Giant Bear

By Melinda Hanna

Photo by Kellen Kjera

"We were just lucky, I guess," says cellist Jana Misener of the band Giant Bear. The simple answer refers to how she and the band happened to meet up with one of the many guest musicians on their debut album, New American Wilderness, released in mid-August of this year. And while the Memphis band was blessed with good fortune, the funk-folky quintet also possessed the initiative and the inventiveness to put their luck to good use.

Comprised of five multi-instrumentalists, the band boasts a broad range of musical talent that they successfully fit nicely within the 12 songs of their disc.

"We've got four songwriters in the band and we all write songs and help out with arranging them," says Misener. "Sometimes we pair off and write a song two at a time, and other times there have been songs that all four of us have written together with [drummer Jeff] Nuckolls in the room banging a drum. But we all make it work and everything really is collaborative, surprisingly."

Collaborative efforts do not just occur within the band. Giant Bear brought in big-name friends to help them complete their first LP, including Memphis musicians William Lee Ellis and Lewis Meyers, as well as Luther Dickerson of the North-Mississippi Allstars. Misener attributes the conjunctions with the band being at the right place at the right time.

"The studio that we recorded in, Young Avenue Sound, had some really great people coming through there," she says. "Luther was friends with someone in the room who was just sitting around listening to us, and one thing led to another and we ended asking him to play on a track. That actually happened a couple of times with a couple of other people who helped us out on a record."

Indeed, the band owes its existence to luck and chance encounters. Giant Bear is comprised of two halves of two very different Memphis bands. Misener shared the stage with lap steel/mandolin/guitar player Mike Larrivee when they played together as part of the funk-based Ruffin Brown Band. The two then joined forces with guitarist and banjo player Jeff White and bassist Robert Humphreys from the folky, earthy band Okraboy.

After adding Nuckolls on as a drummer, the band signed with Memphis label Red Wax, put out an EP and toured all four corners of the US extensively. They immediately began building up a firm fan base in their native South, and, more surprisingly, on the West Coast.

"It's funny because a lot of the places that we've been on the West Coast - especially parts of California and Oregon - have been even more receptive to our music than in the South. Maybe they haven't heard it as often," reasons Misener. "So we've been doing well pretty much everywhere we play, which is awesome."

The supportive atmosphere of their adopted genre was also unexpected.

"I grew up playing classical music and there had always been a cutthroat atmosphere, but I was really surprised with the bands that we play with, we all get along with really well. It's the friendlier of the genres, I guess," laughs Meisner.

Giant Bear steadily marches on into 2008, as the band will tour until the end of December to support New American Wilderness, out now on Red Wax Music.

www.myspace.com/giantbear