It’s not often a rock band will tour international stages across the world, including Japan and China, and have an opening line like “we are from Manotick, Ontario” – but then again, Hollerado is not your average, everyday rock band.
Since forming in the small, Ottawa valley town of Manotick in 2007, the Juno-nominated, fuzz-guitar and vocal harmony-driven rock foursome has done their best to stay true to their roots.
Having shared the stage with such renowned acts as Andrew W.K., The Stills and Jack White’s band The Dead Weather, the quickly burgeoning four-piece will play Communitea Café on Nov. 20.
Their rise in the Canadian rock scene has been swift and well-deserved from ceaseless touring, but the band has sometimes been criticized as having an early and unfair advantage over other up and comers.
After winning a 2009 radio contest called The Big Money Shot, at Live 88.5 in Ottawa, the small town troupe was handed a princely sum of $250,000 in contest winnings.
Currently touring on the strength of their second major album White Paint, which dropped in February, lead singer and guitarist Menno Versteeg has seen the evils of fast financial success and has done his best to keep his focus pure.
“Any battle of the bands can definitely be really lame,” Versteeg said. “Music is not a competition, you know. I mean (Live 88.5) helped a lot of bands to get a jumpstart on things… but they were giving away a quarter of a million dollars a year and that’s way more than most of the other indie bands in Canada would come close to making.”
After seeing a few contest winners mismanage such a large sum of money over a few years, Live 88.5 changed the big money shot first prize total to a more reasonable $5,000 and now offers industry based-help for artists.
Versteeg is thankful his band received the right guidance after winning such a substantial chunk of winnings.
“Most bands have no idea how to spend a quarter of a million dollars. You need to spend that properly and that contest has had a few success stories, but it’s had a couple of dismal failure stories, too, from giving a lot of money to bands who didn’t have the infrastructure to spend that money properly,” Versteeg added.
Overall, Versteeg and his bandmates are thankful for winning the contest and have seen the importance of money in success as a band.
Although artists don’t often like to talk about the almighty dollar, Versteeg knows that the cost of touring, making videos and mass-distributing your own music is not cheap.
“We had really good management, and we were on our way already, and we used that money to start our own record label, but we had people who know what they were doing, and they were helping us and that made all the difference”, he added.
Always using art as a channel for their music, Hollerado decided to make a video and to have a special launch party for the packaging and creation of White Paint.
The video features all of the band members and hundreds of friends, family and fans all adding a personal stroke of white paint to their new album covers.
“There is something great about that video – to have so many people in the same space working on one thing. It was a really good time. We threw a big party and had a big collaborative art project.”
Keeping a childlike, starry-eyed approach to art is important for Versteeg and his bandmates, as serious art can often carry a pretentious air with it.
“One criticism I often have is that being artistic or artsy is something that has to be taken so seriously, but I totally disagree with that. I think there are all different types of art. Sometimes it can be serious, but sometimes it can be playful,” Versteeg said.
Leaving their wives and loved ones behind, the band has experienced the struggles of touring on a first-hand basis, but they also love the adventures of the open road.
“There’s so much to love about it, but there’s so much to loathe about it,” he added.
“For the love, you can make really close friends, and we have friends all over the world that we’ve spent a few intense months or weeks with, and it’s really bonding to go through the same hardships and the same triumphs with people.”
Having travelled the world over, Versteeg and his raucous crew have a special fondness for Canmore.
“The trip across the country is gruelling, but Canmore is a place where we have many fond stories,” he said.
“We got holed up there once for a van breakdown at the Canmore Hotel, and we stayed three or four days longer than we were supposed to. There were some great people we met during that time – especially a guy with one eye and a Montreal Canadiens tattoo, and a shrine to the Canadiens in his bedroom.”
