Photo by Blaine Schultz
Tracy Bonham
Tracy Bonham at Summerfest
“Did I hear someone say, ‘One more?’” Tracy Bonham asked after her first song. On Thursday night Bonham played Summerfest’s Briggs & Stratton Big Backyard stage, settling behind a piano, strapping on an electric guitar and pacing the stage. The only thing missing was the violin that characterized her earliest images as a classically trained songwriter pigeon-holed as an alt-rocker in the mid ‘90s.
Backed by a drummer, an upright bassist and Letters to Cleo guitarist Michael Eisenstein, Bonham’s range of styles connected with the audience even as she shared volume levels from others stages early in her set.
Highlights included “The Uncertain Sun,” a Covid-era song Bonham thought she “wrote for someone else but realized it was for herself” and “Devil’s Got Your Boyfriend.” The latter playfully grooved on a slinky rhythm and as the band jammed a bit Bonham strapped on an electric guitar plugged into the small, battered tweed amplifier and cut loose with a finale that suggested the primacy of Link Wray and the undefined skronk of Marc Ribot. Yet, it was a few guitarless trio tunes that were evidence that Bonham’s impact would be much more powerful in a club setting.
