A.J Bear

AJ was lucky enough to be born in a highly artistic musically skilled family. His Dad used to play a lot of drums to Classic Hard Rock. He had a big 10 piece Pearl kit, music was always on the families collective brain. He watched as his older brother David learned to play drums like his dad by age 10. So Slowly he fell in love with Guitar by 12 or 13 playing at school, with best or close friends and at summer camp a lot. He played in band like environments playing as a lead singer and bassist or guitarist and singer depending on my peers and their style. This happened a lot from around age 16/17 to about 24 gaining lot song writing and live performing experience. He also played solos shows at open mic events in the later years performing acoustic comedy songs covers and originals as well as collaboration performances with other well experienced musicians. In 2011, he composed his first home studio album produced entirely from GarageBand. Although the quality wasn't the greatest as he didn't have additional equipment like mics or an Interface to improve the sound quality. It was still great experimenting with keyboards added as well. He composed a collaboration project with his brother and an opera singer in 2014, the band was called Artistica. Both times David performed drum tracks only and created the album cover.He composed, wrote the lyrics, guitar and bass tracks, Alex produced the tracks and performed the vocals tracks. It was a bit of an improvement in quality as were working with a computer interface device and could control sound levels more accurately. In the last few years he has been playing and recording with his brother on bass guitar, his dad on drums and backup vocals and himself on lead/rhythm guitar and lead vocals. The band is called Son dance, they have at least 25 covers give or take and a few originals with more always on the go and always being tweaked, sometimes a song is never finished. The best example being the song No Penny from the earlier Artistica album he composed was refinished, rewritten and morphed into a new song for my latest album called Chit Coffee.
He has had 3 different clients teaching them guitar. The first one started when he was 18 where he was teaching basic chords, simple melodies and naming open and fretted notes. In 2009, 2016 and 2019 he taught guitar lessons to various clients and sometimes kids learning chords, strumming patterns, reading tablature and level 1 basic lead guitar techniques. On top of all these musically endeavors he was recently hired in late 2021 to teach beginners acoustic guitar for a 15 year old.
Since 2017 he has been recording albums at home and releasing them on sound cloud and for sale on his website. It’s been quite a process of writing, composing and producing. He is also investing in another portable speaker so he can play background tracks that he composed and covers in behind him while he plays lead guitar and vocals over top and blending together. This gives the illusion of a full band with just one guy. He has had a little success busking at giant outdoor festivals like Super art crawl and continues to perform at open mics and network his solo career. This is happening while also playing bass guitar and backup vocals in a cover band which also features his brother Dave on drums. This is a band of friends he joined back in April 2019 called Hotmess. They just finished awesome gigs into early 2020. Currently in 2020 he is back to being a solo and or a duo act. His focus now is home composing recordings, producing and performing originals and covers. He has been creating YouTube, Rumble, Instagram, Facebook and Sound cloud content. He is working on getting more exposure to the music industry and evolving his recognition in the community busking at festivals. AJ says his first big accomplishment to be proud of in this context was having an article written about himself and his musical endeavors in the 2012 Greater Hamilton Musician magazine. With his current experience level and wide range of originals and cover songs under his belt, he will be ready for more gigs in a variety of different set ups indoors and out. He had some amazing gigs busking in Niagara lately and he was featured in a scroll like fun newsletter for June 2021 produced from another anonymous busker for me on the spot. In the 6 full days throughout that summer he played and his average income ranged $170 to $230 for a 6 to 8 hour day.
He is always brainstorming original riffs for songs and he traditionally writes the lyrics last for his songs. He has recently released over the last couple of months a full length album titled Higher Dimensions. Released on Spotify, ITunes, YouTube music and Band camp as well. This album best reflects the range of inspirations within quite a few sub-genres within Rock music that he loves so much.