Probably another thing that you don't know about Cincinnati is that it supports an unusually large and widely varied musical community. A region that has produced talents as big and as diverse as Rosemary Clooney and Bootsy Collins must have something good going on. Of course, those two names are only a couple of the most recognizable people to emerge from this portion of the Ohio Valley.

Another Greater Cincinnati product whose name you probably know is Adrian Belew. In fact, it would be hard to have followed music, especially progressive music, over the past twenty-five or so years without having heard of Adrian Belew. And you know the story, too: "discovered" by Frank Zappa in Nashville, Belew's resume since then is a Who's Who of cutting-edge musical names.

In the late 70's, musicians and people who followed music in Cincinnati began to talk about a new group, The Raisin Band, which consisted of Rob Fetters on guitar and vocals, Bob Nyswonger on bass and vocals, and Chris Arduser on drums and vocals was starting to make waves in the local clubs. As their reputation grew, their name shortened, and they became the Raisins. Not too long after that, a song on the radio began attracting a lot of attention. That song was "Fear Is Never Boring," written by Rob Fetters and performed by the Raisins. The song's catchy melody, unusual lyrics and red-hot guitar solo made it a favorite all over the area, and the talk was that it was going to be a single that would be released nationally. Well, "Fear" did get released as a single, but it wasn't national, and for some reason, the song didn't get the kind of notice that everyone expected.

Next, the Raisins made a whole album. They released it themselves, and called their label Strugglebaby. By this time, the Raisins were Fetters, Nyswonger, Bam Powell (drums and vocals) and Rick Neiheisel - now known as Ricky Nye - (keyboards and vocals). Their album showed that they were a band that could play virtually any style of music. Every member of the band wrote songs and they all could sing lead. And the producer was their good friend Adrian Belew. The story goes that there was a Big Record Deal in the works; that our Raisins were within a hair's breadth of signing with Colombia Records. Then the deal went south. Reportedly, Clive Davis, then head of CBS Records, said that he wouldn't sign them because, since they all sang and wrote and their music could not be easily pigeonholed, the Raisins "lacked focus." (Funny, no one ever says that sort of thing about Paul Simon or Sting when they decide to pay attention to other types of music!) Furthermore, Davis is supposed to have said, these guys just simply have too much fun.

In the late 80's, you may have become aware of the fact that Belew, by this time a full-time member of King Crimson, was part of another band, the Bears. Maybe you even heard that the band was made up of some buddies of Belew's from his hometown, but you may not have given much thought to who the other guys were. They were signed by IRS Records' new subsidiary, Primitive Man Recording Company, and the world looked bright. Their first two albums (The Bears, 1987 & Rise and Shine, 1988) showed that this was a band filled with formidable talent. Far more than simply "Adrian Belew's other band," everybody in the band is an accomplished songwriter and they are all extremely talented players. But PMRC went under, the Bears were left without a record deal, and so they were forced to disband.

But then last summer, an amazing thing happened. The Bears arose from their thirteen-year hibernation with a new album. In the works for over four years, the album was something that simply had to be done. Arduser, Belew, Fetters and Nyswonger had remained in touch over the years, and they felt that it was time for the Bears to make another record. The bad news in all of this is that they still have no one to distribute the disc for them domestically, and are forced to sell it themselves.

Though each member of the band has other musical projects, the Bears is not just a sideline for them. Chris Arduser plays in the Graveblankets and has also released a solo project. Bob Nyswonger plays in a group called Bucket with former Raisin Bam Powell, and is working on a solo effort, which he hopes to complete and release later in the year. To keep body and soul together, Nyswonger works as a real estate agent. "Someday I hope to turn pro," he says. (How much justice is there in a world where Britney Spears has already made so much that she never has to warble another note for the rest of her life, yet a guy as talented as Bob Nyswonger has to sell houses for a living?) Of course, Adrian Belew has King Crimson, his solo albums, as well as his work as a "hired gun" to keep him busy. When not playing with the Bears or one of the other bands, Fetters, Nyswonger and Arduser play together as the psychodots.

