Interview: Minus the Bear’s Jake Snider Talks Long Break, Band’s First Live Show in Seven Years

Minus the Bear will play The Depot on Sunday, November 23. It’s their first tour since abruptly calling it quits in 2018, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s new music on the way — they’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album Menos el Oso. Still, the band’s not exactly ruling that part out either. All things in time.

Lead singer Jack Snider and I spoke a couple days after the band played its first live show in seven years, a surprise performance that helped get the jitters out. 

Can we talk about the show you did recently? Is that a good starting point?

We were scheduled to rehearse, and the idea came together to do a small show and announce it 24 hours ahead of time. We thought the coolest place to do it would be the Sunset Tavern in Seattle, a classic old school tavern with a nice venue in it for about 200 people. We took advantage of the fact we were all in town, and we wanted to get our nerves shaken out before the big tour started off.

Kind of a dress rehearsal?

Yeah. In a way, yeah.

And what was that like?

The whole thing went off amazingly well. Great crowd. Awesome venue. We had our partial tour crew there, and local folks helped out. It was a perfect way to dip our toe back in.

What’s it been like since you called it quits, at least for a while?

My kids were pretty young back then; my main gig became being a stay-at-home dad. For a while, I was working part-time at a HI-FI shop in town called Gig Harbor, close to Tacoma where I live. I was doing turntable and system setups and sales, and I did one little music project called The Jen, a short-lived instrumental project. We recorded an EP in 2019 and that was that. And then it was a lot of hanging out with my family and friends, and getting through the crazy pandemic we all experienced.

Do you feel like you were reclaiming your time a bit?

Exactly. The band becomes a monster that drags you along everywhere it needs to go. You do what it needs. Oftentimes you’re sacrificing your own needs. It was good to take time off. I barely picked up a guitar and concentrated more on listening to music, rather than making it. I sold a bunch of guitar and recording gear, and used that to build up my own home HI-FI system to an awesome level. I still enjoyed music the whole time, just from a different angle. Getting back to it now feels much more on our own terms. The band itself is not in control, but the members are. We can do whatever we want or nothing at all. It’s a nice change.

So it wasn’t exactly retirement. More of a long pause?

I don’t think we knew we were going to do this until about a year-and-a-half ago, when we got the first offer to play Best Friends Forever. It was a nice offer. Our booking agent brought it to us, and we had a serious discussion about it. The timing wasn’t ideal, so we put it off for a while. It takes an incredible amount of time to put together a tour like the one we’re doing, and we didn’t want to do a one off festival show. It didn’t seem worth it. Cory Murchy, our bass player, lives in New Mexico. Alex Rose, our keyboard player, lives in the UK. Our drummer Joshua Sparks is in Iowa. Dave Knudson and I are still in Washington. It would have been a hell of a lot of work for the one play. It did get the conversation going, though. When it came up, I said I’d do it. Everybody hopped on board pretty quickly after that.

Why Menos el Oso? Are you especially connected to it?

It’s my favorite album of ours — that or Planet of Ice — but it is a special record for us, too. It’s the record we felt like we came into our own as a band. We were more comfortable with the songs we were writing, and it coincides perfectly with its 20th anniversary.

I liked what you did recently, when the band recorded a video for “Drilling” in a … what was it exactly, a storage unit?

It’s a rehearsal space called The Institution, like two floors of rehearsal spaces. We’d rehearsed there for most of the band’s history. The room you see in the video was our space for over 10 years. We were looking for a space to rehearse in and checked out a couple, but they were all small and horrifying, about 12’ x 10’ spaces. When we contacted The Institution folks, they said our old room was available. We hopped on that, and it was fantastic. It’s kind of pricey, because it’s a huge space, but rolling the gear back in on the first day for setup, it was like we never left. It looked the same. The lofts we’d built for gear on the walls were ready to go. It was a time warp walking back into that room, and a comfortable transition.

Speaking of going back in time, does playing your album from 20 years ago feel like you’re reconnecting to a former self?

Absolutely. It gives me a better perspective on what it is. It’s hard when you’re in the moment of making a record or touring on it to have any distance. Over the years, though, the lyrics or structures we put together make sense in a different way than they did then. I understand what I was trying to do lyrically back then. It makes it easier to listen to now, because I don’t listen to my own music. With time, it’s a lot easier to appreciate that record. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to play — relearning the parts, seeing how we recorded it, how I played on the record versus how it evolved live. There were some surprises in there where I wondered why I made certain changes. Was it just to make it easier to sing? But it was easy to get comfortable with.

Do you still write music?

Not really. I didn’t play much guitar in the gap, but I’m starting up again, relearning the songs at home. Every time I pick up a guitar, there’s always something I’m noodling on, and I’ll think, oh, that’s pretty cool. And I’ll get my phone out and record a clip of it to keep until maybe one day I go back and work on it. There are hundreds of little clips there now, but I don’t know if I’d call that intentional writing. It’s been more like playing. It’s fun. There’s no pressure from the band to make anything that’s not part of the project we’re involved with at the moment, but it makes me see the possibility of doing something in the future.

Does having that lack of pressure to create feel helpful?

It seems a little scary. The whole process of writing a record has been both amazing and traumatic at the same time, so we can avoid that for now. We always said we weren’t going to play any shows, and now we’re saying we’re probably not going to make a record. But we don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do in the future. Something’s bound to come up.

I know fans of your work would be happy with more, but the fans are insatiable, right?

They certainly are, and it’s amazing. It’s insane there’s still people out there that are stoked. 

What are you most looking forward to with the tour?

Playing shows for the people who have been waiting for years to see us again, or for those who didn’t think they’d ever see us play. And getting to play these songs with my buddies. We’ve got a lot of friends in Salt Lake that we’ve made over the years, and there are always incredible crowds. We love visiting cities like Philly, Boston, New York, San Diego, L.A. and a ton of others. It’s difficult to get much time to be a tourist, so we concentrate on the time we spend on stage.

I feel like the ideal way to be a musician would be plugging in a day for every show you have in the place you’re going to, just wander around a bit.

Especially if you’re in Europe, or overseas. Rarely does anything like that happen. It’s just go, go, go. We rarely take days off. On this tour, a lot of the days off that were planned have been filled up with second shows and new offers that we accepted, with not much time off. That will be interesting for a bunch of dudes nearing 50.

Has the time you’ve spent rehearsing felt like getting back on the bike again?

There were a lot of moments on the first couple days of each rehearsal where I had to get my feet under me again and learn how to play with a band again rather than playing along with the record. The parts just fit differently. But it started to gel, and that made it easy.

I look forward to seeing what you have to share.

On our farewell tour in 2018, we got snowed in at a rest stop and couldn’t make it to the Salt Lake show. We get to actually play this time around.

Kind of a do over then?

Kind of. That one hurt to miss last time, but this show’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Tickets available here.

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