Bear's Den: Beards, banjos and booze

Forty-five minutes from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, along a Dutch motorway,through a small town bristling with parked bikes, down a narrow road shrouded by trees, I find Bear's Den. The west London-based trio are bunkered in Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum. They've been here for almost a month, but this is their last night before heading home.

“We wanted to write some songs,” says Andrew Davie, known to everyone as Davie. “And in London it's quite difficult to find affordable places. And also, if you actually say 'we're away now”, you're not actually able to do or go to anything. We're out of the game for a bit.“

The guitarist/vocalist speaks from over-itinerised experience. Behind Bear's Den: more than two years of gigging, climaxing in a busy summer festival run, promoting Islands. Their wondrous, harmonised, banjo-dusted debut album has turned into a slow-rising, word-of-mouth success since its release last October. The other upshot of their summer ubiquity: the recent appearance of Norwegian banjoist/vocalist Joey Haynes in Grazia's Chart of Lust. Which, of course, is a sure sign that Bear's Den have entered mainstream culture in all the most meaningful ways.

Ahead of the neo-folkie trio a week of rehearsals, then the start of their biggest yet European tour. The trek climaxes with their largest UK gig, a sell-out show at London's 3,500 capacity Roundhouse. Also ahead of them (although they don't know this yet): the playlisting of gently rousing new single Elysium at Radio 1, Radio 2 and 6Music. What Grazia foretold, BBC radio have emphatically underlined – the hirsute, comfortably dressed Bear's Den have quietly crossed over. The dread descriptor “organic” is, alas, unavoidably appropriate.

So this month-long retreat offers a respite, and a chance for Davie, Haynes and drummer/vocalist, Kev Jones, to woodshed new songs ideas. Davie explains that they found Hilversum via friends in Dutch band Causes. “The main rooms at Wisseloord are these enormous, spaceship-style studios,” notes Davie, although Bear's Den's allotted space is more appropriately cosily downhome. “So we're lucky to find a space deep in the woods, somewhere very secluded, which is exactly what we needed – from a creative perspective, and as people as well. It's been a crazy couple of years.”

Bear's Den emerged from the same west London pub/folk scene as Mumford & Sons, Noah & The Whale and Laura Marling. Jones, 37, and Davie, 27, knew each other, and all those other musicians, from hanging out at Fulham pub the Bosun's Locker.

“Everyone was in a band watching other bands – and no one knew what they were doing,” recalls Davie with a laugh. “It was like a university for everyone – 'this is where we're gonna learn how to play music and be in bands.'” We're talking in a tapas bar in Hilversum. After a month on their own in the woods, the relief at having new people to talk to radiates from the lonely threesome's faces. Multiple celebratory beers are in order. “The capacity of the Bosun's Locker was maybe 40, and 35 of them are now in bands,” continues Jones. “A lot of really interesting people seemed to congregate in this one place at one time.”

Another result of this boozy, let's-do-the-show-right-here ethos was the establishing of Communion, a label founded by Jones, Mumford & Sons' Ben Lovett and producer Ian Grimble. It's a busy, successful operation (Michael Kiwanuka and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic are two of their acts), not least because Bear's Den are signed to it too. But Jones cheerfully denies that he ever has arguments with himself about how much video budget or tour support his band are allowed by his label. “By the time we formed Bear's Den, there were enough people working at the label so that I could make it separate. There's no conflict of interest,” he insists.

Islands is a lovely, atmospheric, big-city British folk(ish) record. That is, there's no faux Americana nor try-hard barn-dance exuberance, only robust melodies and heartfelt vocals. The tunes just happen to be picked out here and there on banjo. But unlike old friends and peers Mumford & Sons, who now seem embarrassed about their use of the instrument (even though the band's Winston Marshall sports a banjo tattoo), the Bear's Den trio are unbothered.

“I have no shame,” shrugs Haynes. “And I'm so much worse on the banjo than Winston is, but I don't care. We all really like the sound of it. It has quite a sad sound. And maybe playing it in a slightly less traditional way maybe brings out less of the bluegrass, old-time vibe.”

Similarly, they say the “limitations” wrought by being a threepiece in fact mean the opposite. “It forces us to be creative,” says Davie of a line-up in which all the members are multi-instrumentalists. “No one in the band is just doing the part that's really boring that someone has to do. To make our songs work, so they're even close to being OK, we all have to work our asses off.”

In that regard, after two years' gigging workalcoholicism, is this month's UK tour a valedictory victory lap? The stoutly affable, engagingly mellow men of Bear's Den shudder at such bumptiousness. “We're just always overwhelmed by it all,” grins Davie as the final beers are drained. “But at the same time, when you put out your first album, it's really scary – you have no real idea what's gonna happen. But every show on every tour we've done – playing to 10 people, then 20 people, then 50, then 100 – it's never, ever gone a step out of sync. It's always felt very natural. So while somewhere as big as the Roundhouse feels very alien to us, actually it is also the logical next step.” µ

'Elysium' is out now. Bear's Den play Bristol Trinity Centre 25 October, Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms 26 October and London Roundhouse 27 October