Whenever my mind turns to a band I want to see, my thoughts invariably turn to Bear Mountain Picnic. It’s unfortunate that my thoughts do so since the band broke up well over two years ago. Like a lost loved one they stay in my thoughts. Their only release, a five song EP called Happiness in the Dybosphere, remains in my constant rotation and their songs rank as some of the best driving around music of all time. 
The band’s name is owed to the song from the Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, volume 1. “Bear Mountain Picnic,” the song, comically details a man who purchases phony tickets for a phony event and the eventual letdown. Bear Mountain Picnic, the band, matched the attitude of this song beat for beat.
The group wrote true blue indie-rock songs on par with the Black Lips or Wowee-Zowee-style Pavement. The songs were well constructed snippets with vocal arrangements that seemed to come right out of Big Pink. The band declares on “Silent Trade,” the opening song on Happiness in the Dybosphere:
My father was a military man/he went down in a blaze of glory
I’d like to tell you everything about him/but it’s just too gory of story
A short moment later they nail a great melody over a Dylan-esque guitar part on “Brain Tonic” and then merge that folk guitar with a strong Pixies influence on “Your Cousin’s Neck.”
Many of the band’s finest songs don’t appear on the EP. At live shows they broke out classics that teetered on the edge of pure punk before falling back into pure indie-rock. The most memorable of that group was “Bear Mountain Picnic Blues,” a song the band used to open sets shortly before the break up. The song gave a quirky twist on the band’s ‘current’ situation—most noticeably being blacklisted from the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor.
The band members have carried on. Reagan (bass and vocals) carries on in the acoustically geared Long Whisker and Lucas (guitar and vocals) has moved onto the Chicago scene where he plays in Hospital Garden. The results of both bands are great and worth hearing, but if you build a time machine set it for Detroit between 2003 and 2005.
Track Listing:
01. Brain Tonic
02. Gold
03. Headlines
04. Silent Trade
05. Your Cousin’s Neck
Bear Mountain Picnic: website | myspace
Come see the reunion show December 26th!
712 Emmet St. in Ypsilanti!