Bear Claw

Bear Claw to Dianogah: We’ll kick your ass.

I successfully baited the drummer of Chicago trio Bear Claw into making wild threats toward another Windy City guitarless trio. It didn’t take much. Just make a few comments related to their patsy – er, pastry band name, and just like that, verbal fisticuffs. He put Dianogah squarely in his crosshairs, and even took a jab at venerable rock guitar god Steve Vai.

OK, so I exaggerate. Scott Picco is a burly dude, but he saves his fiercest blows for his drum kit as he rhythmically drives the music of Bear Claw. Bear Claw as previously mentioned, has no guitarist. This shouldn’t be a big deal - after all, it’s 2005 people. We’ve come a long ways from “Johnny Be Good” and yet, sadly, not very far at all. Bands with no basses are still looked at askance – as a novelty act; melodically, as musical blackface. It’s still all about the guitar, Rich Fessler and Rob Raspolich are bassists in a guitarist’s world. That makes Bear Claw, like Dianogah, social pioneers, as they disregard the norms and shout “to hell” with our preconceived notions of what a rock band’s line up should look like. And they sound damn good doing it, too. Oonh, ungowa, bass powa.

Pen: Steve Brydges - Lens: Royce Deans

What's Bear Claw been up to lately?
Lately, we’ve been working on new ideas while doing a few shows locally in Chicago. We recently secured a new practice space and we are looking forward to really hunkering down and concentrating on writing new material.

Your music is rather rough-edged and tough. Wouldn't you agree that an actual bear claw, as in a claw of a bear, would be so much tougher than a pastry of the same name? Then why the donuty imagery on the website? Are you saying you're really a bunch of softies?
You found us out! No seriously, we just thought that it was a better way to go with when considering the name. That is a question we get asked all the time and I think people are looking for a real clever answer but we just like the idea of it for really no reason at all. The best reason I could give is that for some reason it made sense to us with our sound and us having two basses.

Dianogah is another band with the saYour line up consists of two bassists and a drummer. If you were forced to add a guitarist, who would it be?
Not to avoid the question but we just cannot see Bear Claw ever having a guitarist. It would ruin the whole dynamic of the band so I guess I would have to say no guitarist is good enough for Bear Claw! But seriously it just wouldn’t work with the sound and attitude of the band.

If you were forced to either add a guitarist or disband, what would you do?
Disband.

If your choices for guitarist were between Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, or Metal Church's Kurdt Vanderhoof, who would it be, and why?
The only one I’m familiar with is Steve Vai and that would be one horrific train wreck if he came to jam with us.

me line up configuration as Bear Claw. How badly could Bear Claw kick Dianogah’s ass in a bass fight?
Well one of our bass guitars has an aluminum neck so I think we‚d have an unfair advantage, but either way we would pummel them without mercy! We get compared and or mentioned in the same breath with Dianogah all the time and it always seems funny to me because we sound absolutely nothing alike. In fact, I personally am a fan of what they do, but there are obviously differences. It just seems funny to me how we get compared so often. I mean you don’t see bands only having two guitars getting compared to one another all the time.

Good point. When the band came together, was the idea to have no guitar and two basses? How did it come about?
The original concept was Rich’s brainchild. He started off as a bass player and had switched over to guitar for our old band Hello Operator. He always had ideas for two bass lines in several songs and we never really acted on the idea. When Hello Operator disbanded we felt it was a great time to try the idea out. We had to make some major tone adjustments and figure out exactly what we wanted to do with the two basses, but once we found the right combination we never looked back. Rich always says that he wanted to prove that you don’t need a damn guitar, anyway.

He seems bitter about it. Is a dual-bass band with no guitarist limited in what it can write, musically, in terms of melody? If so, how does a band like yours work through or around such a limitation?
I don’t feel that it is a limitation in anyway for a couple of reasons. First, it has not been done as much so that automatically opens the door to new and original ideas. I also think if you listed to the album we prove that we are a very melodic band at points but at the same time we are much more rhythmically driven. Second, I feel that when you take things away it can force you to do more with less. An example I use is that with me playing drums, sometimes I’ll take away half of my kit or more and have like a hi-hat, snare, kick, and say a floor tom and then just start coming up with beats. I’ve come up with some of my most favorite beats this way. It forces me to do more with less and I end up coming up with something really different. I also like having all my pieces just the same, but my point is that sometimes less is more.

Does Bear Claw concern itself more with tonality than melody? Why or why not?
It depends on the song. Sometimes we are all about tone and textures in a song. Then other songs we are much more about the melody and interplay between the basses. Tone is a big part of what we are though, but it’s not the only thing.

Tell me about your drum kit. That thing is sick.
Well, when we first got together to start Bear Claw I had a standard four-piece DW kit with you average sized toms. It is a great kit, but I realized after the first practice that it was not going to work. I needed something more powerful and attack driven to stand up to the wall of sound coming out of the these two full stack bass amps pointed at me. I decided to go with a Ludwig Vistalite kit and I found the biggest one I could. A Vistalite kit is unique in that the shells are made of a plastic material or Lucite, to be exact. This results in a very loud, attack heavy sound. The bass drum is 26 inches in diameter by 14 inches deep. I also have a rack tom, which is 14 wide by 10 inches deep, a floor tom that is 16 inches by 16 inches, and a second floor tom that is 18 inches wide by 16 inches deep. I also opted to go with the loudest, most beefy snare drum I could. I got a Volcano snare made by a small company in Wheeling Illinois by the name of Bison Drums. It is a very unique drum in that it is 14 inches wide at the top and it slopes out to 15 inches on the bottom giving it a slight conical shape. It is also 7 inches deep and is an inch thick. The rim on the top is also quite thick and is made of a magnesium-zinc alloy. The end resultant is a very loud, very thick, snare drum.

This is a very wide drum set and I actually play it completely different that I would a standard kit. I basically sit back and open up my shoulder base all the way and swing much wider than I would normally.

When you’re ready to record, who will be at the controls? Albini? If you had to consider someone else, who would it be?
We’ll be doing the second album with Albini at Electrical Audio. This time werre planning on using both Studio B and well as A so I think it will sound a bit different from the first record. The reason we want to go with Steve is that after doing the first record with him, we feel it really gets what were trying to do. It was a great experience working with him on the first record and this time we’ll be even more comfortable and prepared to work with him again. That are other studio’s I’ve been interested in such as Great Western down in Tolono, IL, but we’d be hard pressed to find another engineer that would fit better than Steve for our sound.