Cozy up to our favorite Seattle-based avant rockers, Minus The Bear, in this exclusive look at the inner workings of their new album, their summer tour and their very private, harrowing battle with video tennis addiction, as relaid by bassist Cory Murchy.
After spending the better part of 2006 on the road we somehow managed to carve out enough time to write fourteen little tunes and on February 1st we headed into the studio to lay it all down. With a month under our belts we’re about 2/3rds of the way done with tracking and I couldn’t be more excited. Once again we enlisted the help of our buddies Matt Bayles and Chris Common to help us out with the recording and production duties.
Before I left the studio last night I had Matt burn some rough mixes of a couple songs so I could see how it was sounding. As I listened to them on my bike ride home I started to get really excited about the record and how much it’s come along, even just in the last few days. Everyone’s parts are complimentary to the others as well as being damn right bitchin’ in their own right. Hearing everything come together has been a real treat, not to mention being able to rib Alex [Rose, sound engineer & keyboardist] a bit on his parts and performances. None of us can ever escape being run through the gauntlet of ‘mistakes’ Alex hears or thinks he hears, so it’s nice to return the favor. The only problem is that a lot of the time he’s run himself through the gauntlet so finely that, by the time we get to him, his stuff sounds pretty much right on. But we manage to find things to pick apart even if it’s just for a laugh. I think we’re all pretty tough on ourselves but it shows in the end product. Speaking of which, we head off to mix on March 17th and will release our new record on August 21st on our killer label, Suicide Squeeze Records.
More after the jump…
When we’re not in the control room we’re becoming well-versed in the world of Wii sports. The interactive gaming system has proven to be a dangerously addictive distraction from studio work. There is fear of Dave [Knudson, guitarist] throwing out his arm with the amount of virtual tennis he’s logging, and you should see Alex bowl with a sling on…
Since we can’t sit still too long we’ve also been in the first stages of planning a little spring tour in support of the release of Interpretaciones Del Oso, the remix companion to Menos El Oso which came out on February 20th and has been getting love all over the place. It’s nice to hear that DJ’s are digging it. You can order it online from Suicide Squeeze or pick it up from your local record store.
[Or hear some clips on their MySpace page]
The tour looks like it’ll be around a month long, hitting some West Coast and Midwest spots we haven’t hit in a while. All I’ll say for now is that we’ve definitely got some surprises up our sleeves and it should prove to be yet another awesome tour. It all wraps up on May 27th at the Sasquatch Festival in the Gorge in eastern Washington.
In other exciting news I got a call from Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service) the other day inviting us to be a part of the Burn to Shine project. Turns out he was curating the Seattle volume of the film series produced by Brendan Canty (Fugazi) and filmmaker Christopher Green. No word on an exact release date but I believe it should be available sometime next fall. Check out trixiedvd.com for more info. It was a big honor to be included in the line-up (an awesome example of how strong and diverse Seattle’s music scene really is) and to be able to work with people who inspired me to play music in the first place. All in all the whole experience was awesome. So far 2007 is getting off to a busy start. Be well and keep an eye out for those tour dates to be posted sometime soon.
-Cory
