On a Friday night they gather, four guys who have been close friends and fellow musicians for more than 30 years. Three of them — Chris Arduser, Rob Fetters, Bob Nyswonger — grew up together in the Sylvania area, playing in bands when they were teenagers. The fourth member, Adrian Belew, has known the rest of them since the mid-'70s.
A self-described songwriting collective, the band members pretty much lay themselves bare in what Belew described as a “scary moment,” playing a song they want to offer the group and waiting for the other three guys to give it a thumbs up.
The rhythm section of Arduser and Nyswonger, both of whom have released solo discs in recent years, has been playing together, literally, since they were kids.
With all four members writing songs, three distinctive singers, Belew and Fetters' inventive guitar interplay — they often sound like one man with four-arms, so attuned is their playing — and a rhythm section that is spot-on all the time, there's a quirky energy to the music.
Lyrically the sentiment of many of the 11 songs reflects the delicate nature of life and the notion that just under the surface of a sunny day is a storm waiting to break loose. It's nothing obvious, but in the money-hungry “great ape” of Nyswonger's dark “Veneer,” the menace of “Keep Your Counsel” or especially on Fetters' glimpse at domestic trouble on “Normal,” the characters in the songs often seem to teeter on going up in flames at any moment.
Growing up in northern Kentucky near Cincinnati he fell in love with The Beatles. That's not surprising, of course. Like any rock musician of a certain age — Belew is 58 — his life was dramatically changed when he first heard their music.
In his various other musical pursuits, starting with playing with Zappa in the '70s, to Talking Heads, Bowie, and then as Robert Fripp's guitar foil in King Crimson, Belew has been out of the pop music mainstream. The Bears allow him to exercise his Beatles fixation.
The band recorded its first album in 1987. It was the middle of the MTV era when record deals were still a reality and other bands like XTC and Utopia were making similar power-pop, Beatlesesque music. The Bears received a fair amount of critical acclaim, but took a break when Belew gave his full attention to a solo career that's produced 15 albums and the rest of the band formed psychodots, and recorded a number of albums in that formation or as solo acts.
Nyswonger first met Arduser when the latter was an 11-year-old Sylvania-area kid who was just taking up the drums. Fetters met them a few years later and they ended up playing in garage bands before graduating to The Raisins and then psychodots.
Fetters, who does session work in Cincinnati, where Arduser and Nyswonger also live, is a fluid player, adept at slamming out Who-like power chords one minute and spinning out fascinating, intricate leads the next. Knowing his band mate has shared stages with Zappa, Bowie, David Byrne, and Robert Fripp could make a guy flinch, but Fetters is good enough — and confident enough — to see their musical relationship as a creative partnership.
For Belew, Fetters is the ideal musical partner because he treats the guitar as a support instrument for the song rather than an excuse to shred wildly.
“People are confused these days about guitar playing so much in general because they go for flash over substance. It's just become the way that it is. If you can dododododododo then you're great right, right?” Belew said.
The Bears' third album, “Car Caught Fire” was released in 2001 under dramatically different conditions, both in the music business and in the way it was recorded.
Six years ago all four members had generous studio access so they traded demo tapes back and forth and worked on songs in completely different places, overdubbing parts and then sending the tape — or digital file — to another person so their parts could be added. Fetters said a conscious decision was made with “Eureka!” to record it differently.
All four are “quick studies,” and after the Friday night sessions they'd get up Saturday morning and start working on the songs, recording two or three in a day together in Belew's studio. Then they'd part ways for a few months and get back together to do it again.
They're also marketing the disc almost exclusively through their Web site www.thebearsmusic.com, forgoing any efforts to sign record deals or mass distribute the disc in “bricks and mortar” stores. They've cut out middle men altogether, owning all the rights to the songs and not worrying about any sort of distribution deal, which means they can sell fewer copies and make just as much money because no one else gets a cut.
They're also on a mini-tour, hitting cities like Cincinnati, Chicago, and Pittsburgh where the band has always had a strong following. (No dates are scheduled in Toledo.) Once that is completed, Fetters said they may tour more or move on to other projects.
“Picking up with The Bears is just like if you have a friend that maybe you don't see for three or four years, but as soon as you see them you're back on the same page,” he said.
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