Bobbyisms: Hollerado taking music beyond the headphones

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: CHRISTIAN JAGGI
Hollerado makes a stop at Call The Office on September 27.

I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. At the risk of stating the obvious, there is so much more to making a career in music than simply writing and playing songs. The irony is that these days artist marketing usually falls squarely on the shoulders of the individual artist themselves; music is important, but the amount of hype surrounding an act and the number of people they draw to their concerts are still important factors in capturing and holding a record label's attention.

Essentially, you show me a band that has built itself a strong following and proven ticket sales record and I'll show you a band that will interest a record label. In the current musical climate more than ever before, the emphasis is placed on the strength of the concert experience itself, and captivating acts will resonate more strongly in our hearts and minds than others.

Few bands embody that concept more than Hollerado. Originally hailing from Ottawa, this fourpiece band has been shaping and honing their sound since 2007, a relatively young career for the impact they've made in touring and entertaining audiences across the county. This February Hollerado released their sophomore full-length album White Paint, with the lead single “Pick Me Up.”

They return to Call The Office on September 27 with label-mates PUP, who themselves are fast approaching their debut release on October 8 from Hollerado's label Royal Mountain Records.

For years, the band — frontman Menno Versteeg shares guitar duty with Nixon Boyd, accompanied by Dean Baxter on bass and Jake Boyd on drums — have been finding innovative ways to take their music out of the headphones and beyond the stage, like the large-scale paint party they threw to aid in hand-painting their new albums, enlisting their friends to paint 10,000 CDs and 2,000 vinyl packages over a few days.

“A lot of it we do out of necessity. We don't want to hire someone to do it,” Versteeg explained, pointing out that the band's do-it-yourself spirit is well-suited to infusing their personality into promotions. “A lot of the things we do ourselves, we don't really know how to do; we don't design T-shirts as a business, so they come out with our spin on things, unintentionally, because we don't really know how to properly do the task we're doing.”

“There is one thing we have hired out to a professional, and that's accounting,” he laughed. “We don't want to mess that up, but everything else we try to do ourselves because that's an extension of our music. Everything that we do is an extension of the art that we're trying to make.”

That art certainly extends beyond music; their recent video for “So It Goes” is a long-form documentary-style video that relates an account of Versteeg's grandfather Karel back in Holland and the life-saving compassion he was shown by one of his captors.

Versteeg has made appearances on television programs like Canada AM and The National with Peter Mansbridge, telling the story of his song of tribute and how it became a journey of remembrance and moving source of closure.

Hollerado began the tour earlier this month in Ontario, including an indelible gig on September 13 before a packed audience at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. According to Versteeg, the band spent time rehearsing their set leading up to the tour working on live arrangements and bringing their album to life on stage.

“We intentionally tried not to use keyboards on this album,” Versteeg explained. “We wanted to see if we could generate some of those same ideas that you get when you listen to dance music and electro pop — they have those big buildups and drops, and we wanted to try and use some of those influences without using the same instrumentation. It was a fun challenge to try to build some of those sounds just using guitars. They get mistaken for keyboards, but they're not.”

Not ones to remain idle, Versteeg hinted that while the band is still in the middle of promoting White Paint, Hollerado is also experimenting with new ideas for their next release. “We're definitely wanting to move forward, and we're already working on new ideas that we want to play, but we don't want to play every show and play a bunch of songs no one has heard.”

For more on Hollerado or the So It Goes Tour, visit hollerado.com online or follow along on Twitter @hollerado. Advance tickets for their show at Call The Office with PUP are $10, available through ticketscene.ca. This show is licensed/all ages, doors open at 9 p.m.

For more of the latest music news, views and concert previews, consider following this column on Twitter @fsu_bobbyisms. Fun fact: White Paint was named in this column back in January by members of PUP as the album they're looking most forward to in 2013. Don't miss this show! I'm out of words.