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Photo courtesy of edenhillphotography.com
The Bone Chimes—an orchestral indie-pop group based in Astoria, Queens, is coming out with a self-titled EP on July 7. The band is made up of frontman, Tobi D’Amore (vocals/guitar), Ben Dobay (woodwinds/keys), Tom Rizacassa (bass), Vincent Byrne (drums) and Alessandra Migliaccio (vocals/keys).
Their musical influences range from theatrical icons like Queen and David Bowie, to jazz players liked by Dobay and punk projects favored by Rizacassa. Downtown spoke with frontman Tobi D’Amore last week, who shared with us the origin behind The Bone Chimes’ name, groups he would like to collaborate with, and what to expect from the upcoming EP.
The Bone Chimes will celebrate the release of their EP at Gramercy Theater on June 20—don’t miss out.
When did The Bone Chimes officially start rehearsing together?
Well, 2010 was our first official gig with The Bone Chimes. For a while, it was just a group of people that were kind of playing with me; I was showing them songs I had already written a while back and had performed for a while and it was growing into a band. So In The Muck was really our first collaboration as a band—so yeah that was the summer of 2013. We’ve been playing around and we’ve been friends for a while and we just kind of grew into The Bone Chimes eventually.
Who are your musical influences? The Bone Chimes’ musical influences?
For me personally, Jeff Buckley is a really big one…Buddy Holly. My interest is in making the song the best it can be, and that happens to be the interest of all of the people in The Bone Chimes. If Tom doesn’t need to play bass for a part of a song to make a part of a song better, then he won’t and that’s the choice we make. As a group, each of us personally have an idea of what makes a song better, so we try everything and it kind of turns into what we do. So we have Jeff Buckley, Buddy Holly, old stuff, Benny Goodman, Elvis, and then in even the more theatrical stuff like Queen, David Bowie—you can’t not like that. And then the rest of the band, Tom, the bass player—he’s from punk, so he grew up playing around with punk, and Ben is a trained jazz player—he’s a sax player and keyboard player…we’re pretty eclectic when it comes to our musical influences.
What is the origin of The Bone Chimes’ name?
It’s starting to be a question asked more and more and I feel bad every time I tell this story. A couple of guys were hanging out, and they were listening to the music and it was one of those nights where you hang out, have a couple of beers, and one guy—a buddy of mine, Jay, said to another guy, “When I die, I want you to turn my bones into chimes.” It was a really stupid thing, and then when I was putting the band together in 2010, I didn’t want to just be called just “Tobi D’Amore,” I wanted to have a band name. I asked the band what they wanted to be called and they said The Bone Chimes, so a joke kind of turned into “we just needed a name to play at a trash bar,” so that’s how it kind of happened—a couple of weeks before the show.
That’s a very cool story—very natural.
I basically stole the name from one of my best friends.
You should just send him a check! Have you always been the frontman of The Bone Chimes? Have you been the frontman of any former bands you’ve played in?
Yes, I’ve always been the frontman of The Bone Chimes. Like I said, there always needs to be one person in the band that makes decisions and pushes things forward, but my situation isn’t so much like that. All of us really put in a lot of effort to do what we do, to sound like we sound, so “frontman” is kind of a dubious term, but in other bands I’ve been in, I’ve never been the frontman before. I played bass a while back, I’ve been in a band… that group kind of split up, and I helped out on bass and trumpet in a couple of other bands. I kind of just jogged around until I landed with The Bone Chimes.
How is this band different than the others?
The difference is that we’re buddies…we’re pretty much like a family really. We all have our little quirks that make us who we are and in turn make the music sound the way it sounds like…it’s a very open atmosphere—everyone gets their say, even when it comes to set lists, even down to the vocal line. If I need to change the lyrics, we talk about that, if a melody line needs to change, we talk about that, if I’m trying to sing to high, we have talked about that—that kind of stuff.
How would you describe your on-stage performances?
We are a high-energy band. When its getting really quiet even, we like to make sure that everyone’s with us…it’s a high energy is what I would like to say.
That’s the only way to be.
We like the intensity, because if you’re just going through the motions—we like to have a good time on stage so our audience will have a good time.
Do you have a favorite venue in New York to play since the band is New York-based?
We just played the new Bowery Presents called Rough Trade in Brooklyn and that was a really cool stage. It was a nice new stage—it was small and intimate but had a big atmosphere…we’re about to play Gramercy Theater for the first time which is supposed to be an amazing venue. We’ve been pretty lucky, we’ve gotten to play a lot of cool venues in New York.
What about outside of New York?
Outside of New York, that’s kind of coming up now. With the new EP and everything being released, we’re looking at dates outside of New York as we speak.
How has New York City inspired your music?
There’s a ton of inspiration in New York. I mean I’ve written probably four or five songs specifically related to just New York, one of them being called “New York Street Lights.”
I was just listening to that one a few hours ago.
It’s nice, it ain’t all bad. My friends in New York, because all of them work so hard—I have a lot of friends that are actors and musicians, that are performers in some sort, whether its trapeze or photography. They all work so hard and that’s why they’ve become friends of mine, and New York is what brought them all together—so New York is a pretty great place.
Who would you like to collaborate with in the future? It could be someone mainstream, someone that’s up-and-coming that you haven’t had a chance to work with yet?
I mean, it’s been pretty great. Any of my friends, any time I can get my friends involved. I have a buddy named Ben Hope who is in a country band in New York City of all things, and they kill it—they’re awesome, but we haven’t played together in a while so it’s a whole different thing now for everybody, and it would be pretty great to play with them again. We’re based out of Queens, any Queens’ bands or anything. Astoria Music Festival is coming up here in the fall…anybody really, its fun to do. My dream person would be somebody like David Bowie.
Where in Queens are you based?
We’re based in Astoria. We have our rehearsal space in Astoria and all of us live in Queens. When we bring in the horn players, a couple of those guys don’t live in Queens, but there’s a great Astoria music scene and a great Queens music scene that doesn’t get as much attention as the Brooklyn music scene, but there are a lot of great bands that are still here.
Have you ever considered adding a sixth member to your group?
Really, in my eyes we have 20 people that play for The Bone Chimes. Anybody that has played with us is a Bone Chime, in reality. Sarah, who played violin for us for so long—she’s a professional actor and she’s also in another band called The Blue Eyed Betty’s, and she’s going out on the road with them today actually, so she’s not around and hasn’t been around for a little while, but she can always come back and play with us. A few of our horn players, the guys that are friends of ours, they come in and out of the band—everyone’s a Bone Chime.
You guys seem to have a pretty open community within your band.
Well, it’s something that I really want. A band is like a relationship with four or five people—you learn how to dance with each one and you figure out what works best, trying to work together and hold one thing together, being a band.
Have there been any challenges?
Well, Sarah getting a job and having to go out of town, so we would have to get somebody in there. It’s a challenge to be a band in New York because it’s a challenge to stand out. There are so many bands in New York and it’s such a dense population—its oversaturated, so it’s tough to stand out. That’s probably the toughest thing about being a band in New York, just kind of coming out and showing that you have something to offer that’s a little different.
What can we expect from your upcoming EP?
Well, the EP is being released on July 7 is a much more complete, same-sound. We worked really hard on making sure we played the right parts…took our time. We took twice as much time with half as much material to release an EP instead of a whole album. There was no rushing, if we needed an extra day to make things right we took that, we made sure we got an extra day, we made sure we had the time to do it and now its more us, and I think its more pure-sounding and more thought out.
By- Krissy Lewis and Katie Garry