MusicVita Interview with Boy & Bear

Far from their home in an office on Savile Row I encountered a group of 5 Australian musicians. Any woman’s bliss. However, I wasn’t just in that place at that time out of sheer coincidence. I had a job to do. And how difficult it was.......

Firstly, welcome to England. Have you guys been here before? As a band or individually?
(All) Yes. We were here in March/April supporting Laura Marling.

So you haven’t been together long. How did it happen?
(Tim) Well, we all played in bands, supporting each other. Dave had a solo project going on. Killian and Jake were playing together, I came on board around March last year and we became a band then. John came on board (John’s my brother), he was playing in the same band as me. We started playing and it just made more sense for us to be a band.

Do you all write music as well?
(Tim) In a way. Dave usually brings the idea and then we all just chip in a bit.

Do you find that you tend to write the parts that you play yourselves? So you bring to it the instruments that you play?
(Tim) Yeah. Definitely. Which I think brings a bit more ownership. Everyones open for everyone to help write their part. Jake definitely is. (Jake quickly disagrees).

Has anyone told you that you sound similar to anyone else?
(All) Yeah, absolutely. (laughs)
Who have you got?
(John) Well, where do you want to begin? (more laughs) We’ll leave that question for another day, shall we? (more laughs). (Dave) I think probably Fleet Foxes. We’re getting Mumford & Sons a lot. We’ve had a few other ones, who else have we had. (Tim) We’ve had Florence & The Machine. (Killian) Wow!

I would say a bit of Bon Iver, Iron & Wine and even a little bit of Fleetwood Mac.
(Killian) Cool. That would be legit. Everyone else I just don’t agree with. I don’t see Mumford but I can see those.

OK good, I didn’t want to offend, I didn’t know if I should say that.
No it’s fine, it’s sort of an in joke.

OK, so your EP is coming out, ‘With Emperor Antarctica. Any reason for that name?
(Killian) Yeah, we’ll leave that story for Jake...(Jake) It’s not particularly exciting. We used to rehearse in a place in sydney, and it was pretty cheap. And one day we were discussing the band and the future in the waiting room and I opened up a magazine and this photo fell out and it was a guy sitting with an emperor penguin, a real photo, and on the back it said ’With Emperor Antarctica’ and we took that photo with us on all the tour we did of australia. We still take it.

So it’s like a good luck charm? It’s your mascot!
(Killian) Yeah. It’s just a really funny photo cos it’s all white snow and there’s this massive emperor penguin with this old guy, in a bright red jumpsuit, yellow gloves kneeling next to him. It was just really strange. (Dave) And they were exactly the same height too.

Wow cool! So you’ve already been touring quite a bit with Angus & Julia Stone, Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling. So are you a little nervous about this coming out or are you old timers now you’ve been doing it for a little while?
(Killian) It feels like that, but it isn’t that. We started touring, I think, the end of last year, really, full time. We haven’t really stopped, we’ve played a lot of shows in such a short period of time I feel like it’s a bit of both. (Tim) I guess we haven’t had enough time to really think about it, the fact that we’re playing a headline tour halfway across the world. I think it’s going to be good, I’d say more nervous but excited about it, see where things go. (Dave’s phone starts ringing - it plays The Temper Trap - he hangs up). (Jake) I think it’s too late to be really worrying about it.
Yeah, you can’t really back out now considering your tickets have gone on sale already.
Yeah, we’re sort of here now, we’re settling in a bit.

But then do you just see it as a normal gig, like “Oh we have a gig today”?
(Killian) Yeah, you get into autopilot mode. We were talking about it today, looking forward to going on the road again but I realised it’ll be day 1, show 1 and we’ll be in Belfast but I’ll still be like, it’s just another show. But then you think, no we’re in Belfast. That’s cool. (Tim) It’s still a sound check, it’s still a performance, it’s still a couple of bands supporting us. It’s going to be great.

How do you find travelling with 5 guys? A bit competitive sometimes?
(All) It’s tough! (Tim) Ah no, not competitive, it’s smelly.
Smelly? Do you have to share a room?
(laughs) (Killian) Yeah, we share beds. We share everything.

Oh that’s nice. Maybe I won’t put that bit in. You played at Splendour at the Grass festival. They had some amazing bands playing. How was it playing at a festival rather than at your own gig? Any different?
Tim) Yeah, very different. I guess we’re a small fish when it comes to the festivals as we’re quite new. But it was amazing.
And everyone loves checking out new bands at festivals.
(Killian) That’s true. It was the biggest crowd we’d played to before and it was good cos we got to catch up with Laura and her crew and the Mumford crew and some other bands we knew, so it was nice. A bit of a party atmosphere. It’s a different thing as well I think, festivals are a really high adrenaline kind of performance.
Well for you and for the crowd!
(Killian) Yeah that’s true as well but I guess when we do our own headline shows, we like something that’s intimate, and so try to make that. So it’s really polar opposites at times. But both are great. (Tim) You have to resist the temptation to change what you do and just do what you do.