Despite all the cruel blows that the music business has handed him, Rob Fetters is an awfully happy guy. In fact, in typical fashion, he's made a joke of it. On his excellent solo cd Lefty Loose Righty Tight, Fetters says, "I already know what they'll say when I am gone/Death was my best career move." He's carved out a niche for himself in a line of work that he just can't turn his back on. A staff musician/producer at Sound Images, an audio production house in downtown Cincinnati, Fetters makes a living making music, even if a great deal of that music is anonymous. (Apparently, some of the treatments of ABC Television's little four-note signature are, among other things, the work of Rob Fetters.) I met him at Sound Images in his "office," which is a room filled with guitars plus a keyboard, plus lots of other equipment for making and producing music.

---

Cosmik: As I understand it you're originally from Toledo.

Rob: Yeah, I grew up in a suburb of Toledo called Sylvania just, like, far west Toledo just a suburban type community and I went to high school there of course. That's where I met Chris and Bob and I've played with them since we were, um, you know, I think the first time I ever played with Chris Arduser, he was ten or eleven. It might be longer, maybe he was eleven or twelve, and I was maybe sixteen at that point. Bob I played with, we played in high school bands together. So we really essentially grew up together, and that's one of the coolest things about being the Bears.

Cosmik: Yeah, my impression has always been that first the Raisins and then the Bears were firstly an aggregation of friends, and that playing together was just about your favorite thing to do.

Rob: Yeah. I think that's a correct surmise of the situation. I think music is certainly one of the greatest things I'm capable of doing. I don't know if it's the greatest thing in the world, but it's all I've ever wanted to do or be since I was old enough to think about a career or anything.

Cosmik: I'm a person who believes that music is one of the crowning achievements of humankind.

Rob: Well, I have to say that I think that being in a group, to me is like the opposite of war. As far as human beings interacting with each other. You're just... you're doing something together that creates this... quantum energy. Especially in a band like ours where although one or the other person's more famous than the others, it's a band in that it's really a band. It's different when the four of us are together than any of us individually, or even any two of us. Something happens.

Cosmik: Yeah, I saw King Crimson when they played at Bogart's last summer, and it's like Adrian's a whole different guy with that band. He's still the most animated guy in the band, but that isn't hard with Robert Fripp sitting in the darkness off to the side.

Rob: Yeah.

Cosmik: It seems like he's just a bit more restrained onstage, whereas with you guys, it's more whatever comes into your minds when you're onstage, and that's a blast. I think that's one of the things that comes across in your music is just how much fun you're having together.

Rob: Yeah.

Cosmik: So you and Bob and Chris came to Cincinnati. How did that happen?

Rob: Well, in high school we all played in bands together, and then after high school we all experimented with college.

Cosmik: (laughing) You say that that way other people say when they were in college they experimented with drugs.

Rob: Oh, we experimented with drugs all the time. I wouldn't say we were experimenting with drugs; we just took drugs.

Cosmik: Sure, and who hasn't?

Rob: Yeah. So we formed bands. We decided, "Gee, we can make money doing this." We liked to play; we didn't like to study. So we played in bands, and eventually one of them was called The Raisin Band at first. At that time we had lots of different members. Guys came and went through the band, but I was in the first Raisin Band, and then I think we convinced Bob to join, and, you know, going through drummers, singers, people quitting and keyboard players that were junkies. We had the experience of all musicians trying to get a band together. But we wouldn't play original music, and when we did play original music, it was bad. We were learning how to write songs, and trying to hide them between, oh, I don't know, Doobie Brothers songs or something like that. Eventually...

[Chris Ardruser]

Chris was in high school, and he was going to quit high school. He was having a miserable go of it. We actually went to his dad, who was a dentist, he was from an affluent family and seemingly intelligent, too, but I managed to convince his dad that it would be better for Chris to go on the road with the band. At that time we were playing a lot in the South, you'd play, like, five nights in Raleigh, North Carolina, have a day or two off, and then go to Pensacola, Florida, and then on to New Orleans, or... I called it the Chitlin Circuit. That's what we were doing, and it sounded good to Chris, of course, being stuck in high school. So I convinced his dad that maybe he could go after his GED or something, because he was a fabulous drummer. He was good from the get-go. Actually, I think everybody in our band were natural musicians. Somehow we coerced him into giving permission for Chris to join the band. So, then it was Bob and Chris and I, and eventually we started forcing people out of the band who didn't want to play original music. Chris quit for a while, quit the band, went to college. Bob and I just kept forcing our hand with original music. And what happened, the move to Cincinnati was really a move of convenience. We were playing here enough, and we were staying in hotels, well motels, out in Sharonville [a suburb north of Cincinnati] mostly. It was just cheaper to rent an apartment here. We were playing here so much. It was kind of the hub of our activities. So that's how we started growing roots in Cincinnati and becoming a Cincinnati band. We hit a point where we just refused to play other people's music unless we really liked it, and we were doing a version of it, and just wanted to play it. By that point we had Bam Powell [drums, vocals] in the band and Rick Neiheisel [keyboards, vocals], two longtime Cincinnati musicians.

