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Boston Calling 2022 Homegrown Artist Profile: Born Without Bones

Photo Credit: Madison McKenna

Editor’s Note: In May 2013, Boston underwent a music revolution. Award-winning digital arts magazine Vanyaland and game-changing major-league music festival Boston Calling launched within 10 short days of each other, completely altering and elevating the landscape where music and culture intersect in a city that had previously gone relatively stale. In the near-decade since, the two entities have been a defining feature of our city, both for its residents and how it’s perceived everywhere else. In Spring 2022, Vanyaland and Boston Calling team up to showcase the homegrown bands and artists that help shape the most Boston lineup of Boston Calling ever. Boston Calling’s ’22 headliners — Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, The Strokes — and its solid undercard are well-known and established; but over the next few weeks, keep it locked as Vanyaland profiles the homegrown talent that decorates the lineup like never before. Nine years later, Vanyaland and Boston Calling continue to showcase Boston in new ways, and we have the sounds to prove it. 

Born Without Bones

Performing on Friday, May 27

What can fans expect from your set at Boston Calling?

“We’re a band that appeals to all types of age groups. The college and high school kid and also their mom or dad who’s waiting in the minivan outside to pick them up. We think that’s pretty cool. This is our first time playing Boston Calling. The festival has such an amazing vibe. We’re of course excited to play with the headliners and bigger acts but I think experiencing this with other local acts is something really special in itself. We feel like Peter McNeeley when he went up against Mike Tyson. We’re really happy to be here and we’re doing it for our mothers, our fathers, our grandparents, Snubby, and of course Milford. The experience of a lifetime minus getting knocked out, of course.” — Born Without Bones

Artist bio:

Born Without Bones is a band with its own path and a stubborn commitment to charting it. While rooted in the Massachusetts DIY punk scene, they’ve consistently pushed through to more interesting sonic terrain, meshing traces of the big guitars and even bigger hooks of ‘90s alternative with the storytelling and subdued tones of heartland singer/songwriters. Over more than a decade, Born Without Bones has established a body of work with an emphasis on pop hooks which sets them apart from most of their punk scene peers. 

Though the world may have been slow to catch on, the band has enjoyed a recent wave of interest as evidenced by several songs which, as if by their own will to be heard, racked up millions of plays on streaming services. “Stone,” off 2013 LP Baby, now has more than eight million plays on Spotify, the bulk of which came in the past year.

The band formed in 2010 as a solo project by singer and guitarist Scott Ayotte. After the release debut LP Say Hello, Jim Creighton from Massachusetts post-hardcore act Therefore I Am joined on bass. A few months later, Jonathan Brucato rounded out the lineup on guitar. The band self released their sophomore record Baby in 2013 and began touring the country in earnest. After a few years on the road the band released their third record, Young At The Bend, on their own imprint, Devil You Know Records. In 2021, they signed to Pure Noise Records and simultaneously released the Pictures Of The Sun EP, a collection of re-recorded and reimagined favorites from the band’s catalog like “Baby” and “Falling Asleep.”

Follow: @bornwithoutbones on Instagram

Listen: Born Without Bones on Spotify

Watch: Born Without Bones on YouTube