On balance, the Ponys have had a pretty good year. The LA label In the Red released their debut album, Laced With Romance, in February, and since then critical praise has been pouring in–garage-rock zines like Horizontal Action, countercultural tastemakers like Arthur and Pitchfork, and mainstream music publications like NME and Rolling Stone have all joined the chorus. Even Maxim and Entertainment Weekly have taken note of the band. Abetted by this buzz, the Ponys’ album has sold around 10,000 copies, more than respectable for an indie release.
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Adams joined the Ponys in late 2002, when the original trio–Gummere and his girlfriend, bassist Melissa Elias, and drummer Nathan Jerde–had been gigging for more than a year. A veteran of twee drum-machine-driven duo Happy Supply, he had a fondness for left-field English art pop that alchemically transformed the group’s primitive, anguished garage noise. The Ponys signed to In the Red shortly after Adams came aboard. “I became a lot more committed to it just to see how far it could go,” he says. “I’d never been in a band that was being paid attention to.”
The group didn’t have much trouble winning over crowds on tour, but all the traveling took a toll. Everyone in the band was used to weekend jaunts around the midwest, but nobody had put in any serious time on the road. That changed when the CD came out. “The tours haven’t been any longer than three and a half weeks at a time, but as soon as we get home we’re there long enough to do laundry and then we’re back out again,” says Gummere. In April all the Ponys’ guitars–including Adams’s prized Rickenbacker 12-string–were stolen out of their van after a gig in Brooklyn. (Some of the gear was found three weeks later, being auctioned on eBay by a pawnshop, but police didn’t recover it till last month.)
The group made a west-coast trip in October and another short tour in November, returning to Chicago on Thanksgiving. A few days later Adams announced he was leaving. The Ponys had a month off before the New Year’s Eve gig and three more before the release of the new record, and Adams figured he’d minimize the damage if he broke the news as soon as possible. “The way I was feeling about touring anyway, I didn’t want to flake out right before the record came out or before we were supposed to go to Europe or something,” he says.
“I don’t have a band right now out of the gate, but I’ve been playing with people, just messing around. So we’ll see what happens.”
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