Minus The Bear

Not to take anything away from the hardships Minus The Bear has faced in their five-year career as an independent band, but taking the summers and winters off from touring to relax at home has to be nice. The band has more than given back, through both their rigorous touring this past spring with Thursday on the Shirts for a Cure tour (benefiting cancer research) and their heavy tour schedule coming up this fall (joining forces with Music For America, a non-profit voter registration organization). Not a band to resist enjoying the fruits of their labor, but also not one known to overindulge, Minus The Bear makes the term “working rock band” actually work. The Seattle-based group of vocalist/guitarist Jake Snider, guitarist David Knudson, bassist Cory Murchy, drummer Erin Tate and new keyboardist Alex Rose has developed enough extensive in-studio experience (particularly when working with former member/producer Matt Bayles) to demo and produce all their material and make it sound decidedly their own. They’ve also toured heavily enough to have lived out the humorous anecdotes of their early records (2002’s Highly Refined Pirates, 2004’s “They Make Beer Commercials Like This” EP) and move on to the more meticulous math rock arrangements and serious songwriting of last year’s Menos El Oso. Between barbeques, beaches and brainstorming band practices, frontman Jake Snider got down to business with Recoil about the additions made to Minus The Bear’s sound and what it’s like coming out of summer hibernation.

What was it like headlining the Suicide Squeeze Tenth Anniversary show this past July? Jake Snider: It was fun. It was really great to see all the bands that [Suicide Squeeze founder] David [Dickenson] had worked with over the last ten years. All the bands were willing to get on a plane and come out and play, so it was a hell of a lot of fun, besides playing the show or being involved in that capacity because of all the friends from the tour that were there. It was at a great venue in Seattle (Neumo’s) so it’s always fun to play there. Anything to help support Suicide Squeeze and whatnot.

There’s a remix album of your most recent disc, Menos El Oso in the works. How did that come about? How involved are all of you in the making of that? JS: We had our song [“The Game Needed Me”] remixed [by Dalek] for the Suicide Squeeze Ten-Year Anniversary compilation, and it turned out really cool, so we thought it might be cool to see if we could get a bunch of people involved and remix the whole thing and possibly put it out. David Dickenson was into doing it, so we basically started brainstorming who to get. It’s almost done; just a couple more songs to get back in.

How did you decide on who would be on your list of remixers? You’re touring this fall with electronic artist P.O.S., who is one of the contributors. Who else do you have on there? JS: Yeah, the first remix is from IQU and they’re a local Seattle band and we’re pretty tight with those folks. J. Clark from Pretty Girls Make Graves is going to do a song. Our driver from our first trip to Japan is going to remix a song. A bunch of people that we know. Some of them are people who do remixes or make electronic music in general, like P.O.S. or Alias and a few of the other people, but a lot of them are just regular dudes. It’s just how different people interpret the songs, which is kind of cool.

Do you think your fans will be surprised to see you allowing your music to be taken in such different directions? JS: I don’t know. Hopefully they’ll be surprised with the results and enjoy that. People have very mixed feelings about remix records, like a lot of people just don’t dig them. They’re never really intended to be like an album, they’re more of just an idea that would be cool.

In some ways you’ve prepared listeners for taking on different directions with how much of a departure Menos El Oso was from your previous records. They’ll likely approach the remixes as another concept for you to explore. JS: Yeah, totally. They’re very open-minded, it seems. Hopefully we can throw a bunch of crazy stuff at them without [them] getting too fazed.

Did the changes you made in your sound with Menos El Oso feel risky at the time, not knowing if people would be able or willing to follow along with what you were trying? JS: I don’t know if we really thought about it that way. Anything that we found interesting was usually something that was new to us too. I think how all the five of us play music, we’re not generally looking to write the same song a bunch of times over. Hopefully the next record will be different, but it’s hard to say.

In terms of what you’ve written so far, do you feel like you’ve tried just as many new things with the new songs as you have before? JS: I think so, I hope so. We’re writing even more collaboratively than we usually do, so it’s going to be different all the way around. After having two years playing the same songs I think there are some changes that will happen so that we don’t get bored over the next two years.

With your last album you recorded the instrumental tracks first and went in and recorded the vocals after that was completed. Was that something you wanted to do going into that record so that you could focus on music and lyrics separately? JS: That’s just usually how it happens. I don’t really write lyrics or try out lyrics at practice very often. We usually have the gear so we can demo things pretty well. We just finished doing some demos for the next record and I’m writing lyrics in the same way. Now that the music’s done I can start working on fitting in lyrics to it. It’s kind of a weird way to do it, maybe.

One advantage you have is that you all can control more of the technical aspects of the recording as well. JS: Yeah, it’s easy. I see it as a big advantage. Although Matt’s no longer in the band, he’s still involved and we’re going to work with him in the future on recording and whatnot. So definitely having that resource around is definitely a huge advantage. Our new keyboard player Alex [Rose] is also a pretty good recording engineer and knows his way around a studio pretty well, too. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to be able to do all that on your own and see the finished product easier.

You guys seem to retain a lot of creative control over most every aspect of your music. Was it the band’s idea to cast your dads in the new video for “Pachuca Sunrise?” JS: For a long time we were trying to think of cool promo photo ideas, not just your typical thing, and I suggested a while ago that we just have our dads be in the promo and not have us be in the promo. And then once we got working on the video, we had this one concept and somebody found a way to shoehorn our dads into the program just to see what would happen. It turned out really, really cool. That’s, like, my favorite footage from that.

How did that whole video shoot go? JS: It was awesome. It was their first time meeting each other, like Aaron’s dad had to fly in from Minneapolis. But yeah, they totally got along and had a great time and they thought it was fun that their kids were doing this crazy thing for the video. It was pretty funny.

So they totally support what you guys are doing? JS: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. My folks have been supportive for sure and it seems like everybody else’s parents are too. There’s not much they can do about it now. [Laughs.]