Bellowing Bear with acoustic strings, sledgehammer melodies, and tear-jerking sounds of arrival.
A once-in-a-lifetime experiment gone right with musical shadow worker Levi Dean, blues/rock king Carlos Steele, and chill as a fan on high Steve Wild.
Been following Matthew (Matt) Culpepper since Day 2. Nora Madonna of FirebirdFM heard him first at Lizard Tail Industrial. Sent me a text “some guy is blowing up the stage” back in summer 2022. I wasn’t writing then.
I was running.
The beautiful thing about Bellowing Bear’s set at Sister Bar, and on this neurodivergent planet we live on, is that Bellowing Bear would not exist without the keen eye and ear of Levi Dean reaching out to Matt on Facebook some time in 2022, likely pulling him off the edge of self-destruction, and back into the music scene. Above ground.
Levi Dean can hear and sense things most humans can’t and Matt is living proof that a simple nudge (invitation) is all it takes to keep someone from going over the edge, kinda like Levi’s subtle music approach.
On the left side of the stage and high side of the sound spectrum, Levi performed a sparkling array of brilliant sounds while in his own world of gratitude and acceptance, playing his brand spanking new Pimentel hand-crafted mandolin.
Me, realizing the precious circle of life unfolding on the grand stage, right in front of me.
All of that while Carlos Steele comes in over the top with his haunting, diesel-engine-in-the-night growling harmonies and Steve Wild’s gently flowing stand up bass keeping us from falling over river’s edge. All of it while streaming in calm, articulated waters of empathy, compassion, and weirdness. A tidal wave of sound compacted with dense, authentic emotion swelled up both on stage and inside my soul.
I could’t finish the video. I chose not to finish the video. To see that punk ass kid from Centerville, TX not communicate a single effective spoken word to any human ever what was inside his torrent of a mind, rip the roof off the sky and shout to the rock gods “I ain’t dead yet you sumbitches” is to fully embrace the power of human art.
The release of human suffering.
For some, like Matt Culpepper, music is a vital conduit to the outside world. Unequivocally, without explanation, it is a release valve. Without that energy conduit, Matt, Levi, Carlos, Steve, and scores of others, know painfully well what happens inside a nuclear reactor that is not functioning properly. We’ve all seen Chernobyl.
Sister Bar was not the arrival, nor was it the destination for Bellowing Bear. Sister was the nudge to keep going.
To embrace the child that never made it out of Centerville.
Stringer