With a new album out and an Australian tour in the works for the end of the year, BOY & BEAR’s DAVE SYMES spoke to LOUISA BULLEY about their new release Harlequin Dream, touring with Mumford & Sons, and the Aussie festival scene.
So it’s been a little while since the release of Moonfire in 2011 to the release of your new album Harlequin Dream a month ago. What have you guys been up to in the interim?
Well I guess after Moonfire there was a lot of touring happening, and in a way that kind of went up to the end of last year, not that it was totally crazy the whole time, but yeah, up until the Falls festival at the end of last year in December/January. But during that time some demoing and songwriting was happening and we started recording towards the end of last year, and we finished that up in May this year, so basically some writing and recording for the first six months of the year, and now the album’s out and we’re starting back up again. So in some ways it hasn’t been that long between releases, only a couple of years, and the band hasn’t really stopped in that time. But we definitely haven’t toured Australia in a while and haven’t really done a lot of shows, so we’re getting ready for that again for the end of the year.
You’ve toured with some big names, supporting the likes of Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons on tours. Do you think touring with such big acts has enhanced the way you guys perform or write?
I think definitely, it’s a big part of gaining experience and getting some match practice so to speak. Every gig you do, whether it’s to two people or two thousand, I think performing is something that you do get better at and you learn different things every time you perform. So playing with people like Mumford & Sons and Laura, hopefully you get to form a close artistic relationship with these people, and you know, get to sort of learn from each other and discuss things and see how other people do their thing, and hopefully get inspiration from them as well. So I think it’s really cool.
I guess it’s a pretty stellar way to come into a reasonable amount of fame I guess, getting mentored into it.
Yeah, well I guess it’s that thing of like, the way the support slots work is that you’re relatively unknown from a popularity point of view, and they’re not really your audience, so you get a chance to do what you do in front of someone else’s audience. And if five people like what you do, then that’s a step forward you know, in gaining your own thing. So I think it’s an important thing, and I think it’s great for the audience. I think audiences love the opportunity to sometimes be able to experience new artists without having really known them before and ending up liking what they’re hearing.
Boy and Bear started out as a solo act, with just Dave Hosking, but has obviously now grown. Is the writing spread out across the band?
Yeah, it’s spread out. Dave Hosking is the main lyricist and vocalist, so most of the ideas at the start might come from something that he’s feeling which he brings to the rest of us, and we take it from there and craft in into the final result. So it’s definitely a band mentality when it comes to writing, and people also jump in with lyrics and things like that, but yeah the main singing and lyrical content from a starting point come from what Dave’s feeling comfortable with, and we take it from there, and add in other ideas as well. So yeah, I think with this band there’s a real band mentality, if someone’s got a strong idea then it might start off a song, and we start with that and then encourage other input. It often goes down many paths before the final incarnation, you know, we’ve got five very different opinions or ideas of what can happen and what sounds right and everyone hears different things, but I think the strength of the band is that everyone really encourages each other in their ideas and therefore we kind of try everything before we settle on something. So I think it’s quite a creative process.
Harlequin Dream has a really laidback feel, possibly moreso than Moonfire. Can you tell me about some of your influences musically on this album? I hear there was a bit of a kickback to some 70s sounds?
Yeah there is, I’d even say sort of 60s as well, that whole period of older kind of music that tells people stories, and from the instrumentation and the feel of it it’s got a tip of the hat to that sort of feel-good sound, you know anything from Fleetwood Mac sound to Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen, things like that, if you wanted to draw upon some names. I think it’s a sense of a live band playing together as well, so everything we did we all played live. Obviously there’s some overdubbed things on there, but we were all in the studio playing, getting takes, so it’s sort of got that feel-good quality and it feels like a live band when you listen back to it.
So maybe it’s laidback in that it’s not too processed and that we tried to give it that live feel. Yeah, there’s definitely a tip of the hat to that period, but yeah, not even necessarily intentionally, I think it was just the music that we were all as a collective listening to, we all love records from that time and it’s stuff that we all kind of grew up with, listening from our parents or you know, as part of our upbringing. So yeah, we all really love that idea of music that tells people stories and has that interaction of a live band.
There’s definitely some modern influences too, it’s not like that was all that we were listening to, we’re always keeping up with records that are coming out, like we all love the new album from The National that came out this year, and we got to see them live up at Splendour which was good, we all hung around an extra night to watch them, and it was a great gig which was cool.
Just with what you were saying about it being feel-good music, in this folk/pop genre with Mumford & Sons, Of Monsters and Men, Josh Pyke even, there’s this feel-goody anethemic chorus-making and stuff like that, but with a real melancholy undertone. Is that something that you recognise in your own music?