Cosmik: I went to high school with Rick Neiheisel.

Rob: Yeah. Rick actually squeezed his way into the band; he actually demanded to be in the band. He was going to school at Berklee in Boston, and he just said, "I wanna be in your band. You need me." And he was right; we needed him. So he was in the band. And we basically just took a vow of poverty, and played our own music. We could only get one gig a week doing that, at one club in Clifton [the area of the city where the University of Cincinnati is located]. This is really getting detailed. But we did that, and we got the backing to make a record. Along this time, we'd been playing in Nashville a lot, even years before when Chris had still been in the band. Adrian had come to see us a lot. We really didn't know who Adrian was then. We became friends with Adrian in the late 70's. There was a point when I went out to L.A. I had a girlfriend out there - I thought - and I went out there and we broke up, and Adrian's there, rehearsing for his first Frank Zappa tour. He'd just snagged that gig. He was kinda lonely, and didn't know anybody out in L.A., and I was in my own private hell, so we just hung out and had a blast.

[Adrian Belew]

We played guitar together. That's when I realized "Ohmygod, this guy can play guitar," because until that point, I didn't really know that much about him. He was really a fan of our band before we even knew what he did. But I ended up listening to the demos he was making, and after that I became a huge fan of his songwriting and of course his guitar playing. And we just kept in touch. And when it was time for the Raisins to try to make a record, he stepped in to produce us, which was a hugely educational experience. We had some success with "Fear Is Never Boring," a song I wrote. And a year and a half later, it was time to make another record, and two of the members of the Raisins at that point didn't want to make another record the same way we had already made one. They wanted to do something different, and I disagreed. We had a fundamental disagreement on direction. So I quit the Raisins. I told Adrian that I had quit the Raisins, and he said in the next breath, "Well, why don't we form a band? We know what we want to do." And I said "Okay." At that point we didn't think Chris Arduser would play drums with us. Adrian was friends and had toured with Larry London, who's a major Nashville session drummer. Fantastic musician. And he was interested in doing it, and we actually did some demos with him, but he couldn't commit to going on the road. He's a first-call Nashville session musician, and just has a great life there. And much older than us. So we called up Chris Arduser, and coerced him to play with us. Everything just clicked. That's the foundation of the Bears.

Cosmik: That's beautiful, because it takes in the top part of this sheet very nicely. In the Bears first incarnation, you all had a certain way to dress onstage, and only you and Adrian sang. Was that some sort of publicist's idea?

Rob: We didn't have anybody telling us what to do. But we had enough experience on our own, knowing that we had heard so many times that our music was "unfocused." I mean the Raisins did stuff that was R & B-ish to... I don't know what you'd call it, kinda punk. I think it was at that point that someone actually called me a "yuppie punk." But I've always thought, "Yeah, that's what I am. I'm a Yuppie Punk!" Fuck. You. You're just a punk, you know? But we were all over the map, and we decided we were not going to be successful unless people could focus on something. And we thought "Well, let's just keep it to two singers." Because we love the sound of two-part harmonies - not three. In the sense that the Beatles would do a lot of two-part things that we really liked a lot. You can just do a lot with two-part harmonies. And we wanted to focus visually on the two singers - two singer/guitar players. Not that we weren't using creative input from the other members of the band. But we thought about that. As far as dress, you know basically, I'll just say that Bob is just a slob.

