Minus the Bear
Interview with Cory Murchy
Words: Becca Nelson and Maynard Del Mar
Photo: Jake Snider

Appearing:
October 14, 2007
Club Firestone, Orlando

October 15, 2007
The Culture Room, Ft. Lauderdale

October 16, 2007
The Moon, Tallahassee

Indie rockers need to take vacations, too. Before setting off on a major 4-month tour covering two countries, Cory Murchy, bassist for Seattle band Minus the Bear, is doing just that. We caught up with him just as he arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to hang out with friends (including Santos Montano from the influential post-hardcore band Old Man Gloom), eat chimichangas, frito pies, and “as much chili as possible,” and watch the burning of Zozobra, an annual festival in Santa Fe featuring the live burning of a life-sized marionette. In between meals, Murch (as he’s known to friends and fam) chatted us up about writing MtB’s new album, Planet of Ice, upcoming tour plans and the band’s burning desire for lasers during their live show.

REAX:  Minus the Bear has toured significantly in Florida over the past several years, a rarity for indie bands. Obviously, Minus the Bear must like to play in our state… what are your thoughts on the music scene down here?
Cory Murchy:  When we first started coming through, years and years ago, it was always good. Maybe it’s because bands don’t come through very often…

REAX:  You get people that are sort of hungry for it.
CM:  Yep.  But it’s always been a fun time down here… and we always get in lots of trouble. I’ve definitely had to pick someone up at the Dade County Jail Before.

REAX:  Oh really?! Do tell!
CM:  Well, I’ll keep it anonymous, but basically, but I had to bail out a fellow member because of some issues… I think drunk and disorderly is what they like to call it. Miami police don’t really like back talk, apparently.

REAX:  They aren’t known for their patience.
CM:  No. But, I felt like we really did Florida proud that night.

REAX:  Tell me about the music scene in Seattle. Has it changed much since you started?
CM:  It changes constantly, obviously, with so many bands forming and then moving away, but it’s also pretty incestuous. A lot of people in different bands have at one time played with one another, and so it’s a really great creative community. Bands in Seattle tour a lot, they need to get out of the Northwest, so they tour together.

REAX:  What are some of your favorite Northwest bands?
CM:  These Arms are Snakes are friends. We’ve played with them, and shared members… they are a brother band for sure. Visqueen is another local band that is great. When we see you in Florida, we’ll be with a couple of bands from up here: the Tiny Vipers are a great band coming with us.

REAX:  Let’s talk about the new album. This is the first leg of the first tour in support of “Planet of Ice”.
CM:  Yep, this is the first time we’ll be playing the new material live. We’re stoked about it.

REAX:  The sound on the record is distinctive Minus the Bear: very textured and complexly layered. One difference, though, is a significant pop influence. Is that something intentional?
CM:  For this album we were listening to a lot of guitar-driven classic rock… a lot of Yes, Pink Floyd, Peter Frampton. But more importantly, I think this record is different because it was five guys, all in a room, all writing together.  After being on tour for so long, we’re really learning how we play together. Going into the studio this time, we had a much better sense of the product we wanted to produce.  We were much more confident.

REAX:  What’s your writing process like? Is it collaborative between all the members?
CM:  Yes, especially for this record. We all came up with ideas and brought them to the group. For instance, say, Dave (Knudson), our guitarist, would come up with a riff at home and bring it to the practice space for all of us to work on together. Plus, this time we had a keyboard player around during the entire writing process who was actually a musician. Matt (Bayles), our old keyboard player, was mostly a producer and an engineer, so he would contribute his part much later, after we had laid tracks down. It was a much different experience to have a keyboard player contributing the entire time.

For me, it was a more personal experience. In all honestly, Menos el Oso, came about at a time when I really didn’t want to be writing music. My mother had just died, and I was trying to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do. So I was gone for a lot of that, and this time it was really nice to be around for the creative process, and really be a part of it.

REAX:  Tell us more about the remix album, “Interpretaciones del Oso”, you released this year. How did that project start, and why?
CM:  It started as an extra track for a Japanese bonus release. We had a friend from another Seattle band do a remix for one of the songs, and it turned out really well. We were actually surprised how much we liked it. We started looking into doing official remixes, and began getting contacted by artists and producers interested in working with us. The project just sort of snowballed from there. We sent the tracks out to a bunch of people without much direction: we just let them do whatever they wanted. It was really cool to be able to hear other interpretations of the songs, and it taught us more about our own songwriting. The process of putting together a remix album created a weird sort of mirror where the image we got back wasn’t the one we started with.

REAX:  So, let’s talk about upcoming tour plans. Anything special planned for the stage show?
CM:  Well… no, not really. It’s a pretty straightforward stage show.

REAX:  So, no Daft Punk-esque lasers or anything like that?
CM:  No, but we really want a laser show! For the CD Release Party up in Seattle we had a laser show at the Laser Dome, where they do like Laser Floyd and Laser Zep, and it was awesome! We’d really like to do a laser show whenever we can.

REAX:  But for now people should just imagine lasers at the shows?
CM:  Yeah, they should just close their eyes really tight and pretend!

www.minusthebear.com