“There are a few things to it, and some of it involves chance,” he says, “The fact is, we happened to be playing music that became popular right at the time that we hit our stride. There was no deliberate strategy to it, we liked what we liked, but it was almost like what we were doing became cool at the right time. So we benefitted from Fleet Foxes and we benefitted from Mumford & Sons, and that was kind of fortuitous. The other thing is just hard work. You have to put in the time and put in your own money and make the sacrifices.”
From the outset, Boy & Bear have been passionate about their music and practical about their business. They reinvested whatever money they made into the band, using profits from gigs and album sales to fund overseas tours and recording, which means Jon was still scraping together money for a beer at the pub when his band was at the top of the charts.
“You have to be careful not to be crying poor as a musician,” he laughs, “It seems a bit silly, I guess, butyou have to make a decision, as an Aussie band. You can do you best to make as big a deal of yourself as possible and just keep your money, but if you have any ambition to have a lasting career it makes sense to reinvest that money, and you become like a small business owner. That’s the life we live.”
Boy & Bear have taken a careful approach from the very beginning, which is one of the reasons they waited so long to release their debut album. Another band might have capitilised sooner on the success of the EP, and that was certainly what their record label expected, but the band tookover a year to return to the studio.
“Whatever style of music you play, you really have to work on your quality control as an artist,” Jon explains, “One of the things that Dave (Hosking) is really about is if you’ve only got one good song, then spend your money making that one good song sound amazing. If you get two, then go with two or three, but don’t just make an EP or an album for the sake of it, just drip feed the material that is worth being out there.
“As a band, if all that people have heard is one good song, then you’re in a position to do something, whereas if people have heard an EP that has one good song and four average songs, people will ask questions. If all you’ve delivered is something great, they’re going to be waiting to see what comes next.”
The resulting record, Moonfire, has successfully moved the band away from the now-familiar tropes of ’70s folk, but still remains true to the Boy & Bear sound. If anything, in fact, it captures the energy of the band’s live show far better than their first recording did. It is this energy, along with a host of new material, which the band will bring to their massive November tour. With sell-out shows at Australian venues that are usually reserved for international acts, including two nights at both The Palace in Melbourne and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, Boy & Bear are on the verge of yet another great leap forward.
“We’ve been around long enough so that people may have seen us four or five times now, and then there are the fans who come to every single show, so we want to create a show where people who have never seen us can see something worthwhile, but also where people who have seen the band as many as eight or ten times can feel like its was worth opening their wallet and coming out. We take that pretty seriously. You can’t lose sight of the fact that our livelihood depends on people being willing to do that, so there is a sense of pressure there. It starts to get slightly nerve wracking when you consider the venues we’re playing, but we’re all ready to give 100% on stage,” Jon says solemnly,”We’re really working our arses off to deliver a good show.”
