Bear vs. Shark
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

Bear vs. Shark is fairly new kickass band from Equal Vision records. It is made up of Marc Paffi, Derek Kiesgen, Mike Muldoon, John Gaviglio and Ashley Horak. I got a chance to talk with bassist John Gaviglio about their new album Terrorhawk.

Check out the official website for Bear vs. Shark

Daniel Robert Epstein: What’s going on today anything good?

John Gaviglio: Nothing so far, I’m keeping my eyes open.

DRE: Have you guys been playing lately?

JG: Actually, we’re on tour right now. We just played yesterday in Syracuse, New York, the hardcore capital of the world.

DRE: Is it?

JG: Well I understand it is. There were a lot of bandanas and soccer shorts.

DRE: So that means hardcore to you guys?

JG: People always tell us that people are really assholes there and to be careful because the hardcore kids will beat you up.

DRE: How was it?

JG: The people were really nice and nobody beat me up.

DRE: Did anyone try to beat you up?

JG: Yeah, I had a Chinese star thrown at me, but it was cool. I dodged it and everything was fine.

DRE: Are you serious?

JG: No.

DRE: That would have been cool.

JG: Yeah, I would have dodged it.

DRE: I read that someone in the band got hurt earlier this year and you cancelled the Buffalo show.

JG: Yeah, Mike reaggravated a break in his hand. He broke it a couple of years ago punching his brother.

DRE: What did his brother do?

JG: Brother stuff. Probably turned off the Nintendo when he was getting beat at Mario 2 or something. He Shaq chopped him and broke his hand.

DRE: Is that a basketball reference?

JG: Yeah, it’s a punch where you come down climbing down punching. So that’s not like very good for bones in your hand.

DRE: That’s all right. He needs those hand bones.

What inspired Terrorhawk?

JG: I would say, lots of beer. But I’d also say that it’s the want and the desire to not have to be a waiter anymore. But I’m still a waiter.

DRE: A lot of people are saying Bear vs. Shark could be the next big thing. What do you think of that?

JG: It that happens it would be cool but I think there’s also a difference of being a critic’s favorite band and a fan favorite. Sometimes you don’t really luck out. Let’s just see what happens, I’ll be cautiously optimistic. I think the album is pretty awesome, but we’ll see what happens.

DRE: So the first thing you would do is quit the waiter job?

JG: First thing I’d do is quit the waiter job and the second thing I’d do is quit the construction job and the third thing I’d do is go buy a badass jet ski.

DRE: Oh really?

JG: No not really.

DRE: There’s nothing wrong with a jet ski, that’s awesome.

JG: Yeah, I’d do some tricks. I used to be a professional jet skier and then I got hurt, that’s how I got into the music business. I miss it a little bit.

DRE: So there’s professional everything isn’t there? I didn’t realize there are professional jet skiers, but I should have known.

JG: Yeah you should have known and I’d appreciate it if you do more research before you call me next time.

DRE: How’d you hurt yourself jet skiing?

JG: I was jumping a speedboat and I ended up twisting my ankle on the landing. But yeah, I really didn’t hurt myself jet skiing, I’m just making things up. I’m sorry; I was up really late watching Braveheart.

DRE: Again?

JG: Yeah, first we played poker and I won which is awesome and then we watched Braveheart until six in the morning or something.

DRE: How much did you win last night?

JG: Like $15.

DRE: Was it against the other guys?


JG: Yeah, against Mike of the infamous hand breaking incident. Then some of the guys from Fire When Ready.

DRE: That’s right, you guys are touring together right?

JG: We’ve actually been staying at their house for the last couple of days. Did I just like totally go off?

DRE: You totally did. So what made you guys decide to hold up somewhere in Michigan write the album?

JG: We were up in the upper peninsula of Michigan and it’s basically Canada where there’s nobody. W figured what we really wanted to do was get a cabin in the middle of nowhere, just so we could be by ourselves and have no distractions or anything. Because when we’re back in Detroit and at home, there’s always family, girlfriends, parties or some other shit going on, so we just figured that the best way to do it, since we all write the songs together, is that we all needed to be together. Actually a lot of the time we were up north, we were hiking and swimming and doing stuff like that. I think it helped us get on the same page at least.

DRE: Did you guys bring a lot of beer with you or did you have to keep getting more beer?

JG: Brought a lot of beer, ran out of the beer, had to drive half hour to the nearest town and restock on the beer. It was cool because there was an Indian reservation that sold beer and it was super cheap. It was cool.

DRE: What kind of beer are we talking about?

JG: Mostly it was cheap stuff. We were drinking Keystone Light because they had a Keystone Light special. There was some Canadian whiskey with some Seagrams VO.

DRE: Oh my God.

JG: Yeah, that was for me because I like to drink it with coke.

DRE: Coca-Cola?

JG: Yes, I don’t like to partake in that other stuff.

DRE: Who said. Guys to get this thing done we have to go up to a cabin somewhere?

JG: I don’t really know because everybody wanted to do it. Ever since we recorded the last album we thought we should just do something cool like that. In the future we plan on doing it on weekends.

DRE: Oh really?

JG: But next time we might go to the Southwest because Michigan in the winter is so horrible. Unless you’re like into snow mobiling and beating people up or something. I don’t know. Where do you live?

DRE: I’m in New York City and it’s so frickin’ hot here right now.

JG: Is it?

DRE: It’s disgusting.

JG: We’re in Binghamton. It’s actually really nice right now but the weather here two days ago was like 93.

