Wasteland Hop

When most bands hit the road for summer tours, they look to play big cities, but Wasteland Hop isn’t most bands.

Last summer, the Fort Collins indie hip-hop group did a tour through Alaska, hitting one-stoplight towns and playing late-night shows with the sun still high in the sky.

“The logistics are really tough with an Alaska tour,” said Wasteland Hop frontman Mickey Kenny, recalling having to pack in the band’s gear to a show in McCarthy (population 42) because the town is pedestrian-based and does not allow cars past a certain point. “It’s a headache but that’s usually a good sign that it’s worth it.”

The band documented its experiences in the film, which will be shown at a special screening/concert Saturday at Lyric Cinema Cafe. In addition, Wasteland Hop, along with fellow Fort Collins band Echo Chamber, will premiere several new videos.

Guitarist Nick Scheidies, who filmed the documentary, said he initially was just shooting the tour as a fun home video for the band but “as the tour became more and more amazing with each day, we realized that other people would want to see it.”

The 20-minute short goes back and forth between the band’s Alaska adventures and concert footage.

“Sometimes I’d just put (the camera) on the amp at a show and press record,” Scheidies said, noting that his favorite footage was the scene shot flying over Ruth Glacier in Denali National Park. “That footage is going to make you feel like you’re with us in the airplane,” he added.

And while the towns they played were small, the crowds they played to were anything but.

There’s a big seasonal population of hikers and mountain climbers who come out to these areas to work hard and play hard, and like to hang out at night at the one or two bars in town, said Kenny, who is originally from Anchorage. Unfortunately, because of the difficulties and high cost of touring in Alaska, very few non-Alaska bands make the journey there.

“They are very thirsty for bands... especially out-of-state bands,” Kenny said. “We had this moment (at a show) where everyone was bouncing and we’re in this old bar and you can feel the whole ground shaking beneath you... That moment was very validating.”

The rooms were small sometimes, but they were packed, Scheidies said, adding that one new fan wrote on the band’s Facebook page that the group’s EP, “Mother Acre,” became the soundtrack to his whole Alaskan vacation.

“To know in his mind, our debut EP and his adventure are intertwined and linked permanently...” Scheidies said, shaking his head in awe.

The trip was so successful that the band is going back this summer for a month-long tour to promote its upcoming release “Morph.” The group is launching a Community Funded campaign to fund the debut full-length recording and collaborating with Equinox Brewing Co. to brew a special Wasteland Hop beer in conjunction with the June 7 CD release.

The title of the CD also describes the state of the band, which has only been around for a couple of years but quickly became an up-and-comer in the Fort Collins music scene, Kenny said.

“We’re all at the point where we’ve dedicated a certain amount of time to the band and we’re at this point where we had to decide is music just a hobby on the side or are we going to really commit and trust that this is going to work out.” - Coloradoan

Wasteland Hop is a six-piece______ (musical genre) band from Fort Collins, Colorado. They like to do _______ (plural noun) in dumpsters, got picked up by a________(noun) while hitchhiking in Alaska, and spend all of their ______(noun) together.

If you answered “Folk-Rock-Hip-Hop,” “photo-shoots,” “soap-opera star,” and “time,” you should either call Ripley’s or fess up that you’ve gotten the chance to see this energetic up-and-coming Fort Collins band.

Wasteland Hop identifies themselves, specifically, as a Fort Collins band. During their rehearsal, while sitting on an ottoman and holding his electric guitar between his knees, Nick Scheidies said they identify as such because of the unequaled strength, support and love of which the large artist community here provides. Brian Weikel (bassist) added that the local scene is becoming cared for and pumped up by some outstandingly committed philanthropists in the area.

Their debut album, Morph, was released last summer and the rave reviews began pouring in from Amazon Music to an outpouring of fan-appreciation on their Facebook page and comments on their beautifully produced YouTube videos. The videos include “Modern Day Moth,” a bold, heart-wrenching illustrated spoken word about losing loved ones to heroin addiction.

The artist whom rendered their vision for the video, Ben Fry, is considered to be their seventh member, as Fry has been an integral part of presenting their material in an exceptional visual intensity.

Notice that the “lead” singers haven’t been mentioned, yet? The entire band truly considers each member an equal, each of them constantly refer to the torrent of respect they have for one another. They are all spotlighted. Even newcomer violinist, Liz Gaylor, was immediately accepted as a frontrunner. A committed viola player since age eight, she discontinued playing for over a decade. Wasteland Hop awoke her passion, and her classical training animates her violin, which seemingly lives the emotion of each song.

When asked who writes lyrics, Mickey Kenny (lead vocalist whom moved from Alaska to Fort Collins where he pursued his MFA in poetry at CSU) relates that he and Steph Jay (life-long performer who plays acoustic guitar and lead vocals), write most of the content, but that Scheidies is also a phenomenal writer, eventually the entire band ends up interjecting and suggesting, and they are left with a true collaboration.

