Quick & Dirty - Hot Panda
By: James Edwards
July 2, 2009 – Edmonton, Canada
For a band whose reviews and own bio lists comparisons with the likes of Talking Heads and The Fall, Hot Panda's Chris Connelly is refreshingly demure about their sound.
"I still like to say it's just fun music you can dance to, and maybe enjoy on some other levels too, if you feel like it," the singer-guitarist says, noting that the group themselves aren't too adept at self-classification.
Hot Panda formed from the remnants of The Blue Letters, a band made up of Connelly, drummer Maghan Campbell and bassist Keith Olsen. The group disbanded after Connelly and Campbell headed to Europe, where they found inspiration.
"We got pretty jazzed from the music scene in Oslo and Scandinavia in general. So, when we were all back we reformed and started actually playing and booking gigs as Hot Panda," Connelly says, adding that the current lineup was cemented with the addition of guitarist Heath Parsons, whom the group had met in Montreal.
Hot Panda is back in Canada after spending much of the spring touring, supporting The Von Bondies in locations as varied as Berlin, Glasgow and Vienna.
"[It's] great, very surreal, everything has gone by really quickly and it feels like we've hardly seen anything, but we've done so much," Connelly says of the group's experiences abroad. "We have learned a lot from touring with [The Von Bondies], a lot about touring in Europe but also just about how things start to work when your band is at the next level.
"There was a moment on the tour where, it was like, here we are, playing in Europe . . . on the same stage that The Beatles played on, and the kids are dancing! And some how we made it and actually did it!" he adds, understandably excited. "It was pretty unbelievable, just that we some how pulled it off and made it to Europe, and made it on the Autobahn alive, driving a stick shift, which none of us could really do properly, and we toasted ourselves onstage right before we played, just for having really done it."
The band has an entire section on their website devoted to food they've enjoyed on tour all across Canada, but Connelly says certain restrictions have curtailed their culinary palate this time around.
"We're really poor for this tour, so mostly bread and cheese," he explains. "It's good bread, and good cheese, but yeah, a few weeks worth of bread and cheese and whatever The Von Bondies would let us skim off their rider. I wish we could have been more diligent about looking for cool spots, but the driving was really long distance, and yup, we were poor."
Hot Panda just played Calgary's Sled Island music festival, and have dates slated in Kamloops and Vancouver, where hopefully, they can stick to the tour mantra.
"Just get out, look around as much as you can, play show, party a bit, sleep, read and on and on . . . "
Video: "It's Worth Eight Dollars" by Hot Panda