DRE: Yeah, this summer hasn’t been a lot of fun in that aspect. When you don’t want to go outside, that’s really bad.

JG: Did they give you air conditioning in your office?

DRE: I don’t have an office.

JG: You’re at home?

DRE: I’m working at home. So I do get air conditioning because I pay for it.

What is the writing process between you guys?

JG: We have a lot of different approaches, but usually it’s that someone will have an idea and we’ll get together with another person or we’ll all be at the practice space, or up north or whatever and then we’ll just show everybody the idea. Then we’ll jam on it for a little while. Then we’ll usually write a song. We usually fight about it for like three hours and then we’ll write another song around it and then we usually scrap the song. But once in a while we get a song out of it.

DRE: Is it the good kind of fighting?

JG: Yeah usually. We’re a total democracy in our band so a lot of times it ruins stuff, but most of the time it generally makes it a total amalgamation of everybody’s opinions. It’s pretty cool.

DRE: How did you decide that Marc [Paffi] gets to do the artwork?

JG: I think it’s because he was a fine arts major in college and no one else can really draw. There is a special connection between the artwork and the CD and his lyrics that makes it more personal.

DRE: Is the artwork personal for you to?

JG: I identify with it so it helps me get into the songs a little bit more. It brings everything together for me. The same things that inspire him inspire me.

DRE: The tone of this album shifts from hardcore to even emo-esque. Did you guys do that on purpose?

JG: We were never like “hey let’s put in a hardcore part here or let’s emo-esque it out.” Whatever comes out usually comes out and we kind of just do it. That’s kind of a lame answer I’m sorry.

DRE: That’s alright. It wasn’t that good of a question.

JG: Stop it. Stop beating up yourself. It’s not you it’s me.

DRE: What do you guys think of being compared to the popular bands out of Detroit right now?

JG: I don’t think we sound anything like those bands but if this helps us out, that’s fine with me. I’ve never met any of those people in my life, well actually I met one of the Von Bondies once before and they are a totally different thing from what we do. They’re all in that Detroit hipster crowd and they’ll go out and run around and go to the cool bars and stuff. We just sit in our houses, watch Braveheart and play poker.

DRE: Do you guys ever try to go out and be hip?

JG: We’re never home, all my clothes are old and I don’t have any money to buy new clothes. We did go out the other night when we were home and saw the Constantines play. They are my favorite band right now. At that show every single person in a band in Detroit was there which is pretty funny.

DRE: What did you guys do before you started playing music together when you were kids?

JG: We read a lot of comic books together.

DRE: You just sat there and read comic books.

JG: I was really into Sleepwalker which was kind of weird and I was really into X-Men and all the other X groups.

DRE: I remember Sleepwalker; they just brought him back.

JG: I stopped around issue 25. I had them all and I was like “people are going to keep beating me up all the time so I’d better stop and play guitar.”

DRE: Did you get more girls once you switched to music?

JG: Yes I did but I think also with it came the onset of puberty.

DRE: What made you guys say, it’s time to stop reading comic books and do a band?

JG: Guns N' Roses. It was pretty much like Ok Derek, you’re playing bass and Mike and John play guitar and we were going to be Guns N' Roses.

DRE: What Guns N' Roses album made you decide that?

JG: That was with Use Your Illusion 2. Ashley and Marc grew up in a different part of town and they were inspired by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

DRE: So you combined Guns and Roses and Red Hot Chili Peppers and got Bear vs. Shark?

JG: That was 7th or 8th grade and there was like seven or eight years in between before we actually formed the band which was kind of weird.

DRE: What are you guys doing to get yourselves to the next step or are you just doing the music the best you can?

JG: We’re really focusing on our live show right now. I think we’re all pretty satisfied with how the album turned out and I think that we just need to make sure that we have good shows. We want to bring energy to the live shows that we had when we wrote the songs. Were also trying to tour with different bands and get out to a wider audience.

DRE: I’m sure you guys get asked this a lot, but I couldn’t find it anywhere, what’s up with the name?

JG: I think we just thought it was pretty funny probably because we use humor in a lot of decisions that we make and Derek actually comes up with a lot of the names for us because he’s a master wordsmith. So it was either that or Dr. Dracula, so we figured on Bear vs. Shark.

DRE: I like Bear vs. Shark.

JG: Yeah, I think it’s pretty cool and people seem to like it.

DRE: Do you remember that episode of the Simpsons where the shark jumped up and ate the gorilla

JG: Which one was that?

DRE: It was the one where Lisa becomes a vegetarian and they’re watching a nature film and the shark jumps up and bites the gorilla. It was really funny.

JG: Is that the one where they take the boy to the meat factory.

DRE: Yeah, it’s the same video where they say it’s the natural course of things.

JG: I was just quoting the Simpsons yesterday, do you remember the one where they were at Hullabalooza?

DRE: Yeah with The Smashing Pumpkins.

JG: One of the kids in the audience was like “Oh this is really cool” and the other guy was like “Are you being sarcastic?” Then the original guy was like “I don’t even know anymore.” I try to use that quote as much as possible.

DRE: What do you know about SuicideGirls?

JG: Aren’t they the best hot naked girls on the internet?

DRE: Yeah they are.

JG: When I heard that you wanted to interview us, I was like totally stoked because you guys have a lot of hot chicks there. I think we actually met a girl in Montreal who did photos for us to put on the site. It was pretty awesome because she showed up with all these naked hot girls.


by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Bear+vs.+Shark/