Dave Hosking is a city boy, through and through, but you wouldn’t know it from the traditional twang of Boy & Bear.
Dave Hosking is a city boy, through and through, but you wouldn’t know it from the traditional twang of Boy & Bear.
“I think it has something to do with just music and the 21st Century,” Hosking muses. “It’s very rare now that you find music that’s 100% tied to its [setting]. We’re definitely not from the country, we’re from the city, writing songs that are influenced really strongly by people that lived in the country and that lived that life. I think the key for us is to try and bring in something contemporary and something of our own personality into that mix, which allows us to pull from those really traditional ideas and hopefully create something new with them.”
And that, friends, is how you can see someone playing a banjo on stage and a whole bunch of teenage girls swooning in the crowd – in 2010. Mixing elements of folk, traditional Americana and pop music is the key to success with Boy & Bear, who draw from influences as diverse as Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Crowded House, The Beatles and Neil Young.
“I guess like any kind of musician, I grew up listening to a lot of my parents’ stuff which was James Taylor and Neil Young, and I don’t know, just somewhere I guess at school I sort of made a decision,” he says, explaining how Boy & Bear came from a lifelong love of music, and really developed out of Hosking’s solo project. “I always had a vision of being a solo artist because that’s what I loved and wanted to do,” he recalls.
Boy & Bear, despite being a band, are driven by Hosking’s vision and the project is largely his. It was, however, only when the other band members joined him that the music really became what it is today. “It was then that the vision kind of changed a little bit to move forward, but it changed in a really good way,” he explains. “It was nice, actually, to change from being a solo artist to being a band. The weight gets lifted a bit.
“I never really loved the whole idea of having my specific name on a record that was the centrepoint of the project; it was really nice to put a broad name to it and be part of a group of musicians, all trying do the same thing.”
Moving from solo to band meant that Hosking had to open up to new ideas offered by his bandmates. “There’s a bit of an overlap of what we listen to but there’s also some strong differences,” he explains. “I think having those differences really opened my ears up a little bit to see what I liked and what everyone else thought sounded good. This definitely pushed me; I think we definitely push each other, which is a good space to be in.”
Once Boy & Bear became a band, it was a seemingly pretty fast path to success, with their trip to the UK in the first six months seeing them play with Laura Marling and hang out with Mumford And Sons in London. Their time spent with the Communion crowd and the folk scene in London has had quite an effect on them, but not as huge as one might think, Hosking assures me. “I think it has been a big part of, without sounding a bit lame, in the journey we’ve gone through, from writing song from our living room to being in London and playing songs with Laura.
“Hanging out with those guys, it’s been a big part of the process. In terms of writing and stuff, maybe there’s been little influences that, just through watching them, have sort of made their way through – but I think it’s more just watching the way they tour and watching the way they perform. The fact that these guys are professionals, I think that’s what we learnt.”
Humble, and surprising, really, considering the high quality of the live shows. But one forgets how new to the world Boy & Bear are, as a band, and how their time has mainly been spent doing extensive touring. So much so that there hasn’t really even been enough time to do much writing. “It’s been hard for me,” Hosking complains. “A lot of people write on the road; I tend not to… I tend to collect all of these ideas and when I come home they all just sort of make more sense, when I get home in my own space.
“That’s definitely been hard because you get home after being away for so long, and your family and friends and partners and stuff are there, you’re wanting to touch base because they’re really important, but at the same time too you only have two weeks or a week and you want to try and get some new songs for the set. That’s definitely been a challenge, but at the same time too, in the breaks that we’ve had, we went away and did some demos and recorded. That was really good and we collected a group of songs to work on, so we can use some new songs that come though. I’d definitely love more time just to jam, and to let these songs grow naturally, as opposed to feeling like we’ve got like a week before we go away again.”
The recording for the album is planned for December and January, which means the album itself is planned to come out some time in the first half of next year. For most Boy & Bear fans, it seems strange that it’s not out already. Hosking tells me that he’s been really interested in innovative time signatures lately. “I really love Arcade Fire, even Radiohead,” he says, happily. “It’s really interesting when you hear bands doing really simple melodies, simple progressions but when rhythm is really fresh and different, you don’t necessarily know it, and you just feel it.” Combining that with his unwavering love of pop melodies and distinctly folky influences, we’ll await this new LP with much anticipation.
BOY & BEAR finish off their sold out run of shows in Melbourne for their Blood To Gold tour this week at The East Brunswick Club this Saturday October 23 and Sunday October 24 – both of which are obviously sold out. If you missed out – head to The Karova Lounge (Ballarat) this Thursday October 21, or The National Hotel (Geelong) this Friday October 22. BOY & BEAR also play the Falls Festival in Lorne over new years. New single Blood To Gold – off their With Emperor Antarctica EP – is out now through Universal.
