You Can’t Break Paper Plates | And you can’t trip up Hot Panda—even if you take their accordionist away.
Hot Panda
w/ Vancougar. May 3 (8pm). Velvet Underground (10030-102 St). Tickets: $10 at the door.
Band names are forever a source of mystery and intrigue, and Hot Panda’s is no exception. I’ll be honest: I don’t even know where the local garage poppers’ team moniker comes from. But I do know they’re hot, so hot they’re ready to explode. Having just signed with one of Canada’s largest indie labels, Vancouver’s Mint Records, that question is sitting heavily on the mind of the band’s newest guitar/keyboard/accordion wizard, former Montrealer Heath Parsons.
“The band I was in broke up—we were a folk trio,” he explains. “And my heart was broken by a lady, so I said, ‘Eff this city,’ and just went home.”
One band’s loss is another band’s treasure, and bassist Keith Olsen is quick to hype the band’s new recruit: “I’ll tell you, for a guy having to work quick—we had less than two months since we had the first conversation with him—this guy’s got most of the songs down pat.... One tour and this guy’s going to be out of control.”
“The deadliness factor is going to increase incrementally show by show,” Parsons adds.
Fellow Pandas Chris Connelly and Maghan Campbell recall their first jam session with Parsons, having met him only once previously. “We never had that kind of situation before,” Connelly says. “We didn’t know how to go about it. It was just a matter of finding someone with a good personality and the right attitude.”
Parsons is more earnest. “They didn’t actually ask me for my qualifications other than ‘Can you play this? Do you think you would be able to learn this?’ And I said, ‘Yeah’. And it’s been that way since, so I wasn’t lying.”
But finding a committed member on such short notice is tricky business in a city with such an intimate scene. “When Mike [Robertson] first broke up with the band we were like, ‘Oh, we need to find somebody!’” Connelly says. “And then we started to realize that the only people we know of that can do this stuff—and the only reason we know them for that—is because they’re playing in other bands. So...”
“We didn’t want to poach,” Olsen says.
Parsons’ timing was good, but if it hadn’t been for his friend and former Panda member Mike Robertson, the other Pandas might still be looking. “I moved out here and Mike sent me an e-mail [asking] ‘Would you be interested in joining another band?’” Parsons explains. “And I said, ‘Okay.’ ‘Don’t make me look bad,’ he said.”
With a new album recorded and set to be released next spring, a 7” on the horizon in early June, and a cross-country tour planned during the first half of summer, Parsons has his work cut out for him. Aside from an appearance with the rest of the band on Access’ HelpTV earlier this week, Saturday’s gig at the Velvet Underground will be his first live show with the band. Still, Olsen is confident about the group’s new crony, and their new tunes.
“We’re going to play all-new stuff. So if you’ve seen Hot Panda before, don’t expect this to be an average show. We’ve got a new guy and we’ve got new stuff.”
