My discovery of Bones Owens is actually in a roundabout way from the 'ski. A really long time ago, nowaypablo and _refugee_ went on a date an adventure. Here's ref's side of the story and here's Pab's. I'd have loved to go to that show but was unable to. Soon after that, Reignwolf disappeared and I was devastated. He released like two singles over the course of four years and never toured. I never got to see him and I never thought I was going to. Then, all of a sudden, he comes back, still having never released an album under the name Reignwolf (he has an earlier album under his name Jordan Cook called Seven Deadly Sins of which the soundcloud link is missing one of the 13 songs. Some guy on Reddit was able to shoot me a download for the whole album because it's damn near impossible to find). So in his comeback, he was doing a Monday night show at a city 2.5 hours away from me one way. With classes the next day, I said fuck it and went because when would he be around again? So that was in Buffalo NY on October 1st 2018. Without question, that is the single greatest concert of my life. There weren't 50 people there. The band is the drummer, a bassist, and Jordan killing the guitar and singing. Their sound is an aggressive blues rock style. While they've since released an album, Hear Me Out, neither Seven Deadly Sins nor Hear Me Out hit the same as their live shows, and in my opinion, both are over-produced, though Hear Me Out much less so than Seven Deadly Sins.

So on a Monday night concert in Buffalo, NY, for a band which hasn't released anything beyond a few singles in four years and has never release an EP, LP, or album to have a forgettable opener. That's fully what I expected. And yet, when we pulled up to Buffalo Iron Works that fateful day a whole 5 mins before the opener started, settled in, and immediately the tattooed man in front of us with his drummer, just the two of them, warmed up the show absolutely perfectly. At that time Bones and his drummer were certainly exploring the more blues rock side of their sound, but the only music they had written and released was the fabulous folky album Make Me No King. At that time, it was very much so folky with some light dirty blues elements in it during the live shows. I maintain that one of my biggest regrets is not buying that CD when I had the chance. I've never seen it on sale online only at Bones' merch table which he was manning himself, and I neglected to buy it because the headliner I knew to be sooooo much better live than in the studio.

Back in October when Bones announced that he was releasing a self-titled album, I got super excited. The stuff he'd been releasing were much more bluesy and rocky since the folk stuff I had known him for. And all of it was phenomenal. I know I've posted some of his stuff on the weekly music threads including accidentally finding one of the videos as private and not really publicly yet. I've been excited and waiting for this album for months now. And every single he has released just made me more and more excited for the album.

Fast forward to today. I am a slut for owning my music. It's not at the whim of contracts by companies to keep it, I just own it and that's all there is to it. It's mine. It's great. So I'm chilling pretending to work from home as we all are in these pandemic days. I pre-ordered this album months ago. And just on time for the release day, it arrives. I've gotten lucky and received my pre-orders before the album releases, but not so today. Today their timing was just right. Having already listened to the painfully short album once and going through it a second time, all it does is leave you yearning for more. Bones really hits a great sound here. Full to the brim of driving guitar and blues rock, it's just absolutely immaculate. I'm not sure where y'all listen to music but do yourself a favor and find this album and listen to it, front to back, top to bottom, the whole shebang, uninterrupted. It's (too) short, something like 38 minutes or so. I'm excited for whatever Bones does next and I'll certainly be following him to find what that might be.

As for live shows, the pandemic has of of course cancelled them, but as soon as he starts touring again, you bet I'll be driving way too many hours on a random night to a small venue very far out of my way to experience Bones again.