Bear Claw

May 21st, 2008

Well, we're back from our European quest. It's good to be home, but I have to say I miss it. The tour went extremely well, and we hope to make our way back across the Atlantic sometime in the future. A huge thank you goes out to everyone that provided us with a place to sleep, a great meal, terrific Belgian beer, amazing Italian wine, or any other miscellaneous gifts. You can read Scott's extremely in-depth tour journal here. Eventually I may post my journal, though it is a huge mess of sentence fragments, lists of things I ate or drank, and descriptions of bathrooms, plus the miscellaneous out-of-context quote. We plan to stay quiet for a bit while we work on new material.

-Rob

April 1st, 2008

Well, we’re off to Europe in less than 24 hours. We’ll try to update you all as the tour progresses. Wish us luck. Check out the shows page for details. Click here to see a nifty map. We have our fingers crossed. Crossed? Crossed…

January 3rd, 2008

Happy New Year! We have reviews of the new album up here. Most of the international reviews are in languages other than English, so if you are monolingual like Bear Claw you can use Google's translator to get a rough (and hilarious) translation.

December 11th, 2007

So winter in Chicago has officially arrived: cold, rainy, windy, and dark…however, on the flip side, the Holidays are here and a new year is right around the corner. 2007 has been great for us and we’re very excited to have our new record out and plenty of upcoming opportunities to bring our brand of noise to all kinds of areas and people. With that being said, I wanted to take a moment to update you all on upcoming items of note in our little part of the world.

This upcoming Saturday we will have a chance to play with some great acquaintances and friends of ours in the infamous Shellac of North America. We are very excited for this show and cannot wait. Tickets are sold out for this show as well as several of the other dates that Shellac will be playing; however, if you mosey on over to The Hideout there is a chance that you’ll be able to score a ticket or two. Check out the shows page for details.

We also have another winter gathering that will be taking place January 26th at the Empty Bottle with Dianogah and Quatre Tete. We are especially excited to have the chance to play with our buds and budettes in Quatre Tete as well as a chance to play with the fellow musicians and low end aficionados of Dianogah. This will be a great show that you do not want to miss. Check out the Empty Bottle for tickets and more details.

We have some new merch items for your purchase if the mood should strike you. New T-Shirts with a new design as well as new stickers will be available at future shows as well as via the website. The merch page will be updated shortly. In the interim, if you should like to purchase something that is not listed on the website, please send an email to scott at bearclawrock dot com and we’ll do are best to hook you up. There are also efforts underway to update the site with a new look as well as include the addition of a new press page for those who might be interested in reading some people’s opinions of the Bear Claw.

Finally, the European tour is progressing nicely. So far 10 shows are confirmed and near two dozen European reviews of the new record have taken place. For all the latest info regarding the European tour, please check out our European reps at Five Roses Press. The confirmed dates and TBA’s based on our anticipated routing as of today are as follows:

We can’t wait! It should be a blast.

Stay tuned for more updates as they will be posted as info becomes available.

Thanks,
Scott – Bear Claw

August 28th, 2007

Here’s what’s been happening as of late in the world of Bear Claw. First, our new record Slow Speed: Deep Owls will be released September 25th, 2007 on Sickroom Records. The record will be distributed nationally by Southern Distribution and in Japan at Stiff Slack.

We just got back from Carbondale and what an adventure it was. Carbondale was where Bear Claw started while Scott and Rob went to school there and it’s always felt like a 2nd home. It was good to see so many familiar faces and to be so close to the crowd while we played. The energy drawn from a crowd like that is what makes it worth while. Thank you, Carbondalians. One thing that wasn’t great was our unfortunate tire blowing out on the highway at 70mph. Luckily Scott handled the tire incident like a champ and steered us to the side of the road in one piece since there was a semi right behind us.

We are scheduled to perform on WLUW's Radio One Program. The air date of the live set will be announced shortly. Make sure to check out the shows page for details. We will also be posting the date of the record release show in the short future as well.

Europe, here we come!!! We are going to be touring Europe in April of 2008 in support of the new record. Thanks to Sickroom Records and Five Roses Press we will be touring Germany, France, Amsterdam, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy between April 2nd and April 27th of 2008. We are really excited to have this opportunity and are looking forward to an amazing experience that will allow us to play with several European bands we have always wanted to as well as perform for our European fans. Details will follow as this tour is in the beginning stages, so keep an ear to the ground for more updates.