[Bob Nyswonger]

You just never knew what Bob was going to show up at a gig as. One week he'd look, oh, I don't know, like he was in the back yard, you know, grilling for the kids. He looked like Ozzie of Ozzie and Harriet or something. Sometimes he'd look like he was in The Clash. He was schizo. And really what it was was he didn't care. So we thought immediately, "Let's put him in a tux and tails. He will always look good; he'll always be the sharpest guy in the band." I don't remember telling Chris to wear anything. I don't think you can tell Chris Arduser to do anything. Period. Adrian and I just both have fun with clothes, so we... I forget what we ended up on. I think we looked like we were somewhere between Maui and London. Musically at that point we were... Adrian will say... he got the focus on us. We were just trying to figure what our favorite stage of the Beatles was. You know the point where they really changed, and we kind of ended up on Revolver. Revolver was where... well, it wasn't the first time they had used Indian influences, or world influences in their music, but Revolver was where they were really using a lot of that stuff, and we were aware of world music, and loved Middle Eastern sounds and Indian sounds, and were trying to get those kinds of sounds out of our guitars. Especially Adrian, who's just a soundmeister. And we heard something happening that we were calling East Meets Midwest. Adrian had some guitar sounds - we were using guitar synths to create the stuff... And percussion-wise, Chris opened up a lot. He was using a lot of wood drums and other things besides just the standard drum set. We felt we had a focus at that point and used it. And it evolved from that point.

Cosmik: On the new album, though, there are times when you use three-part harmonies, like in Waiting Room and it sounds gorgeous.

Rob: Well, this record - if you can just fast-forward over the next ten years or so. I don't know if it was exactly ten years until we started working on another record, but call it ten. Chris and I were the main singers in psychodots. Chris is a prolific songwriter, and made a handful of discs with The Graveblankets, and grew in confidence as a vocalist. He has excellent pitch; he has a very good range, and when it was time to be the Bears again, we just threw out all that stuff. I think we just focused on "Let's just do songs we all like, that we love and really believe in." And when we play them together, they just sound like the Bears. That they sound different than the demos we showed up at the session with... It just becomes Bear music, and we didn't feel slaves to using exotic sounds. As the songs were taking shape, we tried a lot of different things and it just became a little simpler. I don't think there's any focus on this record or any consideration other than we want to be able to play this stuff live. We didn't want to overproduce the record. We're all fully capable of putting all the ear candy you want on a record, but we wanted to be able to pull this stuff off live, because we love playing live, and we didn't want to miss something. We didn't do it on this tour, but I think probably the next time we go out, we'll do everything on the record.

Cosmik: You personally, as a guitar player. Some of your influences, your background, how you came to like to play the guitar?

Rob: I grew up in a family where my dad enjoyed jazz music - I didn't. It kind of bored me. My mom listened to classical music. So that's what I heard. I didn't really think or plan to be a musician until I was one of the millions of people who saw the Beatles play. I saw these guys really enjoying themselves. I'd never seen adults look like they were having so much fun, and weren't acting. The Beatles were not pretending. They were really having fun. Unlike the other people in show business who might have a fake smile. They were so natural and funny, and that looked good to me. That was at the point where there was a guitar in the house. My sister Wendy had a guitar, and I just kind of borrowed it from her and never gave it back. Took a few lessons here and there. After the first, like, year of "Gee my fingers hurt," it just was easy for me to play. I was abetted in that I had a lot of allergies when I was in my early teens, and literally in the summer I would get hay fever so bad, I was allergic to everything growing, so I'd just stay inside an air conditioned house, and either masturbate or play guitar. That's what I specialized in as an early teen. Most men I talk to can relate to half of that equation.

Cosmik: With me it was masturbate or play the drums.

Rob: Yeah, right. And my parents, when I got into it, they were really supportive. I have a cousin that's a professional musician, that was older than me, and my aunt and uncle on that side said, "Well, if he's showing aptitude with that, then get him a guitar." So my parents made sure I had a good instrument. They bought me a Fender guitar, which was solid and held together. And then I just listened to records. I wore through Axis: Bold As Love, and started playing in bands. When I could barely play, I started playing with other musicians, and most of them were really bad musicians. So when I finally got a chance to play with somebody like Bob, who is good and smart... I was into the Beach Boys and the Beatles. Bob was into the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, so he opened up this whole other world to me. But as a guitar player, I never feel like I practiced. It's just I was lucky and I was good. I don't think I'm that much better a musician now than I was when I was fifteen.

Cosmik: Really!

