Getting to Know… Bear Witness | Interview 🎤

For Interview #16 in our ‘Getting to Know’ series, we ‘chew the phat’ with Matt Georgiou, the frontman of UK alternative band Bear Witness.

It’s been a while, but The Musical Hype is back with a brand-new, ‘fresh to death’ interview for you.  For the 16^th artistic interaction gracing the site, we’ve enlisted UK alternative rock band Bear Witness. Bear Witness is comprised of Matt Georgiou (lead vocals and guitar), his brother, Alex Georgiou (drums), and Liam Mead (bass).  Without further ado, here is Interview #16 with frontman Matt Georgiou, who gives us the goods on the rising collective.

Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype (BF): Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes Bear Witness distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

Matt Georgiou, Bear Witness (MG): I’d say the main thing that makes us unique is our variety. We all enjoy a huge range of music and that really comes through in the songs we write. All the music comes under the bracket of alternative rock, but each track definitely has its own personality, whether it be heavier, moodier, more introspective or funky etc., as often each one is inspired from completely different things.

We also pride ourselves in really trying to craft songs that wouldn’t sound out of place in our favorite albums. We write a lot and so filter everything to only the songs we are incredibly excited by. We want our music to really resonate with people, along with having some strong riffs and catchy melodies!

BF: Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Bear Witness form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

MG: Me and my brother [Alex] formed the band in 2014 when the band we were in at the time was effectively falling apart. The singer had been really unreliable and so, it kind of destabilized everything, and made it very hard to organize practices. We decided to start a band as the two of us with the focus being on making the best songs possible.

Our goal has always been to get to a position where we can live off of the music we make. It would be amazing to do our passion for a living.

BF: Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

MG: I think our goals are a bit more realistic now. When we started, we were determined that if we weren’t the biggest band in the world it would be considered a failure. Don’t get me wrong, we would love to be the biggest band in the world, but now we’d be satisfied with having a good fanbase and being able to live off our music.

BF: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

MG: We have loads of influences, some of our favorite artists are: Muse, Highly Suspect, Queens of the Stone Age, Jeff Buckley, Nothing but Thieves, Kings of Leon, Nirvana and Prince. You can hear the Prince influence in our single “Dreams of Fame”, the funky guitar throughout the verses was inspired strongly from Prince’s Kiss era. Nirvana have been a large influence song dynamic wise, we love making choruses big and catchy and amplifying the effect with quieter verses. Melodically we’ve been heavily inspired by bands like Kings of Leon and Nothing but Thieves, they really show you can craft strong, soulful melodies that contain hooks and connect strongly with people without sacrificing the power and edge that rock music has.

BF: Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.  

MG: There was one gig where we bumped into what can only be described as our band’s doppelgängers, literally three people together who were the spitting image of us, very surreal. It wasn’t the other band, now that would have been really weird.

BF: Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

MG: Favorite released song would be “Dreams of Fame”, it’s just so much fun to play live, everyone starts dancing and just has a good time. Favorite song would be “Perfect Living”, it’s coming out on the 18^th January 2019 and we’re so excited about it! It has this energy to it that is so infectious, and the hook in the chorus is amazing, whenever we play it live everyone starts bouncing around and singing along.

BF: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

MG: Me and my brother Alex are actually related to George Michael, haha. According to my Dad, He was his second cousin or something – pretty crazy.

BF: Closing this thing out, what is you/your band currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

MG: We’re releasing our next single “Perfect Living” on the 18^th of January in 2019. We’re very excited about it and I firmly believe it’s the best song we’ve ever written. The music video is also so cool! The camera is POV throughout and so adds an interesting twist on a music video, we’ve tried to make it more of a film than a music video. We will then be releasing a bunch of singles throughout the year and an EP in the summer.

BF: Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward.   

MG: Thank you so much!

Bear Witness Socials: Website • Facebook • Instagram • YouTube