Through illness and uncertainty, Boy & Bear have persevered to deliver their brand new album 'Suck On Light'.
It's the album they thought they wouldn't be able to make with singer Dave Hosking struggling with a debilitating illness that affected his ability to write.
Boy & Bear's Jonathan Hart and Killian Gavin explain how they pulled themselves together against the odds to write and record 'Suck On Light'.
“Dave, our singer, hadn't been well for a few years and that kind of came to a head during the last recording sessions for our last record 'Limit Of Love' and through the touring cycle. That was pretty hard work,” Jonathan says.
“He was needing some time after that to get better, and then because we weren't sure what else to do the other four of us got together anyway and we started fleshing out ideas, trying to come up with ideas and keep being creative.”
Killian goes on to explain that Dave, at this point somewhat recovering, became interested in the new material when drummer Tim Hart sneakily played him what they'd been working on. “As he was having treatment and starting to have some improvement he got involved in the sessions again,” Killian says.
“Then we basically wrote for two years, which is an unusually long period of time for us but part of that was because Dave wasn't really in a position to write lyrics; melodies were starting to come, but lyrics took a bit longer.”
With Dave in a more stable position to contribute and a batch of new songs to record, it was time to pick up and leave for Nashville, where the real Boy & Bear magic is conjured. “Nashville is obviously the city of music, so it's a pretty big part of everything from country and rock & roll to all sorts of music,” Killian says.
“We were fortunate enough to record there when we did our first record and definitely got a taste for what's on offer. At the drop of a hat you can get any kind of musician you need – if you need some strings players or whatever you need you can get in contact with people and they're going to be brilliant.”
Nashville is also a central hub for producers and engineers who have an intimate knowledge of the rooms they work in and the types of sounds they're able to create. “For us that's always a big thing,” Killian says.
“We always want to work with someone who is really comfortable in that room, has worked in that room a lot and who knows how that sound is going to translate outside that studio because it's really going to effect how they go about capturing those sounds.”