Rob: Yeah, really. I was pretty good; there are tapes to prove it. I hadn't found my own style, but I was just a real good young blues guitar player, the way kids are. I just played constantly.

Cosmik: Well, you sure have found your own style, and it really works.

Rob: But as far as influences, I was the kind of guy who would listen to records and learn it, but I'd never completely learn it exactly like the record. So therefore I would become like a combination of Clapton and Jimmy Page and Jeff Back.

Cosmik: And in the process of doing that you find your own...

Rob: Because I can always tell you who I'm ripping off, or who it sounds like. And then when I actually became a songwriter, it was kind of the same thing. I got to the point where I just didn't want to bother learning licks exactly, and I would do my version of a song and then it eventually became... my song. I was trying to ape other people, but I couldn't do it exactly, so I kind of became my own ape.

Cosmik: And now people are trying to ape you, so...

Rob: Yeah, occasionally...

Cosmik: The Bears are two sides of a coin in some ways. Lyrically, take a song like "Robobo's Beef"(from Rise and Shine), which is so idealistic, and then take a song like "You Can Buy Friends" (also from Rise and Shine), which is just as cynical as hell. Those two elements somehow work together and become part of the Bears.

Rob: Yeah. I think they both temper each other. You know, a cynic is - I didn't invent this, but I know somebody said, "A cynic is just a disillusioned optimist." I don't know, I'd just have to say that our songwriting has mood swings, just like a human being, and it [announcing] LACKS FOCUS at points. It just depends on where people are at. You can hear the development in the band. The first album is very "We were going to be kings," you know? We were very confident that we were making the best pop record in the country at the time. I don't know if we thought of it that much, we just felt that this was going to be as good as anything else. And on the second record, I think you begin to hear some disillusionment. Adrian had a family, and it was really hard for him to be on the road as much as we were on the road. We were making not very much money. We were making money, but our percentage of it was pretty small. And it was kind of strangling us. And we came up against the record machine in the mid-80's, which was no prettier then than it is now. And I think we were showing some signs of exhaustion, actually, because we toured so much. We just played all the time. Our record company... you could just kind of feel steam leaking! And things just going, "Oh, god, this isn't turning out the way we had planned." And I think Car Caught Fire is really "This is what happens. We survived." We had maybe six or seven songs done for Car Caught Fire; I just thought it was so heavy. And spiritual in content. Not necessarily "Christ is king," or "Allah is god," or anything like that. Not religiosity, but spiritual. It just had this fatness to it. I could feel it coming, and I just remember saying to the other guys, "Is it just my warped perception, or are we doing something kinda heavy here?" We all felt it. We only made Car Caught Fire because we wanted to make the record. We had no idea that it would even pay for itself. We could hope that it will pay for itself, but we've all been in the music business and survived in the music business long enough to know there are no guarantees, and it's fickle and it's dirty, and there's really nothing good about the music business except the music, occasionally, and some of the people who are in the music business are there because they just love it so much that they don't have a choice. And we are amongst those. We have no choice about being musicians and doing this. So I feel like we made the record for good reasons. Good healthy reasons.

Cosmik: And it shows.

Rob: Yeah. The quality of the music is, I think, really high.

Cosmik: I don't think there's a false moment on the whole disc, myself.

Rob: Well, we go through a very painful decision-making process. Presenting your song to the Bears. The way we recorded it, we'd go down on a Friday night; we'd take a three-day weekend usually, a long weekend. Then on Friday night, you play, like, your four best songs. And look at a bunch of blank faces. You know? "They're not getting it." (pleading) "Please just listen to it one more time, I'm sure you'll like it." "No, what else do you have?"

Cosmik: Is it that ruthless?

Rob: It is utterly ruthless for the Bears. I mean, it is the worst A & R situation imaginable! The only reason we don't kill each other is because we trust each other. I wish I could stack the cards in my favor more the next time. Because we're already talking about doing some more recording.

Cosmik: Excellent.

Rob: I've gotta present these in the best light possible. Should I buy them dinner first?

Cosmik: But you know that won't matter.

Rob: Maybe burn a disc and put a fifty-dollar bill in each one. Tape it to the lyric page. Yeah, they go through a horrid gauntlet before we even start working on them.

