The first official word, after some “Oh my gosh what could this be about??” social media teasers was the announcement as part of the Best Friends Forever festival. Initially, the festival reached out to the Minus the Bear guys for its inaugural year, but guitarist Dave Knudson was already on the reunion tour circuit with his first band, the much beloved math-hardcore band Botch, and thought two reunion tours would be a little much. But, the idea was intriguing, and they figured they could try again the next year with an album anniversary to anchor it to.
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But that wasn’t part of the band’s larger plan. They really were done.
The final hometown farewell at Seattle’s Showbox in 2018 really was a farewell, and not in an LCD Soundsystem way. No “indefinite hiatus,” or anything noncommittal that some bands do. It needed to be a clean break.
“We needed this to be over and final, and I think if we had done an indefinite hiatus, there would have been, like, mentally, in each of our minds, ‘When are we gonna pick up the phone again? Are we gonna do it?’” says Knudson from his Seattle home. “But there was zero intention of this happening until like a year or so, a little more. So it feels weird to resurrect the band again.”
Weird, but good weird. When the band said goodbye, it wasn’t destroying anything, just setting it down. There wasn’t the intention of picking it back up, but it was always there. And the fans certainly didn’t go anywhere.
Minus the Bear wasn’t one of those bands famous for its infighting or volatile relationships. But it doesn’t mean that they were immune to the normal tensions that arise from being in close quarters together for as long as they have. Knudson recognizes the cliche of comparing the members to brothers who might fight sometimes—not quite at Gallagher level, obviously—but ultimately love each other and pull in the same direction.
But they were brothers who had other things going on in life—spouses, kids, dreams outside of Minus the Bear—and those were things they wanted to put 100% of their focus on. That meant there couldn’t even be a fraction of a percentage wondering if and when the band would come back. No sitting at the dinner table with family, watching Little League practice, working on projects far from the Seattle HQ with the annoying gnat of “Hey, enjoy this now because you’re on tour for four months again soon,” or “Hey, why aren’t you thinking of new material for a new album? Chop chop.”
So when the opportunity presented itself with Best Friends Forever festival—one of the many festivals around the country peddling millennial nostalgia—it felt like it could work.
Now Minus the Bear can exist as something that the guys can pick up again without the pressures of promoting new albums on tour, worrying about record labels, or climbing any music industry ladders. They can connect with the fans who they know will show up to hear the Menos songs (along with others across the catalog). They can spend this time together in this capacity again.
Knudson, for one, recognizes the magic of revisiting the band at this stage in life, enough removed from the final Showbox show and having experienced personal growth in the interim.
“It’s amazing that we get to go back and do this,” he says. “I guess one thing for me is that I’m at the point where I just want to, like, live my life to the fullest and do as much positive stuff with my life as I can.”
Knudson, now five years sober, relishes the idea of revisiting the acrobatic guitar parts on Menos (many of which require triggering samples on multiple pedals while he taps away on the fretboard) with a clearer mind.
“Being sober for over five years, I want to be able to live my life in a way that will make my son proud, and I want to live my life in a way where I’m bringing people excitement and hope and energy,” he says. “It’s fun for me to be able to go back and know that I’m going to be playing all these wonderful songs for people completely present and sober, and in the moment instead of, like—I mean, I was really excellent at playing guitar when I was pretty drunk, but being sober and playing guitar, I’m gonna be fucking unstoppable.”
The world is different than it was when Minus the Bear left it back in 2018. But it’s also amazing to Knudson and the rest of the guys in Minus the Bear to see how much is still the same, like when Knudson called about the rehearsal space where they spent more than a decade working out songs in Seattle’s Belltown area, and the woman on the line told him that the same room they had always used was available if they wanted it.
“Each of us walking back into this room where we had written, like, many records—just like, oh, my god, I can’t believe we’re in the exact same place in the exact same building doing the same thing, but in this new world with a new appreciation,” he says. “We get to do this awesome, awesome tour for ourselves and each other and our families and our fans. So it’s just all these little things that are just putting little bows on it all over the place.”
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