Manotick based rock band Hollerado likes to do something different every time they tour.
On their upcoming tour, which brings them to Average Joes, Sept. 19, with Wildlife and Young Rivals they want to meet as many mayors of the cities they are playing as possible.
“It started as a joke really,” observed bassist Dean Baxter. He was surprised by the response to the idea, which came about as a result of discussions with bandmates, guitarist Nixon Boyd, vocalist Menno Versteeg and drummer Jake Boyd, particularly the fact they received responses from about a dozen mayors, including Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi who was the first to jump on board and kickstarted a wave of interest.
They will be asking the mayors five questions:
1. What is the most fun thing you have ever got to do as mayor?
2. If you could have lunch with another mayor of any city in the world, living or dead, who would it be?
3. Mayor Quimby or Mayor West? why?
4. How do you get to work every day?
5. Who is your favourite local band?
And to ensure the questions aren’t all generic, they are putting out a call to their fans in each city for city-specific questions about the local arts scene and other important issues to the residents. Then they will post the answers on their blog.
“We’re hoping to get some audience participation so we ask the right questions, the questions that aren’t too generic,” he said.
“ We haven’t had a lot of response to that yet. We’ve been so busy just organizing things for the tour, but we’ll contact people we know in the cities for questions,” he continued.
“We posted it on Twitter and next thing we knew, everybody picked up on it,” he said.
Mayor Rajko Dodic was one of the mayors who responded to the band‘s request for an interview.
“We’re looking forward to it. It should be fun. We hope he’ll come to the show. We want to bring him up on stage,” Baxter said.
Mayor Rajko Dodic, who plays guitar, said if they do bring him on stage, he might surprise them.
“ I get tonnes of invitations for events, but I’ve never got one from a band who wants to meet the mayor, so I said ‘What the heck, it might be fun.’ I just hope they don’t punk me,” Dodic said.
While he didn’t know anything about Hollerado, he checked out the link they sent him and was impressed.
“I’ll be interested to see how many mayors respond,” Dodic said.
He said he didn’t receive the list of questions in advance like Baxter said, so at the risk of spoiling Hollerado’s fun …
“For the most fun event I’ve done, I’ll probably say this one,” he said.
“As for the mayor I’d most like to have lunch with, I’ll be more serious and say Mayor Nenshi, because he really sounds like an interesting guy.”
Dodic had to think about the Mayor Quimby or West question.
“Mayor West, he’s from the Family Guy, isn’t he? I’d say Adam West because Adam West played the Batman character, who I always liked. And Mayor Quimby is too smarmy,” he said.
He’ll have some fun with the question ‘How do you get to work every day?’
“If I said private jet, they probably won’t buy it, so car,” he laughed.
He confessed he was out of the loop as far as the local music scene goes.
“I’ve heard local bands play, but I don’t know their names, so I’ll probably say something like Metallica and pretend they’re from here. I remember a band during the early ’70s called Moser because some of my friends were in it. In the early ’70s, we had places like the El Rancho and there were a lot of bands playing,” he said. He is more familiar with the visual and performing arts scene.
“Lethbridge has a pretty good performing arts and visual arts scene. We have the SAAG (Southern Alberta Art Gallery), which is an international facility and the Bowman Arts Centre which has a lot of local artists, including sculptors and painters,” he said adding he is looking forward to the new arts centre, which will replace the Bowman and is on schedule to be completed in 2012.
“It’s a move in the right direction. It will continue to revitalize the downtown,” Dodic said who was enthused it will be attached to the University of Lethbridge conservatory program.
he is looking forward to the show.
“It’s a Monday, so it’s a council day. I’m hoping for a short agenda, but if it’s a late show, I’ll probably stick around for it,” he said.
As for getting on stage and playing “Eruption?”
Who knows.
“That‘s Van Halen isn’t it? I’ll have to practice a lot, but maybe I can play ‘Smoke on the Water,’” he laughed.
They released their last CD “Record in a Bag,” two years ago, but they will be beginning work on the next one after this tour.
“For the most part, response has been pretty positive, we haven’t received any big bags of hate mail,” he laughed.
“We always try to do something different on each tour. We did a nacho tour, where we brought a toaster oven on stage and cooked nachos. This is a joke that got out of hand so it’s hard to equate them.”
The last time they played Lethbridge was at Henotic.
If you have any specific questions you want Hollerado to ask the mayor, e-mail them to
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The show, featuring Young Rival and Wildlife,” is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. Sept. 19. Tickets are $15 in advance.
A version of this story appears in the Sept. 14, 2011 edition of the Lethbridge Sun Times
