Down the Rabbit Hole with Greg Bond

By Dakota Parks for Inweekly

Greg Bond is no stranger to falling down. What matters, he says, is what happens next.

For more than a decade, Bond has been a familiar face on Pensacola’s music scene, playing gigs around town with the kind of songs that linger somewhere between heartbreak and hope. A classically trained vocalist turned solo-acoustic singer-songwriter, Bond blends elements of alt-country, folk-rock, contemporary blues and soul.

Now, he’s turning his attention toward his latest project: “Bold,” an album that’s been years in the making.

Bond’s musical journey began in high school, when his parents bought him his first guitar. But music was already woven into his life in other ways. He grew up around gospel and opera, and an uncle who ran an opera company in New York City introduced him to the world of classical music. Bond was fascinated by what the human voice could do and eventually pursued formal vocal training himself.

“I was just in awe of what opera singers could do and how they could manipulate their voice, which is essentially just a muscle,” he says. “Listening to opera singers is kind of like listening to colors.”

That eclectic upbringing never really left him. Among his influences, Bond cites everyone from Motown, blues and soul artists to country, folk-rock and even heavy metal bands like Black Flag and Anthrax. When it comes to singer-songwriters, though, he points to Tom Waits, Elliott Smith and Cat Power as key influences.

“Music is really a calling. It’s the most natural or second-nature thing that I am compelled to do,” he says. “It’s this kind of primitive thing within me that I must create.”

That impulse has produced a catalog of songs Bond has spent years writing, testing and refining around Pensacola. His process is decidedly old school. He writes songs out by hand on pen and paper, then takes them into the world, playing them live and letting performances shape what eventually makes it onto a record.

When he’s writing, Bond says, whatever he is feeling tends to find its way onto the page.

“When I’m writing lyrics out, you can get that aggression and that really succinct and very potent emotion out on paper, because that’s just where I am,” Bond says. “It’s pretty much just me, just different facets of my emotions that show up in the songs.”

Those emotions have often leaned toward loneliness and heartache. Bond’s uncle and brother both died in 2020, a period of loss that continues to influence his work.

“It’s very interesting how these life events stay with you,” Bond says. “I’ve written upbeat songs since then, but it’s still left its influence. Grief may get less difficult over time, but if you’re somebody who writes, creates art or does anything in the creative space, I think you still carry it with you. Those who listen to your music or watch what you create are still able to pick up some of it in your content.”

Then, last year, Bond faced a different kind of loss: the possibility that he might not be able to make music again.

In June 2025, Bond suffered an epidural abscess on his spinal cord, and that infection ate away at a vertebra, eventually requiring emergency surgery. After several weeks in the hospital, he had to relearn how to walk, and doctors weren’t sure how much mobility he would ultimately regain. For Bond, the prospect of losing his independence was frightening enough, but so was the possibility of losing his voice.

“There was a while there that I didn’t think I could sing again,” he recalls. “And that was just really, really hard. By the time I was released from the hospital and got home, reality hit, and I was talking to myself like, ‘Greg, I don’t think this is something we’re gonna shake off anytime soon, buddy.’ It took a long time to process what happened, but that delusional optimism kept me going.”

As he recovered, Bond had to work his way back to singing, rebuilding his lung capacity through breathing exercises and basic vocal training. The experience ultimately changed his relationship with music and changed the way he hears some of the songs he had written for “Bold.”

The songs have been “incubating” for roughly two years, Bond says, and he has been deliberate about how they come together. Rather than rushing them out, he has immersed himself in sound engineering and production, determined to give the nine tracks a cohesive sound.

“All of these songs, they’re all very autobiographical,” he says. “They all have some sort of a story or story arc.”

“‘Desert Rose’ [a song from ‘Bold’] has taken on a different connotation for me since the spinal injury,” Bond adds. “It’s this rare, beautiful plant that seems almost out of place in its environment, yet it’s still able to grow and survive. Not many flowers bloom in the desert. Its allure is its resilience—its ability to persevere in an extreme climate and still bloom and flourish,” Bond says.

The same could be said of his album as a whole.

“I think the throughline for these songs is perseverance,” he says. “I think that each of them sort of has their own nod to this idea that we can withstand anything if we just keep this fire inside our bellies to keep going.”

His biggest takeaway from the past year, he says, has been learning not to focus so much on what he lost, but on what he gained: a new perspective on time, gratitude for his physical abilities and a renewed appreciation for simply being here.

“I’m so grateful that I’m here today,” he says. “While I’m not able to go run a marathon or anything like that, it’s still a blessing that I’m able to be here today. I’m thankful for my family and loved ones, especially my mother and my partner Mark for helping me through it.”

Bond hopes to release “Bold” by the end of the year. And when the songs finally leave his hands and enter the world, he has no intention of telling listeners exactly what they should find in them.

“My songs are intended to allow people to find whatever they want to find in them,” he says. “As soon as I release the song, it’s theirs.”

For Bond, that’s what art is supposed to do: survive its creator, take on new meaning and become something bigger than the person who made it.

“As soon as you offer it up for people to feel how they feel about it, then it suddenly goes from the creative space to being this real thing that’s in the world that people can see, enjoy or have for themselves,” he says. “That’s what art is.”

Greg Bond

@gregbondmusic