Von Bondies Impress Grandparents, Share 'Hate' on the Road

Posted on May 14th 2008 3:00PM by Jolie Lash
Comments

Detroit indie rockers, the Von Bondies kick off a US tour with Die Die Die on Thursday in Chicago, and though they can't make it, the grandparents of frontman Jason Stollsteimer, will be monitoring their little one's outfit along the way.

"They bought a computer just to read about what [me] and my brother do for a living every day," Stollsteimer tells Spinner down the phone from his home in Michigan. "My grandma goes to Google and prints out every page that has the Von Bondies on it. She'll be, 'I'll see you're going on tour to blah, blah,' and I haven't even seen them yet."

Stollsteimer is more than impressed that his octogenarian elders are so up on all things Von Bondies. In fact, his grandparents even are aware and somewhat qualm-free about the Von Bondies's tunes being used in racy TV shows.

"My grandpa watches the TV show 'Rescue Me' that has our song in it all the time, and it has explicit sex scenes," Stollsteimer reveals. "They're fine with it. There was an episode about a threesome and I go, 'Grandpa, you wouldn't know what that is,' and he goes, 'Yeah, I was in the military.' I was like 'What!' That's terrifying and amazing at the same time."

During the tour, which hits L.A. on May 23 and wraps up in Detroit June 13, the Von Bondies will be get a chance to show off material from their new album, 'Love, Hate and Then There's You,' before its release. Currently Stollsteimer is in the process of speaking with labels to distribute the completed record, after splitting with Warner Brothers, last year.

"We don't want to be on a major ever again. Nobody knows we're not on the label," Stollsteimer explains. "When we got signed we were a blues rock 'n' roll garage band. At the time, even the biggest one of the bands that related to us as a four piece -- loud guitars not doing some schtick would maybe sell 100,000 records. We should have never gotten on a major. We were really lucky to at the time, but now it almost hurt us because we were always more of an indie band that was never gonna sell stadiums like the Red Hot Chili Peppers."

As for the new, major-free album, the band recorded "three songs every few months" according to the singer, with producers including Butch Walker, Peter Katis (Interpol) and Rich Parker (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club). Though they ended up with about 30 songs in total, just 16 made it on the record, Stollsteimer hopes to drop by early fall.

"I'm pretty hardcore. If I don't think a song's good enough, I'll throw it out, maybe come back to it eventually, but overall I don't come back to them," he says. "I have no problem writing songs -- it's right place, right time, for me. What we write is always the right place, right time, but whether or not people like it, I have no idea. We can't write for what people are gonna enjoy. [You] just write for what you like and hopefully people like it."