Bunny Claws: The Founding

I lost my job at Shasta’s eco-bar, which was totally find with me.  I didn’t need it anymore.  I had found Chai, and we were going to be the biggest band in the world.  We started working on material the first night we met.  In fact, we had pretty much cranked out at least an EP’s worth of tracks by the time the sun had come up.  Songwriting with Chai was easier than finding a Williamsburg brunch spot that served bottomless mimosas on Sundays.  Every chord he played, every lyric I spat—it was all gold. 

The morning after, Chai told me that he was friends with all of the people at Glosscoat Records, the label that started so many of my indie rock idols.  Over bottomless mimosas at the brunch spot on his corner, he told me that all we needed to do was record a quick demo, bring it over to the guys at Glosscoat, and we would probably be signed by the end of next week.  After we’d tied on a solid buzz, we went back up to his loft to work on more material.  By 8 AM Monday morning, we had finished our first album.

Over the course of the next week, we recorded.  We nailed every song on the first take, obviously.  While the CD was burning, we started brainstorming what to call ourselves.  We wrote down random words on little slips of paper, words like Quilt, Hammer, Elk, Nine, Void, and so on.  We each pulled one word out of the pile of papers, and vowed that whatever words were written there would be the name of our band.  I pulled CLAWS.  He pulled BUNNY.  We celebrated with cigarettes and two cans of 4 Loko he had been saving for a special occasion.

Bunny Claws: The Place

I never did make it to work that day.  Instead, Chai took me back to his loft in Bushwick.  He said he lived with seven other guys, but most of them would be at their start-ups.  We ascended three incredibly long flights of stairs, littered with crates of old copies of Paper Magazine, boxes with tangled wires sticking out of them, and, for some reason, more brooms than I had ever seen in one place.  “What’s with the brooms?” I asked.  He shrugged and told me that Astor, his ex-girlfriend, had been doing an installation about witchcraft for some shoebox gallery on Lorimer.  “It was supposed to be a comment on expectations and assumptions about modernity and post-post-post-feminism,” he said.  “Oh, I think I went to that show,” I said, smugly.  “My best friend Dahlia was in that show.”  Did I have a best friend named Dahlia? I found myself wondering as Chai slid open the monstrous, industrial door to his loft.

I gasped.  It was paradise.  Cables and wires stretched over almost every surface and sliced through the air, which he had to duck under several times.  A pile of old TVs and VCRs set up camp in the corner of the main room.  I commented about how I was looking for a little black & white, so that I could watch the classics like they were meant to be seen.  He smiled a little bit, which actually turned me off for a second.  What was I doing?  I had followed a strange boy back to his weird loft in Bushwick, for what?  Just as I was about to cut and run, he slid back the curtain the separated his section of the loft from the main room.  Inside, was the largest collection of Casio keyboards I had ever seen.  Chai swung back his bangs with swift turn of the head and said, “So, you wanna make some music?”

Bunny Claws: The Moment

So I was hurrying down Driggs, trying desperately to be only my usual twenty-five minutes late for work, when I heard it.  It was a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard before—a hollow, aching synth against a tinny drum loop.  I looked around for the source of the infectious sound, and there was Chai.  He was a lanky, baby-faced goon, staring intently at the black and whites of his miniature Casio keyboard, which was supported by an amazing DIY keyboard stand strapped to his torso.  I slowed my gait, and paused.  I knew what was happening.  He was the one. 

I stopped dead in front of him, tuning out all of the other city sounds that were trying to pollute my ears and prevent this moment from happening.  When Chai didn’t look up from his work to acknowledge that he now had an audience, I was only even more convinced that he was the one that I had been waiting for.  I cleared my throat to break through his intense concentration.  He didn’t look up at me.  I tried a different approach.  “Cool Casio,” I said, nonchalantly.  He didn’t look up.  “What are you running that thing on, D-cell’s?“  No response.  I pulled out my iPhone, checking to see how much time I had left before I went from normal-late to scathing-glance late.  For a moment, I thought that I should really get going, because I knew that when I got to work Shasta was going to passive-aggressively say, “Oh, you’re here,” or some other obnoxious catch-phrase.  I needed to make a move.  In one swift motion, I slammed my hands down on Chai’s keyboard, creating a dissonant anti-chord that sounded like the kind of dreck the Hipsters were making in 2004.  His eyes shot up and locked with mine.  “Whoa,” said Chai.  He didn’t know it at the time, but I did.  We were going to be huge.

Bunny Claws: The Beginning

This is it.  We’ve been struggling for so long, almost six months, I think, and we almost gave up so many times.  But that part of our lives is over!  We’ve hit the big time!  Soon, everyone will know the name BUNNY CLAWS, and everyone will be singing our new single.

Our history is completely blasé.  We started out just like everyone else.  I was living in my family’s rent controlled Williamsburg apartment, studying graphic design at Pratt (what else would I study?), and working part-time as a bartender at my friend Shasta’s eco-bar on Grand Avenue.  At night, I would hunker down over my MacBook, creating loops and samples, pausing only to check my Instagram and Tinder accounts. After all, I was an artist, and all my free time was spent in pursuit of my dream: becoming an indie superstar.

I was so broke, I could barely afford pate and prosecco.  I had sold so many items of clothing to Beacon’s I was practically wearing the same ripped leggings and pashmina every day.   I was embarrassed to be seen walking down Bedford, so I always took Driggs on my way to work.  In fact, if I had been more brave and faced the judgemental looks from the Hipsters on Bedford, I might never have met Chai…