Minus the Bear added to Wakarusa 2011 lineup

Seattle’s Minus the Bear has been added this summer’s Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival, a four-day annual event held 30 miles east of Fayetteville on Mulberry Mountain. This year’s festival takes place June 2-5, 2011.

Seattle rock band Minus the Bear will make an appearance at Wakarusa 2011.

As of Thursday morning, the news hadn’t made it onto the official Wakarusa website yet, but a wall post on the music festival’s Facebook page offered clues and invited fans to guess the name of the latest lineup addition Wednesday afternoon.

From the wall post:

It’s Waka Wednesdays! It’s time to guess our next artist addition.. Here are some clues: It’s an addition, but not a ‘plus’. It’s not “Smokey”, but, despite a few animals bearing a portion of this band’s name being spotted on the Mountain last year, this band wasn’t at the festival . . . who is it?

The clues were no match for Waka fans. Within a couple of minutes, the very first comment was posted and read “Minus the Bear.” Wakarusa staff confirmed the guess about an hour later.

For their fourth and most recent full-length album, “Omni,” Minus the Bear enrolled Grammy-winning producer Joe Chiccarelli (My Morning Jacket, The White Stripes, Counting Crows) to run the recording sessions.

Shortly after its release, “Omni” debuted at #9 on Billboard’s Top Alternative & Top Independent album charts, earning the band the #49 overall spot on the Top 200.

Wakarusa officials typically don’t announce the stage schedule for the festival until around April. When that information is available, or if more artists are announced before then, we’ll let you know.

» See the full Wakarusa 2011 lineup
» Visit wakarusa.com