Cosmik: That filtering-out process, though, makes everything better, right? And the fact that everybody contributes makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts, and that's one of the hallmarks of listening to the Bears, is that your talent, Bob's talent, Chris' talent, Adrian's talent, somehow just adds up to something that's really, really infectious. On to another topic, when you sing, I hear what sounds a little bit like there's a smirk in your voice.

Rob: Hmm.

Cosmik: It goes as far back as I can remember, in the Raisins or anything, but it always sounds like there's a little bit of a smirk in your voice when you're singing, and I enjoy that, but on Dave you play it totally straight. That song obviously meant a lot to you.

Rob: Yeah. Well, the reason we kept that vocal through the end was just that it was terribly... I wasn't really thinking about singing in tune or anything like that, it was just that I was trying to get it out without crying. That song is a true story. A friend of mine committed suicide. I wrote it really fast, and I recorded the basic tracks really fast. I just presented that as a demo. So maybe there was no time to get cynical about it. Although the last verse, I think, is extremely cynical and bitter. "I heard the minister mumble."

Cosmik: It's a powerful song.

Rob: I was really just disillusioned with the... one of the first, but certainly not the last time I was really disillusioned with the church. I know it really works for a lot of people.

Cosmik: It certainly works for me. That bit combined with the song from Rise and Shine, "Holy Mack."

Rob: Yeah, "Holy Mack." Adrian wrote that song, and most of the words, actually. We... yeah, I think we wrote that together. Yeah, that was just a good prayer. That's really what "Holy Mack" was, a prayer.

Cosmik: And a great song. What was it like working with Robert Fripp?

[Robert Fripp]

Rob: Well, I've only met Robert Fripp socially. I don't know him very well. What happened with "Dave" was we recorded tracks and added some guitar parts, and the instructions were "Put a guitar solo here. Here's where the guitar solo goes. Have fun." And we were trying a bunch of sound styles, and I said, "A real nice legato, Robert Fripp-y thing would be perfect." Robert lives at Adrian's house, right next to the studio he has in the lower half of his house when he's in town, and Adrian called me a few weeks later, and just said, "You know, Rob, I had an idea." And he didn't finish the sentence, and I just said, "Robert's there, isn't he?" And he said, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you think he'll play on it?" It made sense. That whole song is just kind of a hair-raising experience. Number one, it just came out so fast. I mean in like ten minutes it was all there, lyrics, melody, bridge, it was just together and finished. And then my friend, Dave Gauthier (pronounced "go-chee"), who is the subject of the song, and I were just huge King Crimson fans. We listened to In the Court of the Crimson King all the time, so it was really neat that a guitar player that Dave loved - we thought that band was so cool - we were "Twentieth Century Schizoid Kids." We just loved King Crimson, so it's really so cool that Robert Fripp played on the song. I just exchanged a couple of letters with Robert.

Cosmik: So you weren't there when he recorded the parts?

Rob: No, no. Robert, you know, he doesn't need anybody around producing him. Adrian was staying being quiet, and Ken, our engineer just recorded, and I think their main job was just to make sure that everything worked. That they captured it. I think that there was some kind of technical glitch or something, and they were worried that Robert would get off the path. But Robert wrote me that it really meant a lot to him, that he understood the circle that things had gone in. And King Crimson fans have said that it's one of his most beautiful solos.

Cosmik: It really is. It's a gorgeous solo. It fits the song perfectly.

[Adrian Belew]

Rob: We're just thrilled by it. King Crimson, you know, has a huge fan base, and they try to create a lot of conflict in the band that isn't there. The band's gone through so many changes, and god knows somebody who was in the band fifteen years ago might say something crappy about Robert, or something like that, but Adrian and Robert are really great collaborators together. And as far as the Bears go, we love King Crimson. We saw many versions of the band well before Adrian was in the band, and when we found that Adrian was going to be in King Crimson, we were just overjoyed! "Gee, maybe I could shake Bill Bruford's hand!" And I did! And we got to go and see them play. We just love King Crimson! I think on almost every tour we've played a King Crimson song.

Cosmik: You cover "Red" now, right?

Rob: Yeah, we're playing "Red."

Cosmik: It must be a lot of fun.

Rob: Oh, yeah, it's very cool.

Cosmik: Which part do you play in it?

