Booking
Sydney Hampton
Yellow Dress Booking
901.218.6243
[email protected]
Label
Red Wax Music
[email protected]
www.redwaxmusic.net
Kerry Hayes
Publicity/Media Relations
901.481.5104
[email protected]
Bio:
“It’s fresh approaches such as Giant Bear’s lush, cello-enhanced take on country-rock that’s keeping the Southern musical tradition alive while pushing it in new directions.†–Dave Paulson, All The Rage (Nashville, TN)
New directions are a big deal to Giant Bear, and the Memphis roots-rock band searches out new ones all the time. From the “New York Skyline†to the badlands of “Wyoming,†from the soulless haunts of modern-day “Nashville†to the cracked highways leading into “Las Vegas,†Giant Bear’s music is the soundtrack to a life of restless searching, with all of the unexpected surprises and twists that that implies.
Giant Bear is a five-person collective of multi-instrumentalists, singers, poets, and songwriters. Robert Humphreys (bass/guitar) and Jeff White (guitar/banjo) previously toured and recorded as part of the seminal Memphis three-piece Okraboy, while Mike Larrivee (guitar/mandolin/lap steel) and the classically-trained Jana Misener (cello/violin/keys) paid their dues in a number of Memphis bands, most recently the widely-hailed Ruffin Brown Band. Drummer Jeff Nuckolls, a veteran of Atlanta’s fertile music scene, joined the band in 2005 prior to the recording of their first album, “New American Wilderness.â€
Many months of subsequent touring cemented the band’s reputation as a fiery live act. In 2007, the group reconvened in the studio with a cadre of trusted producers, including Louis Meyers, Bill Ellis, Kat Sage, and Jennifer Lee, and friends like Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi All-Stars) and Rick Steff (Cat Power, Lucero) to record their self-titled follow-up album. “Giant Bear†was released in Summer 2007 on Red Wax Music and was hailed as "Excellent stuff... it’s the ’On The Road’ of Americana†by Bootleg Magazine and “Awesome… One of the Top 50 Albums of 2007†by Twangville.com. Glowing write-ups in Paste Magazine and Southeast Performer followed along with abundant nationwide touring.
"Just when you think Americana might get sucked dry by anemic rejects and coffee-house politesse, the vast synthesizing power of roots music--and the equally wide inspiration of punk--collide in Giant Bear." --Roy Kasten, Riverfront Times (St. Louis, MO)
Giant Bear’s music is always firmly rooted in the sound of the American South, but never confined by its conventions. Their songs are the work of five musicians who know how to deftly distill and put together an unexpected—and apparently unlimited—number of thoroughly country, rock, bluegrass, and folk elements. Devin Grant from the Charleston Post & Courier likened them to “Jackson Browne and the Drive-By Truckers holed up in a studio with a bottle of brown liquor†while the Cincinnati City Beat and Memphis Flyer memorably described them as “Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention reimagined as a modern-day pop powerhouse†and “a Southern-fried New Pornographers,†respectively. Fans of Gillian Welch, the Jayhawks, Carrie Rodriguez, Richmond Fontaine, and the Pogues , as well as seminal works like “Workingman’s Dead†and “Nashville Skyline,†will find much to admire in Giant Bear’s fearless experimentation and rule-breaking approach to their own myriad influences.
At the core of each Giant Bear album is a cast of lives whose adventures and misadventures are recounted with bracing detail and empathy. Their lyrics tell the stories of relationships broken down and left by the side of the road, of the intoxication of romances new and renewed against better judgment, and of the lessons learned by the searing scars of unrequited want. Just as each Giant Bear melody exposes its many influences by creatively blowing them apart, each written line reveals a tangle of roots, each composition could be a fairy tale written by Sam Shepard and Raymond Carver, cured by barroom smoke and told in conspiratorial whispers in parked cars late at night.
“Count up my money, it’s in the pocket of my coat. We passed a motel a mile or so back. We’ve been yelling, we’re tired, and we’re angry. Now it’s started raining on us both.†–Giant Bear, Las Vegas (Copyright 2007 Giant Bear)
Giant Bear is on tour throughout 2008. More information, photographs, press materials, and songs available at RedWaxMusic.net, GiantBearTN.com and myspace.com/GiantBear.
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