Couch Potatoes// Living Room Songs

COUCH POTATOES//LIVING ROOM SONGS PRESENT: BLACK BEAR COMBO

The snow was falling hard on the far north side when I came upon the big empty garage where half of the Black Bear Combo was grilling bratwursts, hamburgers and veggies on wooden skewers. Working around the charcoal grill, the three guys (all bearded) and intriguing-looking girl (more on her later) were dressed for early fall in t-shirts with the occasional thin button down thrown on top. The intriguing-looking girl wore some sort of mating of pants and skirt.

See, Black Bear Combo, the Balkan marching band (yeah, you heard that right) from Rogers Park, wanted to do a living room song in style. The Dad of a few band members (maybe just one? They all kinda acted like brothers so it was unclear whether any actual brotherhood, genetics-wise, was going down) owns a storage/moving company and was happy to host a little cookout/hootenanny on a blustery day (a day when everyone really needed some hootenanny) with fans, brats, beer and Balkan marching music in a big old cement room surrounded by abandoned pianos and the strangest dark stacks of miscellany.

Incidentally, the space is also where Black Bear Combo records their stunning records.

Over the course of the day I ate lots of meat smothered in grilled tomatoes, saw the intriguing-looking girl doing insanely difficult looking yoga with Black Bear Combo members, met a chain-smoking eighty-year old huddled by a little analog TV who seemed uninterested in all the goings on, and filmed a great live set—which Black Bear Combo graciously did fully and twice for me.

—jack