For example: It's another gray December afternoon at Miller's Bar, a workaday joint in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, where I'm meeting Jason Stollsteimer, the Von Bondies' lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Stollsteimer hasn't been out in public since his notorious scuffle with ex-pal Jack White six days ago, during which his face got punched purple (White was later charged with aggravated assault). So, why this bar for a reemergence? The grub, of course. Nothing gets a Detroit rocker out of the house faster than a Miller's burger. And this being Detroit, the game of connect the bands quickly begins. In front of me in line is Ben Swank, ace drummer for local garage punks the Soledad Brothers and White's former roommate. He also connects with the Von Bondies, since they've played on record together, and there's a blues stomper on the Von Bondies' new album that's punningly titled "Been Swank."
This is just one tiny example of the hundreds of ways the Von Bondies have been tasked with outrunning their hometown's shadow. "The success of the Detroit scene has been a total gift and a total curse," says Stollsteimer, 25, his chin-length brown hair draped, as usual, over his right eye (today, his hair covers a deep-red blotch on the white of that eye, as well as the slight puffiness of his lean face). Stollsteimer is a confident dude, but at the moment, he's cautiously edgy-local news crews have been parked outside his house.
But despite the tense feelings, he's chatty about the Motor City scene. "In the early days, when we were playing with the White Stripes and people didn't like them because they didn't have a bass player, we were the band they liked," says Stollsteimer. "I was playing a lot with Jack and learning from him. Everything sounded so raw, and we were more similar. But over the last few years, I've come up with my own thing."
"We tell people when they book our shows not to say 'Detroit-based,'" he continues, "not because we're not proud of it, but because if you associate with it too closely, you never grow out of it."
The facts: The Von Bondies are Stollsteimer and Marcie Bolen (rhythm guitar, vocals), 25; Carrie Smith (bass, vocals), 25; and Don Blum (drums), 31. Their major-label debut, Pawn Shoppe Heart (Sire), is a massive-sounding garage-punk/pop-rock hybrid, produced by former Modern Lover and Talking Head Jerry Harrison. Massive like early-U2 massive. The single "C'mon C'mon" distills all that's great about the band-sharp guitar riffs; primal, swinging rhythm; and irresistibly wailing boy-girl vocals. "Not That Social," sung by Smith, may be the best single Elastica never recorded. Most of all, the album finally reveals the Von Bondies as more than the scene's little brother/sister band.
Stollsteimer and Bolen met as 19-year-olds at Dearborn's Henry Ford Community College. He was a would-be teacher from blue-collar Ypsilanti (the birthplace of Iggy Pop). She was from working-class South-gate. "We were the only people who looked like us," he says. "Marcie was a rockabilly chick. I dressed like the Strokes dress now [laughs]. The school is mostly Arab-American and black, so we stuck out."
An early bonding moment came in 1998 at a Pontiac church/rock club, where the two friends saw lunatic Japanese punks Guitar Wolf open for the Cramps. "I was so blown away by Guitar Wolf-they were so insane and entertaining, even though I had no idea what they were singing about!" says Stollsteimer. "And then the Cramps came on, and there was this huge voodoo sex charge. That night, Marcie and I went home, got drunk, and started a band. I had no idea how to play guitar. I had never sang. [I'd grown up] listening to Otis Redding, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and the Animals, blues records. But my music collection at that time was Nation of Ulysses, Brainiac, and Minor Threat."
The band they formed was the Baby Killers-remembered mostly for their faux-shock moniker. "We only had four songs," recalls Stollsteimer, grinning. "And they were all instrumental." After recruiting scene vet Blum, the band evolved into the Von Bondies. "When Don joined," says Stollsteimer, "I said, 'No hi-hat.' I wanted it to be more tribal, more like the Gories [early-'90s Detroit garage rockers led by the Dirtbombs' Mick Collins]." When the band's bassist left, they added University of Michigan physics student Carrie Smith, whom Stollsteimer knew from childhood and whom Blum knew from his Ypsi basement-punk days (Smith played guitar in teen hardcore wonders the Fags).
"It wasn't like the Strokes, where all of a sudden, you're famous," says Smith. "Things don't happen that way in Detroit. There's no record industry here. You just play and play. And we had the good fortune to be associated with the White Stripes." That association had a little to do with White having dated Bolen and having been Stollsteimer's ad hoc guitar mentor. The band ended up being included on the influential White-produced 2001 Sympathetic Sounds of Detroit compilation.
Like the Detroit Cobras and the White Stripes before them, the Von Bondies agreed to record an album for Long Beach, California-based label Sympathy for the Record Industry. Of course, the catch was that Smith had never played bass before. Also, Stollsteimer had just gone through yet another breakup with his high school sweetheart and current wife, Andrea. "We'd broken up four or five times," he says of his relationship with Andrea. "And I never wrote, ever. When we started the Baby Killers, I was drinking every night. Writing got rid of that. I became so overtaken by wanting to write, I gave up drinking. I was writing because I was depressed, and it made me feel better."
