by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
It took a little serendipity to create Meat the Vegans.
The band, who took first place at ASUNM's Battle of the Bands in February, came together in June when Seth Hoffman and Jacob Lowery, formerly of the band Seth and Jacob, ran into some bad luck.
"We were looking for a drummer and bass player," Hoffman said. "We had a show we were playing, and the guy who was drumming for us backed out. There we were with two shows, and we had no drummer."
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Hoffman said Lowery went to Guitar Center that day to find a replacement. There, he met drummer Dave Holtkamp.
"I was walking out the door with two pairs of sticks," Holtkamp said. "He just pulled me aside and was like, 'You're a drummer right?' I was like, 'Well, I hope so. I just spent, like, 30 bucks on sticks.'"
Holtkamp said he was hesitant to help until Lowery told him his band's name.
"I was like, 'Seth and Jacob? No shit,'" Holtkamp said. "(Bassist) Mike (Peterson) and I had been listening to the first CD they put out here in New Mexico for four years. I knew all the songs off the first CD. I just went home, got all my gear together and listened to their third album all the way up. We just jammed out."
Holtkamp said Peterson was out of town doing field work for a geology program.
"I called him up the next day and was like, 'You won't believe what band I just joined, and I recommended you as the bass player,'" Holtkamp said. "He and I had been playing together in several bands since high school. So, we had quite a bit of experience between the two groups as it were."
Hoffman said Peterson and Holtkamp's experience together allows Meat the Vegans to experiment during the creative process.
"When you play with people a lot, you can start to make things interesting," he said. "When you do improvisations, it's even more interesting. The foundation, then, is not just a three- or four-chord thing. It has several parts."
It's hard to categorize the band into a specific genre. Each member has his own influences from blues to metal.
What's great about the band's style is that it doesn't just appeal to college students, Holtkamp said.
"One of the (fans') favorite tracks is 'Janie and the Hummingbird,'" he said. "It's just really punk-rocked out and a really fast, energy-driving song. It turns out to be my mom's and Mike's grandmother's favorite track on the album. I was like, 'Wait, the rocker song? Are you serious?'"
Meat the Vegans released their first album March 10 with a performance at the Hunab Hookah lounge. Holtkamp said the show took an ironic turn as the band performed a Pink Floyd cover.
"As we were starting off 'The Wall' sequence, you could hear all this clamor in the audience," Holtkamp said. "All of a sudden, our friend just goes and (accidentally) pushes a wall over. The wall falls down during the opening part of the song, and you could hear this guy like, 'Oh shit.' We talked to some people after, and they were like, 'Did you know the wall fell down during 'The Wall' sequence?"
Meat the Vegans plan to release another album next year, which the band already has material for.
To set the record straight, nobody in the band is a vegan.
"I can't think of one show where somebody doesn't come up to us and is like, 'Are you guys vegans?'" Holtkamp said. "Nobody asks us if we eat meat."