Rob: I guess I play the Robert Fripp part, the main, slashing part.

Cosmik: That would fit you well, I think.

Rob: Well, our initials are the same. When we did "Elephant Talk," I of course did the Robert Fripp part on that one, too. And when we did "Matte Kudasai," I think I did, too. No I didn't do the Robert Fripp part; I played Adrian's part and he played Robert's.

Cosmik: Some people lament that you play some Belew solo songs and King Crimson songs, and of course Bears songs, but no Raisins songs ever filter their way into the Bears' repertoire.

Rob: Well, I think the reason we do Belew songs is some people come to us because it's "Adrian Belew and the Bears," and I think you'd be cheating them if you didn't play some of that stuff. People are paying a lot of money to see us play. All I can say to those people is that you've got three Raisins slash psychodots in the band, and these are our songs... I know what you're saying, because people who believe in the psychodots and the Raisins are huge supporters, and our music's important to them. So I guess you just can't make everybody happy all the time.

Cosmik: Well, I'm not sure they're unhappy...

Rob: Yeah, but I know what they mean, and I'm not sure how we could overcome that. This tour, of all the tours we've done, we did the least amount of Adrian's songs. I don't think we did anything from Adrian's solo records. We just played Bears stuff, and one King Crimson song.

Cosmik: You still don't have a U.S. distributor for Car Caught Fire.

Rob: As we speak, three companies are calling me and want to distribute the record. To do that, we would have to act more as a record company, and really you need a staff for a record company. We don't have it. Because it's just me. And it ain't me! So we're still trying to hook up with a smaller label, that can deal with it. I don't think any major label would want our band. We're just not... I don't know what it is. We're just too fucking good for a major label. We're the Bears. We're a unique American band, and I think we need a unique label to deal with it.

Cosmik: Well, how's it going just selling it yourselves?

Rob: We've sold thousands of records on our own. I don't have an exact count. We haven't sold ten thousand on our own, or we haven't received money for that. We've sold enough to pay for making the record, put some money in our own pockets, pay for the manufacture of it, and pay our expenses. The band is in the black. And I would kind of look at the band as: we're not trying to hit home runs; we're just trying to hit a single and keep a flow. If we can make an investment here, you have a chance of hitting a home run, and I know that if we put all of our capital into some long shot and blow it, we will not be able to afford to make another record. And we want to play together. We want to be able to make music together, and by getting rid of a lot of ten-percenters, we can afford to do that. It would be a lot easier if we had people collecting commissions and things, but we're trying to do it on our own. I think if we make our jump, somebody's going to have to jump with us.

Cosmik: You do have a distributor in Japan, right?

Rob: Yeah. Pony Canyon signed the record, licensed the record, and they're selling it there. And that really was a catalyst. We were just going to shop our disc and not put it up, but Pony Canyon actually had a release date. We just figured, "god, people are going to buy this, or bootleg it actually." Cause they didn't have the rights to North America or Europe, so we better just make it available. So people could actually buy it. And then bootleg it!

Cosmik: Why all the Rickenbackers on the front cover?

Rob: Well, they just look good! We had 'em all. There's really just three and the other's a Washburn acoustic. But Adrian brought his. It was really just kind of serendipity. We had the guitars with us at Michael Wilson's photo studio, and we're all sitting there. We're all thinking, "We're all just middle-aged guys. Is there any way we can dress up this photo? Oh, I got it! Let's cover our faces." I thought it worked great. Michael's a good friend of ours. Everybody involved in this, in the Bears, there's a friendship that goes beyond any sort of business dealings. People really dig the music.

Cosmik: And I'm one of those people, too! And I was just overjoyed to hear that after fourteen years there was another Bears album out. It was worth the wait.

Rob: Well, we think so, too. All along, we've stayed friends, and I toured with Adrian on his solo tour, psychodots appeared with him on another tour. So we've always stayed in contact, and been fans of each other's music. Adrian made some records in the 90's that were sort of lost in the shuffle, like Op Zop Too Wah, and there's just some incredible music on that.

Cosmik: I have The Guitar As Orchestra, which is mind-boggling.

Rob: Oh, yeah! Everybody's churning the stuff out. None of us ever stops. I can't imagine ever stopping.

(C) 2002 - Karl Cable