Enjoy A Steaming Bowl Of Hot Panda

Practice spaces can range anywhere from a friend's dilapidated garage to a cozy, shag-carpeted basement. And for the most part, these grungy or fuzzy surroundings can tell us a lot about a band's music.

However, Edmonton-based Hot Panda are the exception to the norm. The garage-pop quartet's slightly unusual practice environment has a tendency to toy with the quality and well-being of their instruments rather than weasel its way into their sound.

"We had a run where we broke a lot of stuff at shows, and then somebody asked us if we were breaking our stuff because we were cursed, because we jam in a casket factory," explains vocalist/guitarist Chris Connelly. "But then after that, nothing has happened.

"It might be because we've gotten better equipment. It might be more that we had shitty equipment rather than a curse — or maybe we just had the curse of shitty equipment."

Although Hot Panda claim that practising in a casket factory doesn't make their music dark and gloomy in any way — "There are less and less caskets there now, so maybe a lot of people are dying," Connelly casually interjects — the travels of Connelly and drummer Maghan Campbell are what ultimately swayed the group to join forces.

After venturing to Oslo, Norway and witnessing how healthy the music scene was, all Connelly and Campbell could think of was returning to Edmonton to give music a serious shot.Hot Panda, as a whole, have done just that. The group — which consists of Connelly, Campbell, bassist Keith Olsen and guitarist/keyboardist/accordionist Mike Robertson — are still fairly new to the industry, but Campbell attributes Hot Panda's early success to their lack of pretension, their quirky persona and, perhaps, their intriguing moniker.

"We were cruising along one day and hanging out when we see this big billboard on the side of the road that says, 'Panda Hut,'" relates Olsen. "Somebody blurted out, 'I could go for a steaming bowl of hot panda,' so when we all started throwing that around the car for a while, the name Hot Panda kinda stuck."

"It was better than sweet and sour panda," Connelly adds. "We also liked the idea that they might have a cage filled with pandas, and when somebody would place an order, they'd just grab one and cut it up."

The quartet definitely includes some eccentric one-trick ponies — "except for Mike, he's like a three-trick pony, but he's only got one trick per pony," Olsen offers.

And since they feel as though their hooves have trampled Edmonton enough already, Hot Panda are planning on stomping all over other Canadian municipalities in the very near future.

"Eventually, we want to tour Canada, for sure," Olsen says. "We want to visit all of the cities and kick all of their asses.

"I think Edmonton is black and blue at this point. We're going to go kick Winnipeg's ass — maybe even Halifax. Yeah, Halifax: watch out."

Here are Hot Panda's tour dates:
Jan. 27 Edmonton, AB @ Velvet Underground
Feb. 3 Fort McMurray, AB @ Westwood YMCA
Feb. 8 Calgary, AB @ Mastication Station (Alberta College Of Art And Design)
Feb. 8 Calgary, AB @ Tequila