Music Everywhere
Monday 18 June @ 14:57:06 |
 
Bear Clan Music
by DWIGHT HOBBES
Matthew Laughing Bear Shipquist is a fascinating fella. I just get the heebie-jeebies hearing him refer to what he calls Bear Clan Music (something about that word, "clan," for some reason, doesn't do it for me). I can get past that long enough, though, to appreciate his being a throwback to the way old days when, for instance, The Grateful Dead would give Warner Bros. Records indigestion by making as much of The Dead's music free as they could. That included, along with sneaking bootleg albums to headshops, openly inviting fans to record Dead concerts. Yeah, there'd be an area by the stage where you could go, set up your tape recorder and have yourself one hell of a souvenir to take home at the end of the show. Bear has two discs in circulation, Bear-Essentials: Live Honey and Long Cold Winter, a slew of free mp3s you can download at the site "Bear On The Web" and, if you go to "Bear luvs ya baby" on the internet, you'll find the incarnations-Bear solo, Bear & The Eclectic Honey Band, Bear Clan Music Cooperative plus more free mp3s.
Given the above info, it won't come to you as a shock that Bear, who writes, arranges, sings and plays guitar and harp, has a freewheeling, laid-back feel to his music. And sometimes sounds more than little bit like Jerry Garcia (maybe a smidgen of Arlo Guthrie thrown in) with his vocals. I'll tell you this, though, his lyrics owe nothing to anyone. As in, "On the other side of midnight, on the morning side of love/ you don't know what's hit you, but it fits you like a glove." And, all things considered, he does have a rather original sound, owing in great part to some very inventive chord progressions, especially when he gets sentimental (the haunting instrumental "Water Is A Woman" off Long Cold Winter, for instance). And you really have to hear cuts from Bear-Essentials: Live Honey to believe what the combination of a plaintive vocal, some bluegrass styling and avant garde sax can do for you-whether you've been at the bong or not.
He's established himself pretty well through what he calls, "Bear networking with a diverse group of musicians to bring real music from the heart and straight to your soul." OK, so he waxes a bit flowery. So what? Last summer, Bear was selected from a pool of hundreds of regional artists to be one of the 25 songwriters who took part in the 2006 Highway 61 Folk Folks Festival Singer/Songwriter Contest. And he will return as the Emcee for-what else? -this year's Grateful Garcia Gathering, from Aug. 2 through 5, in Black River Falls, Wis. He'll also manage the Acoustic Stage at Feelgood Festival 2007, Aug. 10 through 12, and play his traditional Saturday and Sunday Morning wake-up sets.
So, how'd he get into it, playing, singing, writing and so forth? "I started on the violin when I was five," his bio reads. "Not that I can play the thing nowadays. I did piano lessons for some years but that really never fit either. Then [tried the] ukulele and that was closer, but I broke that over my little brother's head. In the third grade the guitar entered my life. I think I played that thing for two years before I could get anything resembling music coaxed out of it. Somehow I managed to get something happenin'. Started forming bands in junior high, spent the next ten years playing in bands I put together and writing songs. Spent most of the 90s out in Seattle and gigging in the Pacific NW."
The guy is one of these I-gig-therefore-I-am workhorses, endlessly playing all over the place. You can catch him next on June 29 doing a solo set, Acoustic Honey, at Father Hennepin Bluffs Park Bandshell, 100 6th Avenue SE, Mpls. It's free. Which, I'm sure, does not surprise you.
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