Talking With T-Bone

Don’t be fooled by the claim that many bear species have become endangered. You only need to drop down to your local record store to find a couple lurking in the aisles. I’ve seen a Grizzly Bear and a Panda Bear at JB Hi Fi, both in the same day.

And then there is Boy and Bear, an indie folk group from Sydney with dazzling harmonies that won them the Triple J Homebake competition in October 2009.

Boy and Bear don’t have a lot of fur. But they do have a distinctive textured and melodic sound.

I met with drummer Tim Hart on Crown Street, Surrey Hills, to talk music, Mexicans and main influences.

Crown Street is definitely the natural habitat of indie musos. Skinny hipsters stroll the footpath or sit in cafés, sipping organic poached pear juice and dragging on cigarettes. But Tim Hart doesn’t smoke. He does however, “drink way too much coffee”.

I ask Tim about why the band decided on the name Boy and Bear. He explains that they went through a lot of different choices.

“We hadn’t heard the Grizzly Bear album but Boy and Bear was the one name that we didn’t go, ‘oh, its shit’.”

He will not disclose other potential titles for the act. “I don’t want to say what they were. It’s kind of embarrassing. There was one that turned out to be a reference to cocaine, which we didn’t realise at the time.”

Tim agrees that there are a lot of bands named after animals going around at the moment.

“The last time we were driving from Brisbane to Melbourne we tried to go through all the animal names. Everything from The Black Crows to Tame Impala. Maybe it’s just something in the psyche or subconscious of music culture at the moment. The listeners are probably wanting more of an organic thing these days, I think it’s a reaction to pop music.”

Tim doesn’t seem to be a fan of pop music. He dislikes the clinical sound of commercial radio like Nova and 2Day FM. But he is reluctant to hack into these stations just because they are “mainstream”.

“I won’t really say too much about that. What I will say is that we feel privileged to be a Triple J band, we love what they do with grassroots music. We hope our relationship with them is a long term one. As far as Nova is concerned, I don’t listen to them but I think they’re realising what Triple J does and they’re moving towards that in playing Mumford and Sons and the Philly Jays (Philadelphia Grand Jury). It’s definitely changing. But Boy and Bear on Nova… I don’t really like the sound of that. I love FBI. In my car it goes FBI, then North Shore FM, the Sunday night slot with Tom Parker, and then Triple J.”

Boy and Bear have been described as a cross between Fleet Foxes and Australian band, The Shins. However, as Tim points out, any new indie band is going to be compared to others in genre.

“I’d be lying if I said Fleet Foxes and The Shins weren’t influences of ours. I love the Fleet Foxes record and I love all The Shins records. But our influences probably go a little deeper, back to 1970s folk. The harmonies were something that a few of us were brought up on and they seem to be pretty fashionable right now. We love doing the harmonies and it works well having three singers in the band. The comparisons are good if they helps people figure out what direction we’re heading in. We just finished recording our EP and I think you’ll be surprised at the direction it’s taking.”

He strongly suggests that I take a listen to The Acorns, an “amazing” Canadian band. “They do jungle drums and harmonies. For me, it’s the first time I’ve played drums in a band so I have to draw influence from somewhere.”

Listening to Boy and Bear, you would be hard pressed to find any influences from Pearl Jam, but Tim informs me that his first album was Ten.

“Maybe I didn’t buy it, maybe I stole it out of my brothers room. Then there was Alice and Chains. And always Simon and Garfunkel, a style of music that my Dad got me into. I listened to Nirvana, but not as much as everyone else did. It seemed like there was a bit of a Pearl Jam versus Nirvana thing. After that Ben Harper and a bit of Jack Johnson. Then I got a little poppy and got into John Mayer.”

He isn’t embarrassed to like John Mayer, even though he doesn’t exactly fit the “indie cool” image.

“I think he’s wonderful. I’ve seen him live a lot of times and I think he’s a great performer. But my biggest influences were definitely folk. Its cliché to say Dylan, but he was a big part of it, as well as Sufjan Stevens.”

