Rock and roll has a storied tradition of bands moving from small-town USA to California to make it big. Anyone who remembers VH1’s Behind the Music knows the plot. A couple friends with little more than two nickels to rub together head west in search of the glitz, the glamour, and the tousled hair magic of LA. For Illinois natives Jen Black and Aja Blue, the story is a familiar one, a tale of two Midwestern friends who packed up their belongings and headed 2,000 miles west. Unfortunately for their band The Bruises, the reality is not always like it is on TV.
“First of all, we were crossing our fingers,” says singer/guitarist Blue, who was named after the Steely Dan album Aja. “We both had awful credit. Our minivan was attached to our U-Haul trailer because we didn’t have any place to put all our shit, so we were on foot trying to find an apartment.”
Luckily, they stumbled upon a particularly compassionate landlord. “I think she felt for us,” says Black, who also sings and plays guitar. “She could see the fear in our eyes.”
Black and Blue (yes, those are their real names) met in 2001 in Black’s hometown of Peoria, Illinois and soon discovered that, in addition to the coincidental name connection, the two shared a love of guitar. Soon the duo began writing songs together, christening themselves The Bruises. After failing to reach a larger audience with an album of Murmurs-like acoustic guitar pop in 2002, the band decided that a change was in order. So they ditched the acoustic guitars and moved West, first to Los Angeles and then to their current home in San Francisco.
A few tracks from 2004’s Ladies and Gentlemen…EP found their way onto MTV’s teen dating show Parental Control, but it is the band’s newest full-length, Connected, that truly finds Black and Blue primed for bigger and better things. Mixing hard-hitting guitar work with sweet pop melodies, the album is a step forward in sound and style for a band that, according to Black, is still trying to find its niche.
“We’re very pop oriented,” says Black. “I still would like to consider ourselves indie-pop, but we’re kind of right in between. We’re a little too quirky for commercial radio, but we’re a little bit too mainstream sounding for indie-kids.”
The media has had an equally difficult time categorizing the band, resulting in confusing labels such as punk pop and challenging comparisons to bands like Sleater-Kinney and The Donnas.
“People keep calling us grrrl punk, with three r’s, you know?” says Black. “I can understand the Sleater-Kinney reference, because some of our guitar kind of reminds me of that, but I think there are a lot of other male-fronted bands that we are much more associated with….We’re not punk, and we definitely don’t sound like riot girls, by any means.”
As Black and Blue prepare for the release of Connected and the inevitable onslaught of touring to follow, one cannot help but root for The Bruises. Their story is the fulfillment of every small town person’s big dream, that of a self-described “momma’s girl” (Black) and her friend, living it big. One can only imagine what their parents must think.
“My mom has always been one of those dream huge kind of people,” says Black. “She’s always supported me one hundred percent. I don’t think she thought I was crazy (for moving to California), but she was sad. And I think—like always, she’s usually right—she just knew that I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into. She still wonders all the time when I’m coming home. I just tell her I don’t know.”
--Frank Valish
The Bruises’ album Connected was released on January 22nd, 2008.
The Bruises Myspace
