Bearcoon Releases New Album

By Eric Gray (LBLN Contributor)
Long Beach, California

Bearcoon, Long Beach musical group who began forming in the summer of 2012 has announced the release of their new album “Laminak” after the wild success of there first album, “El Guapo,” which hit #1 on the Amazon.com “Hot New Releases” chart in June 2015.

“Laminak” which comprises of tracks from musical duo Andrea Walker & Solange Igoa also has musical contributions from local musicians Antoine Arvizu from the Compound Studio on drums for the songs (“Portland”), (“Ships”), (“Until You’re Mine”), Lily Stretz on bass, Matt Cohn on keys for the song (“Ships”) and Candra Jakeem also on drums for the song (“Until You’re Mine”).

“Laminak,” Andrea Walker describes,  “is a collection of old and new songs. “Until You’re Mine” was one I wrote in an afternoon about 5 years ago. I wrote “Holes” while we were in San Diego last spring and “Portland” was written in the fall of 2015. Solange wrote “Apparitions” while we were still living in our apartment in Long Beach and i wrote “Ships” the week after we won Buskerfest in 2014.”

Over the past year before releasing “Laminak,” Bearcoon hit the road touring many cities across the United States from Bakersfield, San Diego, Santa Cruz,  and San Francisco, CA,  to Portland, Ashland, and Eugene, OR, through cities in Virginia,  North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Andrea Walker describes their whirlwind year of touring and recording in her own words, “Exactly one year ago Solange and I were frantically rebuilding the interior of our van. We’d spent 7 rainy weeks in Portland with a bunch of leaks in the roof and by the time we made it south again we had a variety of molds growing on nearly every surface in the van. We had 2 1/2 weeks to get the job done, a limited budget, and some very basic carpentry skills. But we hunkered down and got it done and came down to Long Beach to play some gigs around town and in San Diego also. We tried to start recording in February but we were both pretty sick from the mold so we weren’t really able to start recording until the early summer. We spent the early summer touring up and down the coast. We spent April May and June gigging and playing festivals (we headlined the LB Green Prize Festival, played Joshua Tree Music Festival, and also Psychic Faire in Bakersfield). We spent July hanging out in Oregon and playing shows around Portland. In August we made our way back to SoCal and decided last minute to throw a surprise EP release party at the Compound Studio. It sold out in less than 24 hrs and we did a preliminary release of the EP at the show. Then we took off for the east coast! We spent Sept gigging around Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. We spent the month of October busking, playing shows, and hanging out in Asheville, NC. We left the east coast in early November and headed back up to Portland. We opened for the Posies in Portland, played some gigs around town, and made our way back south. We spent Thanksgiving in Bakersfield with Solange’s family and landed in Long Beach the first week of December. We played 8 Long Beach gigs in December and played a killer new years party too (The Official New Years Eve Long Beach Banger). I think that just about sums it up….”

Laminak is available for download at CD Baby, iTunes, and Amazon with physical copies available online.

Here’s a video and song from Bearcoon’s travels through California and Oregon called “Waking Eyes”: