Haley Bonar

Who is Haley Bonar?

Haley Bonar is a US alternative country singer-songwriter who hails from South Dakota. She has lived in Duluth and St. Paul, Minnesota. In July 2009, she moved to Portland, Oregon, where she spent a year writing songs for her newest album Golder, which was released April 19, 2011. She plays mostly acoustic guitar and a rhodes or wurlitzer organ, either solo or with her Minneapolis-based band, including Jeremy Ylvisaker and Mike Lewis of Andrew Bird fame, as well as long time band mates Luke Anderson on drums and Jacob Hanson on guitar.

In 2003 Bonar's album . . . The Size of Planets received favorable reviews in the Minneapolis press. The album spawned the single "Am I Allowed," which was played on college radio stations. Bonar was 20 years old when the album was released, and did a number of tours with Duluth band Low upon its release. She also toured with the likes of Mason Jennings, Richard Buckner, Rivulets and Mary Lou Lord, who was also, for a time, Bonar's manager.

In 2006 she released the album Lure the Fox, originally on Mary Ellen Recordings, whose owner, Mary Lewis, decided to help Bonar pay to record the album at Pachyderm Studio after reading a Star Tribune article about her in 2005. Dave King of Happy Apple and The Bad Plus plays drums, Chris Morrissey plays bass, and the album features Low's Alan Sparhawk on the track "Give it Up." Also on that track is David Frankenfeld, Bonar's former drummer, who played on The Size of Planets. One year after Lure the Fox was recorded, Bonar signed with local label Afternoon Records, who then released the album nationally in October 2006.