‘’We probably wrote some bad poems back in the day trying to be a melancholic teenager...’’ - An interview with Bear’s Den
A few weeks ago we got to hang out with the duo Bear’s Den as they were in Spain preparing for their set at Dcode Fest, the festival that took place in Madrid on the 10th of September.
September Issues: Okay, so you’re playing Dcode Festival tomorrow. How does that feel?
Bear’s Den: Really excited. It’s our first ever show in Madrid. We had only played in Bilbao (BBK Festival) before.
September Issues: How do you feel about the line-up, are there any bands you like?
Bear’s Den: We are most excited about Jimmy Eat World. There’s still a part of me that loves that stuff, so I’m pretty excited about that.
SI: So apart from Dcode, what other festivals have you played this summer?
BD: We’ve done Glastonbury, Pink Pop, quite a few of them. This is the last one of the festival season.
SI: So you’ve played the main festivals, the big ones, but are there still any on your bucketlist?
BD: Yeah, we would love to play the End of the Road Festival, we’ve always wanted to go there. It’s in England and it always has a very cool line-up. There’s this festival called Green Man Festival in the UK that we’d love to do it again. Also loads in America, we haven’t done Coachella either.
SI: So as a band you’ve grown very fast, you’ve gone from very small venues to selling out your whole american tour. How does it feel going from playing in a pub to playing pretty big venues?
BD: It’s amazing. We feel very lucky, it sort of seems quite quick, I guess it still is but we’ve been a band for five years so it’s kind of been a process. At the beginning we played to like 2 people, then 15 people, and it grew like that. It’s never been like we woke up one day, it’s been pretty gradually.
SI: When we saw you a few months ago, what was really interesting is that you played the last song without amps, without mics, without anything. Do you sometimes miss being in a small venue with very little people and the intimacy of it?
BD: We do, we always try to do things like that when we can, even if the venue might seem too big for it, but nowadays it’s gonna become more difficult. We’ll still try to keep the intimacy even if we’re playing a bigger venue, that’s definitely an element that we want to keep. We’ll have to figure that out.
SI: We want to ask you guys about your early start in music, so what music did you listen to when you were growing up?
BD: Jimmy Eat World *laughs* We always liked Blink-182, New Found Glory, like that was the first type of music that we really fell in love with. You know, not probably the coolest. Also, loads of 60s and 70s music. Not because of our parents, we went looking for it ourselves.
SI: Do you remember the first record that you went out of your way to purchase for yourself?
BD:
Kevin: Appetite for Destruction by Guns N’ Roses.
Andrew: I can’t really remember but I guess it was a New Found Glory album, the one with Dressed to Kill on it.
SI: How did you guys get into music? Did you guys start by playing an instrument, if so when was that?
BD:
Kevin: I started playing piano when I was a kid, guitar when I was sixteen
Andrew: Also guitar when I was sixteen. I’d probably be better if I had started earlier. I also started out of boredom. You know when you have to revise for exams, I had had a guitar for over a year but I learned how to actually play it when I was procrastinating.
SI: Do you think that the music that you listened to has influenced your actual music that you produce now, or did you find inspiration along the way?
BD: I think you can’t help being influenced by it, even if it’s not the style you’re looking after, it’s always in the back part of your brain.
SI: So, you started playing music, we imagine at the beginning it was covers, but when you started writing your own music, we’ve noticed that lyrics are a big part of your music, people really connect with them. Does that have anything to do with an interest in literature on your part, do you enjoy writing besides music?
BD: Yeah, we really care about words, and we want all of our lyrics to mean something to us. I think that if you’re trying to perform and make music that’s going to mean something to someone else, it’s good if it means something to you before that. We both try to make sure that is something that we think about. Books, movies, they all serve as inspiration.
Acoustic version of Emeralds for Mondo Sonoro
SI: Did you enjoy writing prose or another style of writing before getting into songwriting, or was it always music from the beginning?
BD: We’ve never really written prose or anything. We probably wrote some bad poems back in the day trying to be a melancholic teenager, emo years, and all that energy in that era, but for me it was learning guitar and wanting to write and be able to perform my own music instead of someone else’s.
SI: To finish it all, we wanted to ask you if you had any recommendations of any new bands, up and coming artists or just what you’ve been enjoying listening to lately.
BD: Whitney are very good. We saw them live this summer and they’re amazing. Seramic is really great as well. There’s so much good music right at this moment.
Judith www.twitter.com/jdtth
Just your average twenty year old pizza lover, somewhere in between Madrid and Mallorca. Loves indie, pop, punk, books, minimalism and anything related to cats. Inés van B. www.inestakespix.tumblr.com
Editor in Chief
Video: Bear’s Den for Mondo Tv / Mondo Sonoro
