Tracy Bonham

Biography

When Tracy Bonham set out to make her fourth full-length record, a lot had changed. She’d move back to Brooklyn, after spending three years in Los Angeles, had fallen in love and gotten married, and watched as the record industry cease to exist. A native of Eugene, OR, Bonham began singing at age five, playing the violin at nine and piano at age 14. After earning a violin scholarship at University of Southern California, she transferred to Berklee College of Music to study voice and began writing and recording her own material. On her 1996 debut The Burdens of Being Upright, Bonham established herself as a brash rocker with ironic nods to the emerging music of punk grrrrl bands. With blunt, direct observations on love and loss, the album went gold and earned the singer Grammy nominations for Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Vocalist.