Artist Profile: Hertz Donut

Hertz Donut is an electronic music production duo consisting of Mitch Mckinnon (Apatchi Sound) and Tim Lange (CrashCourse). The Electric Love team caught up with the boys at FlowFest in North Vancouver to ask a couple questions about their experiences, their goals, and their craft.

Electric Love: Can you tell us about your previous festival experience?

Mitch: Well, we have lived in British Columbia our whole lives so we kind of were raised around the whole West Coast bass music scene and were around festivals like Shambhala. We actually just went for the first year last year, so that’s kind of like our scene, that’s our passion, that’s our family and community. So we just live for that feeling and the festivals, we’ve been going to them since we were in our teenage age.

Tim: Being in the woods is like the thing you do in the interior. (laughs)

 Electric Love: Do you have a good tour story for us?

Tim: Oh we’ve got a good one actually! On our tour, our recent tour in February, we were, I think we were in Fernie, and we had our driver kind of abandon us at the end of our tour. And we ended up hitchhiking from Fernie to Red Deer because we had to play that night. It was quite a journey away and we were hitchhiking with all our gear on the side of the highway, in The Rockies. It was pretty interesting.

Mitch: Yeah, we’d had a couple pints the night before, so it was a little rocky. So if you ever go on tour: Be smart! And don’t party too hard before you gotta go on the road the next day!

 Tim: Absolutely.

Electric Love: What do you guys bring to the table musically speaking?

Mitch: Well, we bring a fusion of both tastes because we’re both prominent solo acts on the go at the time and both making such a different music together and on our own, so we’re always trying to, we always have a wide variety of music. So it’s kind of like one person likes a glazed donut, one person likes a jelly donut, the other guy likes the coconut cream, so like everybody would be like an assorted moxie that come to our shows, everyone’s gonna have their own little flavour y’know?

Tim: Trying to make everybody leave happy…We don’t try to make them, we just help them. (laughs) We influence them to be happy.

Electric Love: Cool! So what are you guys currently working on?

Tim: We just wrapped up our “Glazed EP” which came out on May 1st, and we’ve currently got another EP in the works. We haven’t named it...

Mitch: Yeah, we don’t even really know… We just got the debut EP out of the works, so it’s kind of like our presentation of what we’re about. The next EP’s gonna probably be a lot different in terms of genre because we like to bounce around and give everybody kind of our own little expertise in each little area. So big shout outs to Timothy Wisdom and Abstrakt Sonance for featuring on the EP, this debut one, so they’ve definitely influenced a lot of stuff for us in the future.

Tim: The West Coast funk scene has been a huge influence on our music, probably ever since we got into music I’d say. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of collaborations in the works as well with our friend Rapture, he’s out of Calgary—he’s a really, really awesome guy. We’re kind of just keeping ourselves busy to make sure we always have something on the go, and we’re very open to taking collaborations. Collaboration is super important, especially in the industry these days.

Electric Love: When you guys are performing a set, what do you think are 3 proper ingredients for an awesome turn out?

 Mitch: Good promotion! 100%. That’s the number one.

Tim: Yeah, good promotion is key. Energy is always a must.

Mitch: A good vibe and location too...having an accessible, great location that everybody can use and the proper amenities. Of course, you’re not always get that, but always try to accommodate the party who are, and the people who are the patrons, they’re the most important part. Like, you wouldn’t have the party if it wasn’t for them.

Tim: Yeah, you gotta cater to the patrons. For sure. It’s the most important part.

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/hertzdonutmusic

Twitter: @HertzDonutMusic

Facebook: www.facebook.com/hertzdonutmusic