On December 7, 2007, the Ponys played at the Primavera Club festival in Barcelona, in front of a crowd that guitarist and front man Jered Gummere and his wife, bassist Melissa Elias, figure was about 500 strong. They’d had the kind of year that most bands can only dream about. They’d taken four American tours with A-list indie bands like Spoon, Deerhunter, and the Black Lips, plus another full tour in Europe and a short jaunt to London. Their third album (and debut for Matador), Turn the Lights Out, had dropped in March, and the song “Double Vision” had appeared on the soundtrack to Knocked Up, one of the biggest hits of that summer’s movie season. By the band’s estimate, the record’s sold 16,000-20,000 copies.
The answer may come as something of a letdown to the Guitar Center flunkies for whom “making it big” is the highest possible human aspiration. The Ponys say they got off the merry-go-round because they’d been starved of the joy and satisfaction of songwriting—the part of being in a band that’s the most fun for them. In the spirit of the garage-punk scene from which they came, they put self-expression ahead of careerism and the hurry-up-and-wait grind of constant touring that comes with it.
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During their hiatus, the Ponys stayed close to home. Case has been spending more time with his wife Amy and their son Asher, who’s about to turn four. Gummere and Elias, who celebrated their three-year anniversary on October 21, bought a house on the northwest side. And everybody went back to a job of one sort or another: Gummere does woodworking for Mode Carpentry, Case tends bar at Nightwood, and Elias is a freelance producer and stylist for photo shoots. Jerde has been freelancing too, mostly as a screen printer, and working on his own art—he does mixed-media drawings, where he’s fond of using Post-It notes, ballpoint pens, and correction fluid.
“Dan the Fan better be in attendance,” he adds, referring to scene fixture Dan Urban, who can be seen pogoing joyously at three or four Chicago rock shows in any given week. “We’re giving you a warning now.”
“I definitely want to do something in the studio,” Gummere says. “But I want it to sound raw and live without sounding like we went to a studio to make it sound like we recorded it in our attic.”