Do you feel that when you have a bigger stage you fill it? Or do you still feel like you’d rather be on a small stage in a little pub somewhere?
(Dave) I love a big stage! For us they seem to have punctuated our career. You have to rise to the occasion or you just get tired. (John) And there’s five of us so a small stage can be pretty crowded.

I can imagine, do you feel like you bash each other around a bit?
(John) Yeah, or you end up standing on someone else and there’s no room and your elbows go somewhere. (Killian) And I have this guitar trick where I throw the guitar up in a big loop. (laughs)
That’s pretty amazing.
(Killian) With my foot up on the monitor. (more laughs)
That’s a bit rock and roll though isn’t it.
(more laughs)

So your EP launch is in London. Great. In the London Luminaire. Have you guys been there before?
Yeah it’s a nice place.

Did you pick that place yourselves?
No, an agent. (they talk amongst themselves discussing why Dave has never been). (John) We’re just discussing why some of us have been and some haven’t. Dave had a night in when we went to watch a gig. (Killian) One of our mates was releasing a small EP and we went along. It’s a nice little room.

So do you think it’s going to be the climax of your tour? Or do you think it’s going to a little sad cos you’ll think, it’s out now, you can just listen to it online.
(laughs) (Killian) That’s it. I think it’ll be good. Its nice because we’ll have all our friends from london come down. I think a show’s always different to a CD, obviously you know that, so every show’s going to be fun, it’s individual. (Tim) I’m looking forward to london, a lot. I think it’s going to be the biggest show of the tour I assume.

With mexican mavis you got the Triple J Unearthed title. That’s pretty cool. Turning point?
(Killian) Yeah, sort of the starting point really. Gave us a bit of a boost into the world of touring. Before that we were just a couple of kids in the living room, jamming.

What were you doing before that? Did you do gigs here there and everywhere?
(Killian) I wouldn’t say that, I think we had about six shows as a band before that. Literally we were a really new band. So that song was the first song we recorded and sent it to Triple J. They picked it up and it just sort of started, it hasn’t stopped yet. It’s been amazing.

Yeah I can imagine. Goodness. So you have a five track EP. What’s your repertoire? How many songs do you have?
(Tim) I suppose we have got about 12 or 13 songs. Maybe a few more now because we’re recording an album in February. (Killian) When we were supporting Angus & Julia we had a 6 or 7 song set and the slot was for 40, 45 minutes. And the first show we did we finished in 30 minutes and they told us we had to play for longer, so we said, let’s talk and spread out the time and when I’m tuning just take a drink of water, we’ve got all of those little things we do. We had to quickly learn a cover the next day before the next show. (Tim) It’s funny there’s a few bands and I remember going away from their show and people are going “man that was a great cover they did and I can’t remember anything else”. I just hope we don’t fall in the same category.

So I mentioned some of the bands I thought you sound similar to. Who are your influences?
There’s probably a lot. Everyone’s an influence. (Dave) You (to Killian) like The Beatles. (Killian) Ryan Adams, Fleet Foxes, Arcade Foxes. (John) I grew up to Simon and Garfunkel, that’s what our parents used to listen to so, not that you want to avoid it but you can’t really avoid that stuff in your childhood. (Tim) I love paul simon, I love peter gabriel. I love Sting even though I get chastised for it. (Jake) I like Enya. (laughs). (Killian) He’s not joking. (Jake) And some other weird, weirder things. I don’t fit in with these guys. (aww). (John) I think we’re all fans of Fleet Foxes though, and everyone’s OK with Arcade Fire.(Jake) I don’t like Arcade Fire. (John) OK Jake doesn’t like them. (Tim) I don’t like Arcade Fire. (Killian) So everyone’s there with Arcade Fire.

With this I turned off the recorder as the conversation continued to get more silly and raucous. After the quickest, most easy-going 15 minutes of my life concluded I bid the boys goodbye and left them to it.

Jake (Tarasenko - vox/bass)
Tim (Hart - drums/vox/guitar)
Dave (Hosking - lead vox/guitar)
Killian (Gavin - vox/guitar)
John (Hart - vox/keys/mandolin)

http://www.myspace.com/boyandbearmusic

- Simi Bhullar