Holler, Wild Rose! A sweet traveling smile
It was during their eighth grade trip, while staying at a Holiday Inn, when Holler, Wild Rose!’s John Mosloskie and Ryan Smyth decided they wanted a career in music.“We got into the hotel room and I had a CD player in my bag and I broke it out and we were just head-banging,” recalls vocalist Mosloskie.
Mosloskie says it was in that moment, while “air-guitaring” to Rage Against the Machine, that he and long time friend, drummer and percussionist Ryan Smyth, experienced their first sense of freedom and rock star excitement.
Now over a decade later, New Jersey natives Mosloskie and Smyth are signed with Backlight Records, writing and performing together in their band Holler, Wild Rose!
Holler, Wild Rose!, named after the first track on their debut album, Our Little Hymnal, consists of six other members alongside front men Mosloskie and Smyth: Ryan Cheresnick on guitars, pianist Morgan Mosloskie, bassist Scott Vangenderen, vocalist and guitarist Mike Ortega, Steve Oyola on keys and guitarist Lou D’Elia.
Originally named A Dive, Mosloskie says the name soon changed after a club gig gone bad – finding out the hard way what it was like to share a name with another band. It didn’t take long for the group to establish a new nom de plume for themselves, says Mosloskie.
“We had written a song called ‘Holler, Wild Rose!’ and that moniker, A Dive, didn’t really have much meaning for us anymore and we felt like the song ‘Holler’ really encapsulated who we were and where we were going,” he says.
Like in the song “Holler, Wild Rose!” the band originates “beneath the city” in a quiet town right outside of New Jersey.
Mosloskie, Smyth and D’Elia agree that there is no place like New Jersey. “People land in the Newark Airport and the first trying they see is the turnpike in Elizabeth and it’s like, ‘oh it smells here!’” D’Elia jokes.
Although it carries a bit of a stigma in America, Mosloskie says it is actually a beautiful place to grow up - inspiring most of the songs he has written. “The visuals [in our songs] are a lot of those landscapes of where we live,” he says. “Our environment breathes into the music.” Not only does the New Jersey surroundings inspire Mosloskie’s songs. He says, love, loss and life circumstances help to generate lyrics. Compared vocally to Jeff Buckley, Mosloskie is the singer and songwriter for the band. Influenced by early Coldplay, U2, My Bloody Valentine and My Sunny Day Real Estate, Holler, Wild Rose! is in a genre of its own. Smyth labels the band as an urban country mix, saying, “some of the beats are more urban and colourful and on stage there is like seven of us and we are all family.”
Holler, Wild Rose! has introduced Canadians to their “urban country” music a number of times in the past, visiting venues in St. Catharine’s, Montreal and Ottawa. However, 2009 marked their first year performing at Toronto’s North by Northeast Music Festival (NxNE). “We’re really excited to be apart of it,” says Mosloskie.
On June 20th, the group stopped by The Audio Recording Academy’s Secret Sessions for a free performance with The Paint Movement and Josh Reichmann. The band played music from their 2003 full-length release and their newest EP release, Yarn.
What’s in store next for Holler? Well, the band has shows lined up in New York for the summer, kicking it off at Cameo in Brooklyn on July 19th. The band has also already begun work on a new album and hopes to have it ready for release sometime in 2010.
As far as their experience at the NxNE festival goes, the boys say Torontoians are, by far, the nicest group of people they have met yet. “Canada in general is great,” says Smyth. “Everyone is really receptive and everyone is really into it!” The boys are truly what “Holler, Wild Rose” lyrics suggest: a sweet Traveling smile.
