`Bonsai' Leader Expands Repertoire

Onstage, with his acoustic guitar and a streak of self-deprecatory patter, Andrew Ratshin seems familiar.

The singer/songwriter recalls an almost an archetypical high school figure: He's the wise-mouthed kid on the fringes of the popular crowd, the one with the wit that runs circles around the bullies, the one whose comic stunts are indulged by hip teachers while sterner pedants respond with trips to the principal's office.

Ratshin, known to audiences as Electric Bonsai Band (more on that later), swears it isn't true.

"I was just the little quiet music geek," Ratshin says.

His father was an opera singer, his sister plays flute and piano and Ratshin studied classical violin for 15 years. But somewhere in the soul of that high school music geek slumbered a natural entertainer.

After moving to Seattle in 1981, Ratshin formed the Uncle Bonsai Band with two fellow graduates of Bennington College in Vermont. With offbeat songs like "Cheerleaders on Drugs," "Penis Envy" and "Boys Want Sex in the Morning," all written by Ratshin, Uncle Bonsai earned a devoted following around the country.

Uncle Bonsai broke up in 1989, but Ratshin has kept its memory alive. Never having performed under his own name, when he launched into a solo career he decided to clue former Bonsai fans to his identity by calling himself Electric Bonsai Band. It's not electric, it's not a band - it's Ratshin on acoustic guitar.

Saturday at 8 p.m., Ratshin will perform at the Museum of History and Industry to mark the release of his second album as Electric Bonsai Band, "But I'm Happy Now." (Tickets are $12 at the door, $10 in advance at Elliott Bay Books, Bailey Coy Books and the Rosewood Guitar.)

Compared by past reviewers to Gilbert and Sullivan and Tom Lerher, Ratshin in "But I'm Happy Now" demonstrates anew his talent for writing clever, often funny, lyrics.

But, as on his first Electric Bonsai Band album, listeners expecting only novelty songs like "Penis Envy" will be surprised. Ratshin sings about loneliness, he sings about a man and a woman who have become strangers in their marriage, he sings about the loss of exuberance that comes with age.

Not that Ratshin has started turning out nothing but woebegone folk tunes - he also sings about the trials of puberty and really bad days, and his live performances include plenty of straight-ahead silly songs. But his songs, particularly as they are recorded, represent the merging of a comic's gift for irony with subjects that touch on pathos. It's an effective combination.

In "I Am My Dad," for example, Ratshin reflects that no matter how hard we try to distinguish ourselves, we inevitably become more like our parents as we age. Ratshin sings: "The belts get bigger/As does the waist/I never figured on being this vast/Look in the mirror/That's not my face/It's happened so hard and fast/And I, I, I/I am my dad."

For the album, Ratshin included backup vocalists and full band instrumentation, but his vocals and guitar dominate.

In addition to performing as Electric Bonsai Band, Ratshin writes for and performs with the Mel Cooleys, a six-voice Seattle group that recently recorded songs for a live album to be released on Ratshin's label, Yellow Tail Records.

Yellow Tail also releases Electric Bonsai Band albums, some Uncle Bonsai material and the debut recording by Ratshin's wife, classical guitarist Hilary Field. Field's album, "Music of Spain and Latin America," was recently awarded an honorable mention for Classical Album of the Year by the National Association of Independent Recorders.

"She went from being Andrew's wife, Mrs. Bonsai, to me being Mr. Field," Ratshin says. "And it's great."