By Tom Lanham
T
oday Garrett Borns might be the fop-
pish baroque-pop trendsetter who
records as simply Borns, with three
adventurous albums to his credit, includ-
ing the new Blue Madonna LP, his second
for Interscope. But there was a time not so
long ago when the Michigan native was at
the mercy of a pack of marauding masked
bandits after moving to Los Angeles. And
he could do nothing to stop them. Or, as he
laughingly recalls, “I ate what the raccoons
left for me. Which was, basically food they
didn’t like.”
It’s not a metaphor or some purple-
prosed exaggeration. The singer, 26, is talk-
ing about a real family of fearless, very
smart urban raccoons, who had a nightly
territory they prowled. And his treehouse
abode just happened to be in their dibs-
calling path. And when you live in such
arboreal seclusion, you reckon, this is the
price you have to pay for such a hippie-ish
lifestyle. Borns, however, maintains that it
was always worth the wildlife hassle. Just
outside of the city clamor, the hideaway –
which he’s long since departed -- was an
actual treehouse, cozy if not necessarily
warm, where he happily retreated to after
getting signed to compose his introductory
Interscope EP Candy quietly. “I don’t know
if I landed in that treehouse, or the tree-
house landed on me,” he notes. “But it was
a really fun place to get some writing done.
Until, of course, those raccoons happened.
But I think it’s important for anyone who’s
creating anything to have artistic distance.
And there are multiple ways of creating –
you can work with another person or a
group of people. Or, if you’re like me, you
can create a