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Anchorage’s Bearfoot to make Iowa debut at CSPS

By Steven Horowitz

Bearfoot’s latest CD, Doors and Windows, reached number one on Billboard magazine’s Bluegrass chart the week it was released. The only problem is, Doors and Windows is not a bluegrass album.

“We used to call ourselves Bearfoot Bluegrass, but we changed our name because we are not really a traditional bluegrass group,” founding member and guitarist Mike Mickelson says over the phone.

For one thing, Bearfoot does not have a banjo player. The group consists of Mickleson, Kate Hamre (acoustic bass), Mike Mickelson (guitar), Jason Norris (mandolin), Angela Oudean (fiddle) and Odessa Jorgensen (fiddle). 
All of the band members contribute vocals and are known to break out into a capella style singing during their shows. Still, Mickelson says they are music players first and foremost.

“We use string band instrumentation and create a fresh, new Americana-type sound that really doesn’t have a name,” Mickleson continues. “We don’t want to put a label on it because we our objective is to grow and do different things musically without being bound by genre limitations.”

Mickelson offers an example from Doors and Windows. The band covers The Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down.” Bearfoot changes the structure of the song so that a person has to listen carefully before realizing it’s a familiar Beatles track. Bearfoot does not offer a bluegrass interpretation of the tune, but does something different entirely.

“The only thing the same about the two songs are the words,” Mickelson says. “We even wondered if we should give the song a different title so as not to confuse people.”

The band met while working as summer camp counselors in Alaska, the state from where all the members but one originally hail from. Mickelson says Alaska enjoys a rich musical heritage because so few people who live there are natives.

“A lot of people in Alaska were born in other places. They came from ‘down south’ as we say, and they brought their instruments and cultures with them,” Mickelson notes. He was exposed to bluegrass, rock, country, folk, and music from all over when he was a child.

“And now we tour all over. Bearfoot has been together nine years and we’ve played many places in Europe and the United States,” Mickelson says. He notes that the Jan. 20 show at CSPS, 1103 Third St. SE Cedar Rapids, will be the first time the band has played in Iowa. (Tickets to the 8 p.m. concert are $14 in advance or $18 at the door.)

“Our immediate goal is to tour more and expand our audience,” Mickelson says. The band’s next gig after CSPS will be in Scotland. Mickelson says he especially looks forward to performing at Merlefest in North Carolina this spring and other big festivals in the summer.

Bearfoot has already won one of the most prestigious festival awards as the group was voted the Best Bluegrass Band at the esteemed Telluride music festival. The only problem with that, as Mickelson says, is that Bearfoot is not a bluegrass band.