ARTIST: Stayton Bonner
TITLE: Think I'm Gonna Move To Australia
LABEL: Blue Trout Music
GENRE: Folk-Rock
TIME: 39:30 min
SIZE:  50,7 MB
RIP DATE: Aug-11-2005
RELEASE DATE: Aug-02-2005
WEBSITE: www.staytonbonner.com

Track List:

01. Twenty Miles From Tuscon                   04:09
02. Cool Hand Blues                            03:39
03. Think I'm Gonna Move To Australia          03:29
04. Me And My Poodle                           03:07
05. Lonely When You're Here                    04:04
06. North Donegal Blues                        03:31
07. Dancing Marfa Lights                       03:56
08. It Hasn't Been Pretty                      02:40
09. A Debutante                                03:17
10. Fisherman Song                             03:00
11. Balled Of The East Texas Wolfman           04:38

Release Notes:

Since placing second out of over three hundred fifty
entries in 2004’s Merlefest songwriting contest,
Stayton Bonner has been busy. Buoyed by the
experience, Bonner wrote and recorded Think I’m
Gonna Move to Australia, an album of original
material as unusually refreshing as the song that
won the young songwriter a ticket to the premier
Americana music festival in the first place.

“The song they picked is called “Me and My Poodle”,”
Bonner explains with a smile. “Growing up, my family
had a standard poodle named Willie. My Mom had
researched this dog book and concluded that poodles
were supposedly the most intelligent breed. A couple
of nights later, after Willie woke up the household
barking at his own reflection in a dimly lit window,
we realized the book may have been a little off.
Ostensibly, the song’s a story about a man and his
poodle, but it also addresses the difficulties of
growing up different in a small town.”

Born and raised in the rural outskirts of Henderson,
Texas, Bonner grew up in a household that placed an
importance on the arts.

“My earliest memory is reading a book in my Mom’s
lap,” Bonner recounts. “Growing up in a rural area,
my brothers and I didn’t have any neighborhood kids
to play with, so it was important to be good at
amusing ourselves from pretty early on. Besides
reading, music offered a low-maintenance means of
preoccupation.”

“Initially, Mom made me take piano lessons, and I
hated it,” Bonner explains about his musical
beginnings. “I told my parents I thought the piano
was boring and that I wanted to play guitar like
Eric Clapton. So, the next Christmas I got an
ancient six-string acoustic they’d taken from some
ancient relative’s attic. My parents didn’t want to
buy me a new guitar, because they weren’t sure if
I’d stick with it. For the next couple of years, I’d
come home from school every day, turn on the radio,
and try to figure out all the songs I was hearing.”

While attending boarding school in Washington, D.C.,
Bonner started listening to country and bluegrass
music. “I was homesick in D.C. when a friend of mine
played me Guy Clark’s Old No. 1 album,” Bonner says.
“I was already leaning more towards acoustic stuff
like the early Grateful Dead, and the way Clark’s
songs told a complete story or gave a lucid snapshot
of someone really had an impact on me. His music led
me to Dylan, Kristofferson, Hank, and further back.
The whole idea of the solitary songwriter just
seemed kind of romantic and cool to me when I was
stuck studying algebra in a Washington, D.C.
blizzard.”

After high school, Bonner moved to Austin where he
studied English at the University of Texas. While
attending school, he began writing songs and even
recorded an early album. But upon graduating, Bonner
found himself with the same questions that most kids
ask fresh out of school- What the hell do I do now?

“All my friends seemed to be either entering law
school or going into the real estate business,”
Bonner says. “About the only thing I did know was
that I didn’t want to do either one of those.”

Stuck in a stalemate, Bonner made an unusual move.
Getting a work visa for Ireland, he left Texas with
his backpack and guitar, and moved to the Irish west
coast. Working odd jobs during the day, he played
music in the pubs at night while starting to hone
his stage abilities.

“Ireland had a really strong impact on me. I lived
in Dunfanaghey, a small town on the northwest coast
where there was a grocery/post office/hardware store
and 8 pubs strung along one street,” Bonner
recounts. “There wasn’t much to do, so music was a
real release and social glue for the locals there. I
gave my best efforts at strumming along to their
traditional music, and then played them Hank or
Kristofferson songs in return.”

After a year of living abroad, Bonner moved back to
Austin in January 2004.

“Playing songs for complete strangers in a foreign
country really forced me to learn a lot more about
myself,” Bonner says about the experience. “I came
back a much better singer and writer, with a lot of
new songs and the confidence to give the music
career a real shot.”

Since placing second at last year’s Merlefest,
Bonner has kept busy playing gigs in the Austin area
while recording his new album Think I’m Gonna Move
to Australia. Featuring a sparse atmosphere of
mandolin, guitar, and harmonica, the album puts a
real emphasis on Bonner’s writing and melody without
any pretense.

“I believe that less is more,” Bonner explains. “I
wanted the album to be close to what you’d hear if
you saw me playing live, and I keep my stage setup
pretty simple.”

Featuring stories about burned-out lovers, prison
breaks, Australian dreams, and a poodle dog, Think
I’m Gonna Move to Australia is a remarkably original
statement by a young artist.

“I’m really proud of the record. It’s been an
unusual path getting to it, but I feel like
everything I’ve done has led me here for a reason,”
Bonner says. “I’m just excited to get it out there
now.”
