Boy & Bear – The Only Name We Could Agree On

By Dan Hutton on December 17, 2015 in Arts

After the extraordinary success of their first two albums, Sydney rock-folksters Boy & Bear are back with their third album, ‘Limit of Love’. They’re currently gallivanting around Europe, but they’ll be back to dazzle local crowds in the New Year. We threw a few questions at drummer Tim Hart during the month…

Our earliest music memory is… listening to church music when I was a kid. It was when I first wanted to learn to play an instrument.

The idea for the name Boy & Bear… actually originated as the result of a band name generator search on the Internet. It was the only name we could agree on and we were on a deadline to decide, so this was it!

We’d like to think that our music is… a good representation of us as people and as musicians. It’s a reflection of the music our parents introduced us to as kids, and a reflection of the music we came to love whilst growing up.

Our new album, Limit of Love, could be described as… a series of diary entries from our last couple of years of touring. It’s a bit of a search for answers and also a discovery of identity.

Debuting at #1 on the ARIA charts again (second consecutive album to do so) is… really humbling. It’s definitely something we don’t take lightly and is something we feel very proud of and grateful for.

The most exciting thing about the local music scene in Australia is… that there are so many great bands, with great musical taste. It’s a smaller industry so you feel a certain closeness to other bands and artists, but all the great new music coming out also keeps you on your toes as a songwriter and performer.

Our biggest fan has got to be… Greg Weaver, our tour manager. He travels around with us, does the sound at all our shows and sings every word. He loves it and we love him.

There was this one time when we were starting out that… we all had to move home to our parents’ houses because we couldn’t afford to pay rent.

If we could have written any song, it would have been… ‘Slip Sliding Away’ by Paul Simon. Lyrically it’s just a beautiful melancholic song. It’s a great lesson in story telling.

One person I¹d still really like to record with is… Paul Simon or Peter Gabriel – both for different reasons. Paul Simon for his song-writing and vocal delivery; Peter Gabriel for his leftfield approach to live shows and his vision for albums as opposed to just singles.

If you ever come to see us live, you can expect… a fairly loud show and hopefully a fun one.

We never want to get to the point where… we have to compromise what we love to do, which is writing songs and playing them to people.

Our dream gig would be… headlining Glastonbury and having Crosby, Stills and Nash come on stage and sing harmonies with us.

Breakout Box: Boy & Bear will play the Hordern Pavilion on February 12. Tickets are available at www.ticketek.com.au.