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We Are All Mortal: A Q&A with Bear Colony
04/07/2008 If you put together creative minds wanting to entertain themselves occasionally you will stumble across something worth your time. Bear Colony ( MySpace) is worth your time. The band is a combination of friends who got together to flex their creative minds. Athens Exchange was lucky enough to pick the brain of Bear Colony in an e-mail interview. AE: Why did you create Bear Colony? BC: Bear Colony was created out of a quest to play music that was fun and challenged ourselves. I wanted to play music with so many of my friends whom I admired for such a long time and the idea of starting a "recording" project that we could do whenever we had the free time seemed like the perfect solution. So in between tours or working each person would come and go at there leisure and record or just hang and be a part of having a sense of a community with each other. AE: OK, sorry for this question, but your name is interesting. Why are you called Bear Colony? BC: Basically we were called Brothers + Sisters for the first year or so of this whole thing and we caught word from our friends in mewithoutyou that their new album was going to be called something similar. Also, there was already a band called "Brothers and Sisters" as well as a television show that was in the works at the time. So, we decided to make a change since the project had progressed from just something that we would hear alone to something that would actually be released and see the light of day. I use a lot of references in the songs to animals... "an elephant in the room" type of thing so we thought it would be neat to use an animal and also kind of sum up in a word how many people worked on the album. So we used Colony. I like the idea of Colony just because it reminds me of community a lot, a group of people working together for something. We have gotten asked recently if it is in reference to the gay community because they use the word "bear" to describe a certain type of guy and it's not related to that. Although I love that community. I think it is a great idea that fuses people together for good reasons. AE: Were you making music before your diagnosis with Chron’s disease? Will you continue to make music after this album? BC: I played in several bands here in Little Rock with friends. I have played music for as long as I could remember. I really think the Chron's misdiagnosis did a lot to open up my perspective on the world. What I mean by that is we are all mortal, we are all going to die, we all have choices that could enrich our lives. I just don't want a long list of what if's, I don't want to play it save all the time. I think it is important to have a plan, but I think it is equally as important to understand that plans don't always work out, and that the end of an adventure isn't as important as the "during." Yes, we definitely plan on continuing to make music. We have begun writing some new songs and testing them out on this tours we have been doing, but I think right now our plan is to finish out the year with as much touring as we possibly can do. AE: What is the purpose of Bear Colony’s album we came to die? BC: To celebrate life, death and everything in between. AE: Who are the members of the band? BC: Matthew Putman, Matthew Depper, Brooks Tipton, Kyle Smith, Stephen Tucker, Andy Haldeman, Dave Huff, Bryce Chambers, Adam Putman, Chase Pagan, Patrick Ryan, and Vince Griffin. AE: How would you classify Bear Colony’s music? BC: It's hard to say, I wouldn't really want to classify it. That would make writing the next record predetermined. I would like to think we just write honest music and whatever classifications you think work are cool with us. AE: How did you like the Caledonia Lounge? Are you going to come back through Athens? BC: The Caledonia Lounge was pretty awesome. Athens is a really historic place musically so it was great to play a show there. I definitely want to come back and next time I would really love it if our van stayed in proper working order. AE: What/Who are some of your influences? BC: I have been reading the book No Logo by Naomi Klein here lately and it is really inspiring. The Art of Daniel Davison is also doing a number on me too. I really like the fusion of collected items into his pieces and the dialogue they create to me. I really am influenced by a lot of things, art, books, music.... it all trickles down one way or another for me. My favorite quote, which is also from the book No Logo right now is "You might not see things yet on the surface, but underground, it's already on fire." I think that pretty much sums up a lot. AE: Which one of your songs is the most meaningful to you? BC: There is a new one called "Badblood" that I am really loving right now. AE: If you don’t mind me asking, how did the doctors discover that you didn’t have Chron’s disease? How did that change your outlook on life (both with the diagnosis and finding out you didn’t have it)? Did the doctors ever tell you what really happened? BC: Well, Basically the day after I was misdiagnosed I ran out of health insurance. So, I started reading up on different diets and other alternative options to treat myself. After a couple of months of this kind of thing the symptoms started to go away. I think my outlook is still the same as it was when I was misdiagnosed. I still try to live every day to the fullest and experience as much as I can. I have no expectations other than experience and it has been really great so far. So there it is: a small sliver of Bear Colony’s genius. Comments [post a comment]Comments are closed |
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