They’ve toured internationally and have recently finished a big Australia tour, and they’re now scheduled to perform at Melbourne’s new concert event A Weekend In The Gardens, which will come to life in March.
Drummer and vocalist Tim Hart is excited to play at A Weekend In The Gardens, since it’ll be one of the band’s first shows since they finished their Australia tour in December.
“I love playing outdoor events, especially where people are there for a specific reason,” Hart says. “It’s going to be great, it’s a nice time of year so it shouldn’t be hot, and I think there’ll be people on the grass with a couple of glasses of wine. Also, the boys are getting back together after a fairly long break, and when I say long, I mean a six-week break, which is long for us.”
Before their six-week break, Boy & Bear had an 11-week straight tour, jumping from their America dates straight into their Australia jaunt.
“We had a day off and then we were back on the road,” Hart says. “It was 11 weeks straight. To be honest I was pretty tired at the end of it but we love touring regionally in Australia; it was pretty fun.
“We had a few things going on; we had a gig at a local brewery in Sydney called the Akasha Brewing Company and we were giving all the money away to charity supporting regional funds. It was a bit different for us and it was an exciting tour with some great places, some places we’d never been before, most we’d had and it was nice getting out and reaching people who support our music.”
Boy & Bear began with three of its members going to university, while playing in separate bands and supporting each other at shows. They all clicked instantly while writing songs together and then united to become what they are today. Hart reminisces over the band’s musical journey and how it’s developed over the years.
“We make music more characteristic of us as people,” he says. “We grew up listening to music that was shown to us by our parents and then you go through the years of teenage angst and I think we probably reverted to the music we were brought up with.
“I don’t know if it was some sort of nostalgia or there was better songwriting or whatever it was, but you know that sort of ‘60s-‘70s pop music, and that’s what we started writing. We just enjoy writing songs, stories and narratives that have good melodies and harmonies.
“We’re friends, we’re passionate, and we’re music lovers,” Hart said, when asked to describe Boy & Bear as a band. “I think that’s what’s held us together all this time, you know, in February it will be eight years of being a band.
“A lot of bands break up because they’re searching for I don’t know what, maybe they’re searching for fame or money and I think that’s one of the great things about our band, there’s not a whole lot of any of those things, we’re satisfied with what we have but at the same time we’re hungry to create and to write albums. We love playing shows and that’s what we do as a band.”
Hart discusses his future goals with Boy & Bear, which are to write the best possible albums they can.
“I think there are no guarantees in life, but especially in the creative industry, you’re trying to produce your best work all the time,” he says. “Because you know there’s no guarantee that people would want to listen to our music.
“We’re still really hungry to write great albums and I’m not saying that we have achieved that yet but that’s what we’re going to be aiming to do in the next couple of years.”
By Christine Tsimbis
