Bringing hard-core music to Rockdale County, the seven-member Heroic Bear, works very hard for the passion they have for their music. Heroic Bear brought Rockdale News up to speed with their recently with an interview.
What are some of your musical or non-musical inspirations?
Thomas George: A lot of our lyrics are based off of art and poetry, so I guess that would be our non-musical inspirations.
Austin Clark. I can tell you what we’re not, we’re not 'Woah! Is me'. John Mayer is my biggest influence.
Josh Lucas: My biggest influence would definitely have to be Tony Royster Jr., Jay-Z’s drummer. He is literally the best drummer in the world.
Jaten Dimsdale: Jason Vena from the band Acceptance and Jesse Hampton; they got me into music solely, man.
Thomas George: I met a guy a long time ago named George Hamlon. He got me into the whole music scene, and he pretty much told me to start playing the guitar.
Eli Adams: The dude from Chiodos, Bradley Bell.
Rashene Mincy: I actually have three people who have inspired me… Mod Sun, Miles Davis, and Victor Wooten.
How was the band formed?
Jaten Dimsdale: I met Thomas George and Jamil Bridges at a church event. I was just singing, man, and they wanted me to come in and jam with them, and we ended up making a song. I was like, dude, we need to start a band, and the next day we met Jalin and Rashene. We have had a thousand different line-ups since then. Now we have these guys.
Who writes the songs and music?
Thomas George: I’ve written most of the songs so far, and Jalin has written music too. Jaten has been helping me with music writing; his mind is a musical genius
What are most of the lyrics about?
Thomas George: One thing I really drew inspiration from is Renee Margaret, an artist who paints about how no one is really who they say they are. He is a surrealist. I take the lyrics and apply them to my regular life. Our lyrics are applicable to emotions and forgiveness even.
How far do you plan on going with this?
Heroic Bear: We want to go all the way.
Josh Lucas: We are all very passionate about music, and we are not going to do anything else in our lives but this. So we are all definitely going to hit this as hard as possible, and going to try to get somewhere with this, you know? We want to tour the entire world, that’s our dream.
Jaten Dimsdale: Like John Mayer said, “Anybody who had a fall back plan had a dream once and was too scared to chase it.”
