Minus the Bear really meant \u201cfarewell\u201d back in 2018. After nearly 20 years and six full-lengths and several EPs of confident, energetic indie rock, the Seattle-based band decided it was as good a time as any to walk away gracefully and on their own terms.<\/p>\n
After a goodbye tour, including a New Orleans stop at the House of Blues, the five members<\/a> played a final hometown show and parted ways to pursue other things: new music projects, old band reunions, visual art, small businesses and fatherhood. A live record of the farewell tour<\/a> released in 2021 was the last news from Minus the Bear for a while.<\/p>\n But when Las Vegas music festival Best Friends Forever hit up the band about reuniting for its first edition in 2024, it got the wheels turning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe decided not to do it, but it was a really good offer,\u201d vocalist-guitarist Jake Snider says. With guitarist Dave Knudson busy with a reunion of his mathcore band Botch, keys player Alex Rose in the U.K., bassist Cory Murchy in New Mexico and drummer Joshua Sparks in the Midwest, \u201cthe timing wasn\u2019t quite right.\u201d<\/p>\n Fall 2025 presented a much better opportunity. It\u2019s the 20th anniversary of Minus the Bear\u2019s watershed second album, \u201cMenos el Oso,\u201d<\/a> and the band is now on a reunion tour that\u2019s quickly selling out. It includes a New Orleans show at 8 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 19, at the Civic Theatre<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cDave did the Botch reunion, his hardcore band from back in the day, and seeing that made me open to the idea [of a reunion],\u201d Snider says. It was good to know the band still had the option \u2014 and the audience \u2014 for a tour, he adds.<\/p>\n