Yeah I think so, that whole happy-sad kind of thing, there’s a lot of that going on for sure. And I think that sort of comes through sometimes, you don’t even necessarily need to know exactly what a song’s about to still maybe feel the emotion of what it’s about, or the soul of what it’s about, and I think that translates across the board to some of those undertones as well. Maybe there’s a heavy theme but it’s being presented in a way that’s more digestible. And I don’t think the album’s incredibly feel-good all the way through, I think that there are still good moments just in the way that the band are playing, getting into that whole band mentality of getting on the bandstand and counting it off and just playing, and feeling like everyone’s together and whether you’re playing a sad thing or not, you’ve just got that and hopefully it feels good, onstage and off.
Yeah I guess it’s that communal kind of music and that live feel that bring the feel-good effect within this genre, because people want to sing along to it and have fun, even if the song isn’t necessarily a happy one.
Yeah I think that’s it for sure. There’s a real connection between the performance and the listener.
Earlier this year you played Splendour and later in the year you’re going to be playing Fat as Butter. What is it about the Aussie festival scene that keeps you guys coming back?
I think the special thing about the festival scene is that obviously you get to share the stage with lots of other acts, a lot of acts that you already know and maybe you look up to or just dig what they’re doing, and also there are a lot of acts that you’ve got no idea about, so you’ve got a chance to discover new music and I think that’s the same for the bands playing as well as for the audience at festivals. It’s sort of like worlds colliding, because otherwise you know, you’re up there playing and you’ve got people supporting or you might be supporting someone and apart from that you’re just in your own little world. So I think that’s what’s special about festivals. It’s a chance to also perform your music to a new audience, because obviously not every person at that festival is there to see you, they’re there to see someone else, and so you get more of a cross-over of audiences which can be really good sometimes and it makes for a different energy that you receive back from the audience.
I’ve had a pretty good listen to Harlequin Dream and I really enjoyed it. I love the epic sax in the title track, that really caught me. Do you have a particular favourite on the album?
It changes all the time, it changes from day to day. When we were recording, it was funny, say as we were recording and then putting the overdubs on and mixing and mastering, like everyone’s favourites were changing every time a new mix came in, you know “oh I like this one now”, haha. And I think that’s the same now, because we’ve been starting to play the songs live at Splendour and we’re starting to work on playing all of them live. And I think, what’s really strong for me anyway, I think it’s the same for the other guys, is that it’s really exciting to be playing new songs live, they’re translating from the record to onstage, and so I’m getting lots of favourites just from playing. There’s a nice little tune called ‘Real Estate’ on there, which has been really fun to play just the last couple of weeks, and ‘Three-Headed Woman’ actually was one that I think is still really growing, and I mean they’re all really growing, but ‘Three-Headed Woman’ at Splendour and these last little promo things that we’ve done has felt really great and it feels like it’s taken on a whole new life since we recorded it. And that’s always exciting, I think music’s alive the whole time, and you know ‘Southern Sun’ as it’s been recorded here compared to how it’s being played now has got a new energy. It’s not a new song or anything, but it definitely has a new energy and that’ll hopefully be the case in five years’ time, it’ll have a new energy again, because I think that songs are alive and depending on how you interact and play them they keep growing.
Absolutely, just depending on where you are as well when you’re playing it, your context is always going to come through.
Completely, it’s a personal thing. Yeah, you’re not just up there like a robot, and yeah you’re doing similar things each time, but you’re not necessarily doing things exactly the same. And that’s what’s good about a band I think, that interaction. If you are playing, you’re playing live and you’re communicating together, your song can kind of go any which way. Yeah I think that’s probably what I mean about a song still having a life after it’s been recorded.
So you’re heading into a tour in October, how are you feeling about getting back on the road and back up onstage after being on a bit of a hiatus from touring?
Yeah it’s feeling good actually, everyone’s really keen. It’s great now that the album’s actually out, but also it’s kind of been like, “oh look it’s actually out, oh shit we’re not touring for two months” you know? Everyone’s a little itchy to get happening, but if all things go to plan we’re all really keen to play a lot for this record. So hopefully the next sort of year and half will be a whole lot of gigs all over the place. So there’s definitely an excitement in the air to be getting out and doing another tour and doing Fat as Butter, and that’ll be sort of around the same time as we’re doing the tour. So it’s good to get a little bit away from our own, as we were saying before, to join up with a bunch of other bands, and that’ll be really nice to have that amongst the tour. I think it’s nice while you’re doing your own little thing to step away and be able to stop and listen to some of the other bands that are playing up there.
Just one last thing, I assume you like everyone else in the universe have seen Miley’s VMAs performance. Can we expect this calibre of performance from you guys at Fat as Butter?
Ahh, what can I say about Miley haha. I think Dave Hosking’s got a few dance moves he’s working on, so just keep an eye out. He’s been working out, so we’ll see what he’s got [laughs].
Boy & Bear perform at the Fat As Butter Festival on Saturday October 26, 2013, at Newcastle Foreshore.