music down to the bone, adopted the initials of his birth name (Auguste Arthur), and re-emerged as a folk-blues performer called A.A. Bondy. Here's a clip of his foot-stomping good performance of "Vice Rag" captured recently at the legendary 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga., where he supported Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band.

When The Devil's Loose, Bondy's second solo effort on the Fat Possum label, streets on Sept. 1. The singer/songwriter will celebrate the album's release with a series of dates beginning Sept. 2n at Mississippi Studios in Portland, Ore. His itinerary also includes at a performance at F Yeah Fest 6 on Sept. 5 in Los Angeles, before heading to the East Coast for a series of shows that will wrap on Sept. 11 at Kung Fu Necktie in Philadelphia. If you can't catch him live, I suggest you pick up When The Devil's Loose upon its release. Bondy himself says the album "sounds like a radio washed ashore after a shipwreck," which is an apt description.