The result was their 2001 debut, Lack of Communication, coproduced by White (who prerehearsed the band at his house). Later that year, they scraped together enough cash from their day jobs (Stollsteimer worked the counter at a downtown Detroit bowling alley) and set off for a tour of England and Europe opening for the White Stripes. "Those shows were incredibly important," says Smith. "We got so much exposure and press. We wouldn't have gotten that without the Stripes."
Over time, the Von Bondies have developed into a blistering live act. Stollsteimer, all gangly limbs in tight, tattered jeans and jacket, channels God-knows-what as he literally pounds his guitar. Behind him sits Blum, a buff, six-foot-one Chinese-American heartthrob, arms flailing. They're flanked by the inscrutable Smith, and by Bolen, a flame-haired pixie impeccably decked-out in vintage garb who, depending on the light, can come off as either angel or devil. "A review [called] us [Smith and Bolen] the cool bookends," says Smith. "That was kind of appropriate. You have two people going crazy and Marcie and I holding it up."
"Yeah, it's cute guys and cute girls," says Willy Wilson, a longtime Detroit DJ and concert promoter. "But they're not up there for cute's sake; they can play. Seeing them live is like a sucker punch."
But the Von Bondies have squirmed against their rep as the band that Jack White built. "At some point," says Smith, "we decided that we wanted to do this on our own. We wanted to show that we weren't just a baby band of the Stripes." And in a scene as incestuous as Detroit's, that ambition has caused eyebrows to raise, especially post-fight. "I think there is unbelievable resentment toward, of all people, Jason," says Brian Smith, music editor of local weekly Metro Times. "When you go to clubs and overhear snickers about what a pussy the guy is, you have to wonder if all these people are as fucked up as Jack White. There is the perception that the Von Bondies didn't pay their dues. Well, they're a good decade younger than your average Detroit garage band. So [White] helped them out early on. Big deal."
The fight that launched a thousand blog posts, a stylish mug shot (White natty in a pinstriped suit), and even a FREE JACK WHITE coffee cup, was over almost before it began. During a set by Brendan Benson and Chris Plum (opening for country rockers Blanche) at Detroit's Magic Stick, Stollsteimer stood near the stage with his wife, Smith, and Bolen, when White walked up to talk. As White backed the Von Bondie up against a speaker, he spit in his face. Then White punched him several times, putting Stollsteimer on the ground, before the other Von Bondies and their friends intervened. They fetched ice and towels from the bar and hustled Stollsteimer down the club's back stairwell, then to the hospital. White claimed in a police report that he was acting in self-defense.
Problems had been evident before the fight. On January 18, 2002, Stollsteimer told the German online magazine Gaesteliste.de, "Everybody wants to know, 'How did it work when Jack White produced your record.' I can only say he sat in the studio and made sure we didn't kill each other. That's it." Then, in December 2002, a bloodied Stollsteimer filed a police complaint claiming that White had come to his apartment, punched him in the face, and choked him (no charges were filed). Stollsteimer told the website Indie Rock Resource last March that "[coproducer] Jim [Diamond] didn't get any credit, and he produced it as much as Jack, if not more." White told NME in October that the Von Bondies had "lost their minds" and that Stollsteimer had "gone off the deep end." Stollsteimer told NME the next month that "we were never happy with the sound of our first record." According to Metro Times, White also had tussled with other bands-Sights drummer Dave Shettler felt the wrath at a local bowling alley, and Dolf of the Datsuns was reportedly kicked by White. Coincidentally, the White Stripes leader will stand trial on March 9, the same day as the Von Bondies record-release show-at the Magic Stick!
"I don't fight," says Stollsteimer flatly. "If someone wants to fight me, I'll just stare at them. Even when I was a kid, when my older brother would beat me up, I would just take it. And it would infuriate him."
Stollsteimer claims he and White haven't talked for more than a year. "Not a word," he says with a dismissive wave of his hand. Ironically, the day after the throw-down the band had a passel of interviews and photo shoots set up to promote Pawn Shoppe Heart. They were canceled.
Perhaps to avoid such hometown distractions, the band had spent a month recording the album in Sausalito, California. They worked with Harrison to capture the spirit of their live show-as heard on 2003's Raw and Rare (Dim Mak/Intheact)-and then refine it. The resulting album is a seamless patchwork of '80s gloss and hooks that delivers the visceral crunch of '70s punk angst and timeless blues pain.
So it's appropriate that the record was inspired by a place where people buy and sell bits and pieces of other people's past. "I went into [a pawnshop], and there's all these rings from people who had fallen in love but then fallen out, and it was kind of sad," he says. "Everything that I write is very factual. And the heartache in those songs-even though I'm married to her now, [Andrea] will never live that down...."
He stops, grins, and doesn't say much more. One thing the man does not need is another fight on his hands.
