Rising Stars: Meet the Bear Fighters of Midtown-ish KCMO

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bobby Evans, of The Kansas City Bear Fighters.

Hi Bobby, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Quinn, Sean’s older brother, had been in bands throughout the 90’s but took a break for school. Sean and I had also been in bands when we were going to school in lawrence. Quinn finished right around the time that Sean and I had both finished college as well. So we were all bandless, done with school, just working jobs and kinda hanging out looking for something to do. One night we realized that Quinn had been writing all these great songs the whole time and we should start a band. None of us were really comfortable with the massive amount of equipment it takes to play rock n’ roll, so we decided to just play acoustic instruments and go from there. Mark just kinda showed up – I really can’t remember how we met him but he could really rip on multiple instruments, so we needed him. We played our first show at Mike Kelly’s Westsider as “The Denver Broncos.” That name only lasted a few months – turns out drunk dudes REALLY hate the The Denver Broncos no matter how fun your concert is.

I (Bobby) moved away for like 10 years and the band kept on. They added Jeff Williams on guitar and Grant Buell on keys who both helped usher in some much needed expertise both musically and technically. Together they played a ton of shows and recorded some voluminous albums – one of which was never released, sadly. It seemed like Quinn got even more inspired to write music when the band got to playing and recording regularly so they just cranked out songs year after year – even when Quinn and his wife moved to Springfield, MO for two years. I moved back in 2019 and they invited me to play percussion and that’s the lineup that we’ve had for the last 5 years. Quinn’s been steadily writing songs and exploring new musical inspiration the entire time – it’s almost scary how much music he will write.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
“I like to play”
– Garth Algar

We all have jobs and families and other stuff going on. We really just have fun with it and make sure that we’re putting our enjoyment first. I don’t know how the dynamics in other bands are but the hardest part for US is scheduling shows and stuff around the rest of our lives. Obviously, getting “exposure” or turning the music into a job can be really difficult and there seems to be a massive amount of luck involved. We never really bothered with that end of it. Just trying to have music in our lives and play in a way that we all find engaging is the top priority. Everything else is very much an afterthought. If we put out merch, for example, it’s because Sean has a fun idea for a shirt that he thinks we’ll all be proud of, not for any sort of money making or notoriety angle.

For example, we’re about to make a shirt that just says “Metal, Satan, Weed, and Crime.” Why? Because it’s hilarious – and it’s also some lyrics from a new song. So, there’s a connection to the music, but it’s also just funny and fun to make that shirt.

TLDR – we do it because we like it, that’s it and that’s all.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an urban planner. I specialize in transportation safety and bicycle pedestrian infrastructure.
Quinn’s a social worker. He’s worked with refugees and folks with disabilities for 20+ years.
Grant is a structural engineer. Way too smart.
Sean is a web designer. He wins awards for these websites all the time!
Mark runs a business with his family. He’s kinda retired now and we’re all jealous.
Jeff is a stay at home dad with a ton of really cool hobbies. He can do anything, seriously.

Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I guess this kinda ties back to a previous answer – we’re doing this because we find it to be enjoyable. If we want to start playing a different style of music or something, we just do it. Our process is so collaborative that no matter what we do it’s going to be filtered through all of our minds and come out as a Bear Fighter song. We’re not famous so we don’t have to think about things in terms of maintaining a certain amount of notoriety or please anyone other than ourselves. In a certain way that allows us to do things that might seem risky, maybe (IDK), because our only real goal is to enjoy ourselves. Hopefully, then, that comes through in the music – you can’t fake the funk, right?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kcbearfighters.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kcbearfighters/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kcbearfighters/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgXzOJ-e9NpVnn3NLbvD49w
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/quinn1-1