The band’s MySpace page lists three other members; Dave Hosking, Killian Gavin and Jake Tarasenko. However, Tim’s brother, John Hart, also plays keyboard with the band.

Before Boy and Bear was formed, each member was producing a different kind of sound.

“Dave was pretty pop. Killian was quite indie, so was John.”

None of the members feature in the video clip for “Mexican Mavis”. It was made by Steven Lattuca and Paul Andrew Rhodes and is composed of home video footage of two brothers. They are seen chasing pigeons, holding puppies, dancing like crazy and generally having childish fun. However, the Super 8 film gives the clip a nostalgic tone and the skillful editing creates an inexplicable sense of melancholy. At one point, the screen is split into four frames of one child dancing exuberantly. The contrast of his energy with the sad lyrics of the song creates a sense of loss.

There is definitely a story behind the video, but Tim is not giving much away.

“Well, I don’t know if its true or not. Something went down, I don’t actually know what happened. I don’t want to get in trouble for saying this. But possibly, allegedly, one of the brothers ended up killing the other one. Jake would be the one to ask about that story, he’d be happy to fill you in. The idea was the have the video kind of light but at the same time have some ambiguity to it. Its actually quite a morbid song. You almost miss that when you hear it until you focus on the lyrics. The video and the song are kind of juxtaposed.”

Although it’s a beautiful song, the title “Mexican Mavis” is fairly random.

“The riff at the start sounds quite Mexican,” Tim explains, “We liked the way it sounded. Mavis is a songbird… at the time we were looking at band names too, there was an Australian band called the Mavis’.”

When I saw Boy and Bear at the Monavale Hotel last Friday night, there was a very enthusiastic punter cheering on the band.

“Yeah that guy,” Tim recalls, “He was off his chops. He was at the Melbourne show at the Corner Hotel. But he’s a lovely guy and he loves music, and when you talk to him he’s really knowledgeable about music. When you get him one on one, he can hold a really decent conversation. He’ll say, ‘dude I love the harmonies, and the lyrics…’. I really like the guy. I mean, travelling around the country, and getting off your dial. I like those kind of people. They make it fun, they make it interesting. Its nice to see the same faces in Melbourne and Sydney.”

Even though Boy and Bear have fans following them around the country, Tim claims that they haven’t had many bizarre or crazy moments typical of the “rock n’ roll” experience.

“We’re not so rock n’ roll. I think the most bizarre thing that’s happened so far, which is not going to impress you terribly, is that when we turned up at Homebake, we thought we’d play to two people because we were in the morning, but when we walked out the whole place was packed. We didn’t expect it. It was one of our best shows.”

The Australian music scene is small when placed in an international context. This is why it’s important to support local acts so that they can develop and eventually spread their talents overseas.

“There are a lot of good bands going around at the moment. You go down to Melbourne and they’re fighting for the licensing laws to be relaxed so it’s easier to hold gigs. It’s not punters who are going to gigs and getting pissed and fighting, its all the club bouncers. But there are great venues all over Sydney, like Oxford Arts and Spectrum.

“Its so important to support Australian music. We’re so stoked that we get to go on tour with these great acts, like Angus and Julia Stone. There will be one more tour with someone else, but I can’t really say who it is.”

He won’t share who that artist will be, so I ask him which song he would cover on Triple J’s Like A Version if he had the chance.

“If I had my choice I would do a song called Heart and Bones by Paul Simon… OR I would do a Peter Gabriel song. I like singing Jolene by Ray La Montagne in the shower. If you ever hear me at a gig doing a sound check, I’ll always be singing that song.”

How would the other band member’s describe Tim in one word?

“T-Bone. That’s what they call me.”

“T-Bone? That could make a good header for the article.”

So the choice is there. Either catch one of the band members singing in the shower or get along to a gig. Judging by what I’ve seen (and heard), these bears are going extinct anytime soon.