(Editor’s Note: And now, the dramatic conclusion of my interview with ex-Nocturnal Bryan Dondero. -DB)

SD: Not to dredge up and “he said, she said” stuff, but I am curious as to how it all went down.
BD: To be fair to Grace, what happened between us is a personal thing;. But I also felt a sense of holding her accountable. And that’s where I’ve been struggling. Because someone says something, you don’t necessarily have the right to go spreading it around and throwing mud and trying to get vengeful. And that’s not my style.

The one thing that bothered me, and I still don’t know that I completely understand it . . . and these are her words, and the ones I feel justified in holding her accountable for, is that she said something along the lines of, “Bryan, you have so much integrity. You are integrity personified . . . and that scares the shit out of me. Because I feel like I might have lost mine.” Those are pretty much her words exactly. And I was like, “What? What the hell does that mean?”

But for what it’s worth . . . whatever. That’s for her to think about. I think I understand what in essence she meant by that. There’s one way just to take it at surface level. But there’s another way to take it as someone who has known me for five years to say something like that . . .

I don’t know that  she completely understood why she said it and what she meant by that. And I don’t know that I completely understand some of those things that she was saying. But that’s for her to decide.

SD: Do you feel you were forced out?
BD: It felt a little forced. There was pressure. Not pressure to quit, pressure to make a choice. Pressure to say, “This thing that you stood for is no longer going to be that. And I’m forcing you to choose whether or not you’re willing to accept what this is going to become.”

Dan Bolles is a culture coeditor at Seven Days. He joined the paper in 2007 as its music editor, covering Vermont's robust music, comedy and nightlife scenes for a decade before deciding he was too old to be going to the Monkey House on weeknights to see rock shows for a living. He became assistant arts editor in 2017 and culture coeditor in 2021. Bolles has received numerous local and national awards for his writing on Vermont arts, sports and the occasional celebrity canine murder mystery. He loves...

13 replies on “For the (Pete) Best? The Deep Cut, Part 2”

  1. SARA, thanks so much for your thoughts in response to my post. And same goes for everyone else, especially the epic lyric lifted from Danzig’s deep well of rock n’ roll articulation. I was ready to script something, but where do you go from the last post via CASEY?! Perhaps a Michael McDonald moment?

  2. As a great man named Danzig once sang in a little band called the Misfits: “Ooh baby, when you cry / Yoir face is momentary / You hide your looks behind these scars / In hybrid moments / Give me a moment.”

  3. and in five, ten years? oh wait a mintue,, time presently is momentary -just tweet me on that. oh, sorry, tooo quick. it is now past. The sexuality of Emmylou, joni, carly, mick, tom friggin petty, meatloaf, oh go on and on… is not that she (emmylou)is sixty or something. Beautiful, yes, but the music that lasts, returns, resounds like echo from a stone wall of integrity – your own self…your choice.

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