It’s easy to see how deeply this amazing group cares for each other. They fondly refer to each other as the nicest people ever, and after viewing all the smiles and laughter during their nighttime photo shoot in 42 degree weather, it’s certifiable.

“We all really enjoy hanging out with one another. We’re always so willing to listen to each other, we immediately confront our problems and tackle them,” said drummer, Adam Fallik, softly relayed from behind his drum set as he adjusted his glasses. “Sometimes the world can feel overwhelming with decay, death and emptiness– like a wasteland, but there we are, sock-hopping in the midst of it!”

Their powerful messages of equality, peace, unity, environmental protection, and feminism, speak to the true maturity and empathy that each member exhibits.

Community funding for their album has given them so much opportunity in attaining their goals. The entire group is unabashedly grateful and agrees that they are some of the luckiest people in the world. They seem to have so much love to spread; their fan-base is thriving from the Rockies all the way to Alaska, where they are heading in February for the second time. Their previous tour of America’s northernmost state gave way to weeks of beauty, exploration and excitement. They rafted the Chitina River for five days, reveling in their chemistry. When their van broke down, hours north of their destination in southern coastal Valdez, they were rescued by a vacationing soap-opera star in a Winnebago and delivered, on time, to their gig, where they bestowed her with gifts of teeshirts and CD’s.

Wasteland Hop is undeniably ablaze with fresh, neoteric talent, and hearts that are as expansive as the mountains that cradle the town that they love.

Experience the brilliance of Wasteland Hop upon their return from Alaska, at Hodi’s Half Note in Old Town Fort Collins on Feb. 22. They will be playing with the Deadwood Saints and James and the Devil. - Scene Magazine

Mickey Kenny, MC of the Colorado-based band Wasteland Hop, is both a scholar and a gentleman. Kenny is relaxed and charming as he describes the trajectory of the complex sextet, a project that merges hip-hop, rock and a little bit of everything else. Kenny, originally from Alaska, was drawn to Fort Collins to get his MFA in poetry. “That’s when I thought I’d do the whole academic thing,” Kenny said. “And leave musicianship behind.”
But perhaps the formation of another band was always in the cards. Kenny had previously done spoken word in Seattle and in Alaska, and had formed a 12-piece band called Kaleidoscope in Anchorage. With a long history of wordplay, academia was only part of the equation, and Wasteland Hop came to be in winter 2011.
Although the group has grown and evolved over the past few years, the band members all vibed on a basic level from the moment they met, Kenny said. A great example of this shared vision is the band’s debut EP, Mother Acre, which dropped in 2011.
“That [album] was a concerted effort towards having some environmental awareness in our lyrics,” he said. “I don’t know if we explicitly sat down really — this was within a year of meeting each other. It just so happens that we were rotating around these environmental images and working through that in lyrical ways. Basically, I believe Mother Acre confronts the objectification of nature.”
Listeners will immediately notice the lack of fluff or meaningless lyrics. For Kenny and the other members, Wasteland Hop is a way to express deeper experiences, dreams, fears and issues that members confront in their own lives — which he says comes through in the group’s 2013 debut LP Morph.
“Mother Acre dealt with objectification and exploitation in nature, in the wild other. Whereas Morph, in many ways, was a metamorphosis into other. [Morph] confronts the band on a biographical plane and puts a microscope upon our transformation brought about by our commitment to each other, and our music,” Kenny said.
Tracks are infectious and keep the listener engaged, songs continually progress in unexpected, creative ways. Kenny spits his witty, distinct rhymes over vocalist Steph Jay’s dreamy folky vocal layer, while funk, rock, and classical layers mingle and meld. With six distinctly different elements — including bassist Brian Weikel, drummer Adam Fallik, guitarist Nick Scheidies and classically trained violinist Liz Gaylor — one might expect that individual ideas could be overwhelmed. Instead, Kenny said, the songwriting process is extremely democratic. “I write all of my lyrics, [Jay] writes her own, and Nick is also a songwriter,” Kenny said. “He has a lot of influence on hooks, and he has a couple of songs.” By the time a song is finished, everyone has had a chance to forge their own way, bass, drums, guitar and violin included. “We hear each other out,” Kenny said. “We allow all the voices to have their own on their songs. You know, Liz on violin might have this beautiful Celtic moment in a hip-hop song. We trust each other.”
Alaska has actually played a key role in helping the band members learn more about writing together and trusting one another. The group has toured the state each of the past two summers, and Kenny said every tour in Alaska proves to be a marathon compared to standard shows.
“Shows on the west coast, the longest set we’ll get is an hour an hour-and-a-half,” Kenny said. “Alaska we’ll play four hours a night. That forced us to acknowledge the different styles.” This sort of expanded set has allowed the band to break from routine and explore more improvisational and freestyle forms of music.
“Through that process Alaska really brought us into that comfort zone with all these different styles. We grew so much in Alaska,” Kenny said. “Kind of a boot camp experience, it seems.” - Anchorage Press