"It's really important for us to prove we're not some garage-rock band," says the Von Bondies' singer-guitarist Jason Stollsteimer. "We sound like a huge, moody mess onstage, so we tried to capture that in the studio."

The Detroit-based quartet tracked seventeen songs for possible inclusion on Pawn Shoppe Heart, the major-label follow-up to their Jack White-produced debut, Lack of Communication. Twelve songs made the cut for the album, due March 9th, on Sire/Warner Bros.

For this disc, the band worked with producer and former Talking Heads keyboardist Jerry Harrison at the Plant in Sausalito, California. The shag-carpeted studio once hosted Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac and a best-forgotten Eddie Murphy-Rick James collaboration. "We like to go into the room with the grand piano and play 'Party All the Time,'" says Stollsteimer. "It's like, 'Oh man, this is probably the piano where they got all fucked up on coke.'"

That cover won't make the album, but an unlisted tribute to Stollsteimer's two favorite singers will. "I did a perfect blend of Screamin' Jay Hawkins doing Otis Redding's 'Try a Little Tenderness,'" he says. "It's hilarious."

Much less hilarious are bittersweet new numbers like the hook-filled "C'mon C'mon," featuring lyrics like "When my teeth bite down, I can see the blood of a thousand men who have come and gone," and "Mairead," a theatrical epic that pays tribute to a notorious British groupie.

The song includes thinly veiled allusions to Mairead's conquests, including lines such as, "It's your oasis, it's your stroke with a pen, it's your hive of friends, is this the end?" Not surprisingly, it's Stollsteimer's new bride's least favorite song.

"It basically sounds like I'm in love with Mairead, but I'm being sarcastic," he says. "It's a super-duper dramatic, depressing love song. But it's actually a shot at her. But my wife said, 'It doesn't sound like you don't like her.'"

The album's impending release has recently been eclipsed in the press by reports of Stollsteimer's violent encounter with the White Stripes' Jack White in a Detroit club this past December. "There's no new evidence," says Stollsteimer. "I got attacked. That's the end of it."

White, meanwhile, has pleaded not guilty to the charge of aggravated assault. He's scheduled to stand trial on March 9th, the same date, coincidentally, as Pawn Shoppe Heart's release. Stollsteimer remains confident the album will shift the focus back on the music.

"To us, it's like, we put out a great album, but it's overshadowed by this," he says, "but it won't be. As soon as we go on tour and people see us live and have a chance to hear the new songs, it's going to be forgotten -- not 100 percent -- because something like that never goes away. But we're big kids -- we can deal with it."

ROBERT CHERRY
(January 20, 2004)