Bunnygrunt: the Biggest Duo Ever

by Harper Bridgers
08/12/2008

Bunnygrunt – n. 1. a loud and forceful grumble emitted from a small rabbit. 2. an indie-pop band from St. Louis, Missouri set to dazzle the faces of Athens Popfest.

The tight duo of Matt Harnish and Karen Ried is scheduled to perform in Athens as Bunnygrunt, with a large supporting cast to boot. Since their foundings in 1993, they have been a virtual marry-go-round of members with Matt and Karen at the helm. Touching almost every genre of pop-rock since the 60's, the music fuses these influences with their own unique, quirked-out humor and spunk. They take themselves seriously enough to keep making great music but keep it fun enough to not get burned out.

Returning again to Athens Popfest is something they look forward to, a community-sponsored event that does it up right, according to them. Oh, and the name... well what else would you call them?

AE: You've been on the scene since about 1993, how has your sound evolved over the years?

BG: Well, pretty much the first era of Bunnygrunt (93-98) I can't say we evolved much at all, but once Karen switched over to bass in mid-2004, it definitely loosened things up. We used to always worry about our bass players keeping up, so Karen & I were always covering too much ground to really stretch the songs too much. Now we're waaaay free-er to screw around & ,um, that's a good thing I guess?

AE: What is your primary approach to songwriting including instrumentation and vocal composition and arrangement?

BG: Again, we used to sit down & painfully chart out every little bit to get the most out of it, now Karen or I bring in the barest bones of ideas & we flesh 'em out by playing 'em a million times in practice.
Since we've been doing this so long, we kinda have our own language. I can tell our drummer Eric to "Gary Glitter it up" or Karen can tell me to "make it sound like those dancing skeletons in 1920s cartoons" and we know what we mean.

AE: Your myspace page says you guys formed out of boredom... elaborate on this... what were you doing before and what made you want to get together?

BG: There is often a severe lack of non-crazy drummers in St Louis, and Karen was getting sick of being asked to play in every shoegaze/alt-country/straight edge band in town, so she wanted to be in a band where she played bass. Of course, after like a month our drummer quit so Karen had to revert to that cuz there were no non-crazy drummers in St Louis. Took better than a decade to get her back on bass.

AE: What happened in 1998 to cause you all to move in other directions, away from Bunnygrunt, and why'd it take so long for the reformation?

BG: A I mentioned earlier, we had sort of reached a point where we sort of had that "not so fresh feeling". Our bass player at the time, the legendary Jen Wolfe, was quittng to go back to school and the prospect of starting all over again with somebody new was just too depressing to deal with. Karen & I jumped right into a new band, the See-Thrus, but that didn't really gel & I ended up taking a full year off of even picking up a guitar. It was kinda nice, actually. After that we both kicked around in a couple different bands before deciding that we might as well start playing together again, and if we did it'd be silly to call it anything other than Bunnygrunt.

AE: What's your personal relationship like (Matt and Karen)?

BG: Why, what have you heard?

AE: Some people call your music "twee" among various other labels, describe your sound more accurately in order to interest people who haven't yet heard you.

BG: A melodic mess.

AE: How do you feel about All Guide Music naming you "The World's Cutest Band"?

BG: Back when it was closer to true, I found it somewhat belittling, like we were skating by on our fresh-faced good looks & our winning charms rather than our rock prowess. Hmmm. Maybe we were. Now I think it's hilarious.

AE: What is it like being a duo now w/ a high volume of rotating sit-ins?

BG: Luckily we have locked in our drummer, the fabulous Eric Von Damage, so we have no worries on that front. Each of our other occasional extra folks bring their own take to things which is nice. They're all good enough players with enough good ideas that we don't have to really tell them what to do. For Popfest we're bringing the triple ax attack. It'll be sweeeet.

AE: You guys have played Athens Popfest numerous times... what about the festival makes you want to return?

BG: We love the city, we love the bands, we love the community of the whole thing. I feel like Popfest takes things with the right amount of seriousness AND the right amount of "what the Hell, let's just wing it, everybody on stage!" chaos. I always feel like when I look around at one of the shows that I could have a really funny conversation about something stupid with anyone in the room.

Catch Bunnygrunt at the 40 Watt on Thursday, August 14th.

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