San Diego Reader

Alabama alt-folksinger A.A. Bondy has played San Diego less than a half dozen times since 2010, always at the Casbah, where he returns on August 3. His early band Verbena may have only breezed through town once, coincidentally enough at the Casbah’s original address, but when it was occupied by a bar called Velvet. That seems surprising, seeing as how bare-bones solo “this is just between you and me” folkies with homegrown stories to share have long been welcomed on our more intimate local stages, whose number were once legion. He has infiltrated the local airwaves via a number of songs that were heard on TV shows such as House, Bones, Shameless, One Tree Hill, and most recently AMC’s adaptation of the Preacher comic books.

As evidence of just how rural and folksy his tracks tend to be, his first solo album was recorded in a barn near his Catskill mountain home, a second was taped in Mississippi, and a third, released in 2011, earned comparisons to Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, even if it turned out to be his last release for the next eight years. He’s touring in support of his newest, Enderness, reportedly completed within 24 hours of the day he lost his house and all his belongings to a wildfire.