LEO BEAR CREEK
Feature: 6.3SE
Music
I SEE PARIS, I SEE FRANCE
wordsby saelan twerdy photosby fred mortagne
In a small town in France, there’s a 15-year-old mini-troubador playing the left-handed ukelele. He’s got at least three bands (Bear Creek, Antsy Pants, and Coming Soon), and one of them was on the soundtrack to Juno. Is he the coolest kid in France, or the whole world? Photos by Fred Mortagne.
In a small town in France that he calls Kidderminster (maps call it something else), there lives a 15-year-old boy named Leo. He’s a mini-troubador who specializes in drums and the left-handed ukelele, and you might already have heard one of his songs, recorded with Kimya Dawson and her husband as a group called Antsy Pants, on the soundtrack to Juno. Leo’s first band (formed when he was only 12) was called Bear Creek, and he and his pal Alex also have a band called the Matching Cubes, but his main project at the moment is playing drums and singing in Coming Soon, a band he formed wih his older brother Ben Lupus and a bunch of their mutual friends. Their music is sweet and naive, wry and dirty, and sung in English – they grew up on British and American music and, as everybody knows, rock music just doesn’t sound right en francais. It’s got an effortless cool that’s half Gallic charm and half Strokes-y self-confidence, but it’s as unpretentious as your average 9-year-old, full of dirty jokes and a quirky sense of fun that recalls their friends in the Moldy Peaches. They’re touring all over France this summer, and their debut album, New Grids is out now on the French label Kitchen. Leo took some time to talk about what it’s like living the rock n’ roll dream before you’re old enough to drive.
