Hollerado Make Chinese Connections

Hollerado recently returned from a two-week whirlwind tour of China, where they played shows and soaked up the culture while they were at it.

The Montreal/Manotick, Ont. band started the tour with a performance at Beijing's TransmitCHINA, a four-day trade event focused on cementing the relationship between the Canadian music industry and the Asian market.

After they played Beijing, Shanghai and Zhenjiang, the adventure-seeking quartet made their way to Shehzhen, Chengdu, Wuhan and Changsha before returning to Beijing to play a final concert on May 10.

"We found everyone to be extremely welcoming to us," says lead singer/guitarist Menno Versteeg. "We were so grateful to be in China and absorb all the new things in it.

"Even despite the language barrier... we were just having the time of our lives. We'd be at one place and [someone would] come say, 'No, you guys gotta come see this,' and bring us down the street and point us out to something. Every single person we met, even the police."

Hollerado stayed in hotels during the first leg of their journey, a luxury they normally can't afford while touring in their own country.

"We're a floors band in Canada, and when we're in China, we can afford to be a nice hotel band," says Versteeg. "A nice hotel is $40 a night for a double room... and that would include an amazing buffet — all you can eat awesomeness.

"And some of the dingier places we stayed in were $12 a night. But that came with bed bug bites."

Hollerado didn't always stay in hotels, though. At one point, they were the impromptu guests at a hippie commune.

"The translator that we had with us, she had heard about this place, and so we set out to find it," explains Versteeg. "And all of a sudden, we just got to the top of this road, this dirt, windy, weird road, and there was this guy with dreads just standing there outside a house.

"And he was a white guy. And so we got out, and we're like, 'Hey!' And he said, 'Hey, you guys need a place to stay tonight?'

"We got to know this guy, and he introduced us to a bunch of his friends and took us around. He ended up being in a really awesome band from Chengdu."

Hollerado were travelling on the cheap and at one point decided to busk for a bit of cash in Tiananmen Square — home to a gigantic poster of Mao Tse-Tung and the setting of a series of bloody student-led protests for democracy 20 years earlier.

"We wanted to see if we could busk somewhere, and we said, 'Where is there gonna be a lot of people?,'" says Versteeg. "'Let's go check out Tiananmen Square.'

"We started playing and within 30 seconds there were 200 people who just gathered around, maybe even more. All of a sudden we were a spectacle, so we couldn't really bail out then."

Versteeg says they were forced to leave soon after, however.

"The army showed up, because they have the army there, and right before they kicked us out... there was this little kid... he was maybe eight years old, he was right at the front and he was really diggin' it. You could tell he had never seen anything like it and he was catching the rock 'n' roll bug.

"We had bought these cheap acoustic guitars so that we could busk, and I gave him my acoustic guitar. His face just exploded with the most amazing look I've ever seen in my life. That was one of the real highlights for me."

The Tiananmen Square show wasn't meant to be a demonstration, even if Hollerado played Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World."

"Everyone was really getting into it, and not in a 'protest the government' kind of way," explains Versteeg. "The emphasis was more on the 'keep on rockin'' part.

"You can rock anywhere in the world. You can put politics aside and rock out."

Hollerado didn't just put their politics aside during the tour. They also put aside some of their fears and (perhaps) their better judgment while they partook in some dangerous activities. They spent one evening at an all-you-can-drink go-kart track, but really tested their limits while visiting a temple.

"The temple was really high and we had to climb up, and it was really hot out," says Versteeg. "By the time we got to the top, we were totally exhausted.

"We didn't even want to go down. We went around and there was this guy who looked like he was 250 years old. He was guarding this — it was basically a bobsled track with a toboggan in the track on wheels.

"You didn't need a helmet. It was so dangerous. I almost went over the edge, and there was a ravine below. If that place was open for a month in the U.S., it would be lawsuits left, right and centre."

Hollerado had a former Iraq war correspondent film their entire trip and will turn it into the first episode of a television show they've titled Hollerado Land.

"It's just in the pilot stages and we're editing it this summer," says Versteeg. "It's basically a travel show that is hosted by our band and it's very not music-centric.

"The focus is not on us and being a band and listening to us bicker. It's showing you around the city and with locals that we meet through music, and trying to do stuff that is cheap that a band can afford that is really fun.

"We're throwing around a whole bunch of destinations for the second filming. Right now, I think we're gonna do New York this summer, but we're planning on trying to do somewhere in northern Russia. We're trying to go to Siberia or something, or South America — Argentina or Brazil. We're really stoked about how this one came out."

Until the first episode of Hollerado Land — which will include the guys attempting to hug a panda and enjoying such delicacies as duck brains and scorpions — hits the airwaves, you can see the band closer to home here:

June 4 Quebec City, QC @ Le Cercle
June 5 Montreal, QC @ Le Divan Orange w/Zeroes and The Goodluck Assembly
June 6 Montreal, QC @ Rialto (Kinks Konvention)
June 11 Ottawa, ON @ Capital Music Hall w/Malajube
June 12 Toronto, ON @ Lee's Palace w/Malajube (free)
June 14 Thunder Bay, ON @ Apollo w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 15 Dryden, ON @ Dryden High School
June 16 Winnipeg, MB @ Royal Albert Arms w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 17 Saskatoon, SK @ Amigos Cantina w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 18 Canmore, AB @ The Canmore Hotel w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 19 Kelowna, BC @ Habitat w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 20 Vancouver, BC @ The Media Club w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 21 Victoria, BC @ Lucky Bar w/The Goodluck Assembly and Malajube
June 24 Lethbridge, AB @ Henotic w/The Goodluck Assembly
June 25 Edmonton, AB @ Starlite Room w/The Goodluck Assembly, Malajube and Slim Twig
June 26 Calgary, AB @ TBA (Sled Island Music Festival)
June 27 Calgary, AB @ The Hi-Fi w/Malajube
June 28 Regina, SK @ The Exchange w/The Goodluck Assembly
July 3 Kingston, ON @ Bar None w/The Goodluck Assembly (all ages)
July 4 Manotick, ON @ Kelly’s