There are also some regional plans in discussion. We’ll keep you all posted as to other touring plans as they become available. Hope to see you around at the upcoming shows. Make sure to visit your favorite online retailer, local record shop, the Sickroom Records site, the Bear Claw site, or us at show to get the new album Slow Speed: Deep Owls on September 25th.

June 7th, 2007

Since our last update we recorded our next album which will be called Slow Speed: Deep Owls. We were in the studio for four days and we had a blast recording with Steve at Electrical Audio. It was a crunch, but we happened to get all of the lyrics written in time. There’s nothing like the stress of writing lyrics the day before you go into the studio. Shortly after recording the album, we had it master by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service. This is a brand new facility and it was great to be one of their clients in the infancy of the mastering studio. Let me tell you though, even though they just opened up shop, these are some talented Engineers and Bob has many years of recording bands under his belt.

We have also done a short tour with Self-Evident from Minneapolis for their record release tour. This band is amazing to see live and even after seeing them for four nights in a row, I still wonder how they can sound so good. I highly recommend picking up their new album. I can’t wait for the next time we can tour with these guys.

We also had our second DIY show at the Payless building in Chicago and we had a blast playing with Quatre Tete and Sequoia. We will also be playing with Quatre Tete and Caterpillar Tracks at the end of the month in Chicago at Quenchers, so keep an eye out for that show.

March 26th, 2007

Here's what's been going on with us since our last update. We had a real nice mini tour back in November out to New York and back and had an excellent chance to meet some fine people, especially the fine lads from Kash and Instrumental Quarter as well as the fellows from Form of Rocket. We've done a few local and regional shows since then but have been mainly concentrating on preparing for the next record.

The new record will be a full length consisting of about 10 songs and lasting close to 35 to 40 minutes. We will be recording the record with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Studio A between April 19 - 22nd. The record will be mastered by Bob Weston at the newly created Chicago Mastering Service shortly thereafter. Right now we are planning on a release date sometime in October of 2007 along with a CD release show in Chicago with hopefully a very special local Chicago guest. The album will be released by our good friends at Sick Room Records of Chicago. There has been some speculation as to the possibility of releasing this album on vinyl as well but we'll have to do a detailed cost analysis and get back to you on that. Art has been started for the album but no title has been decided on as of yet (we plan on arm wrestling each other as part of the decision process). We'll keep you up to date with details as they come forth.

We have a real nice show coming up shortly here at Double Door with Ken Andrews. Mr. Andrews was in such bands as Failure, Year of the Rabbit, and ON. He is a swell guy and we care for his music so it should be a lot of fun to share the stage together. We also have a miniature tour coming up in early May with our friends from Minneapolis, Self-Evident. We will be supporting them during their CD release tour. Please check the shows page, and details will be released shortly.

For the site, we plan on adding more pictures and some other features shortly. We also plan on updating the news more often than twice a year so please make sure to check back.

September 28th, 2006

With a bunch of new songs in the works and quite a few shows coming up, what happened last night at the practice space was not a fun thing to deal with. It seems that they were tearing down a house across the street and decided to uncap a fire hydrant to clear dirt and debris from the road. Well, by them doing so, it caused our practice space to flood. So far it seems that the equipment is ok, but we have yet to test it, let's cross our fingers because our tour starts next week with Dropsonic.

Speaking of shows, we will be doing a tour for a few days with Dropsonic in the Midwest. It's always a pleasure to play shows with not only a great band, but with nice people. Also, we'll be making our way down to Carbondale the following weekend, the town the gave us birth and nursed us to health. Then in November we have another mini-tour with the highlight being the CMJ festival. We're playing a Sickroom Records showcase.

Another fun show we did was over the course of the Touch & Go Records Festival Weekend. Not only was it great to see so many of our favorite bands over the weekend, but we put together an afterparty show. The show consisted of IFIHADAHIFI, Push-Pull, LKN, Triclops, and Bear Claw. We would like to thank not only everyone who came out, but the bands that played, and Ryan Duncan for being such a great help. Thank You!!!

June 18th, 2006

Welcome to the newly designed Bear Claw site. Hopefully things will be a bit easier to navigate. Some things still need to be put up on the website such as an ordering page for merch and a few other things. Also, if you like what you see, Rich has been designing a few sites lately and wants to design more.

Things have been a bit hectic with the band lately with writing new material for the new album and playing in other bands. Some of these bands include Darkmoor, which Scott has been filling in on drums. Also, Rich has another band that he's been playing with called All Limbs Intact. As far as the new Bear Claw album goes, we're hoping to record near the end of summer and release the new album early next year. We actually have too much music for the album, just not enough lyrics yet(that should give you reason to harass us at out next show).