The Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra can rock a group of septuagenarians, or get a university-age crowd on their feet into the night, so when they hit Jasper on Jan. 31, anything could happen. 

The band was last here a year and a half ago to play with local favourites Sam Hate and the Jackals. Before that they performed at the Jasper Folk Fest three years ago. 

Two of the band’s members, Ian Nichol (accordion, lead vocals) and Peter Mynett (bass, vocals) took the time last week to answer a few of the Fitzhugh’s questions. Paul Wolda (percussion, vocals), Patrick M’Gonigle (violin, mandolin and vocals) and Kurt Loewen (guitar, vocals) comprise the rest of the band. 

Nichol and Mynett say the band prefers to create music first, then ask questions later. They like to write and perfect a song before they decide what genre it fits into, but both say their primary style is a mix of Roma ska folk.

“We play music that you can dance to or sit and listen to. I was stoked the other week because we played a show one night well attended by folks over 70 and the next night we played a sweaty dance party full of university students,” Nichol and Mynett said in an email.

Their style has been generated from each member’s unique background. Some bring in classical training, while one member boasts experience training with Nigerian elders. Another has moved into sound engineering. As far as former band and musical experience, Nichol and Mynett say members have been in everything from punk bands and African groups, to flamenco, to attending Jazz school and the Berkley School of Music. 

The band has been together for four years. Nichol and Mynett say they have developed the ability to bring people together at shows, when they would normally stick to their familiar groups. 

“We played recently on Quadra Island and a woman came up after the showed and thanked us because there were people in the hall that don’t usually hang out together,” they said. 

Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra (TMO) adapt each show to the audience in front of them. They can slow things down and make a more intimate affair, or speed things up to get the audience dancing. 

“We did a four month shoe-string tour across Europe, and in doing so learned the importance of versatility,” Nichols and Myett wrote. “We have played German train stations, Corsican sailboats, posh restaurants in Vienna, art studios on the Sunshine Coast, sit down theatres, major folk fests with 2,000 dancing bodies, sweating, stinking underground illegal bars in east Berlin with lofted stone ceilings and drunk, high pulsing Germans and once a teenager’s back deck outside Seattle.”

Clearly, somewhere within that tour TMO learned how to rock a place like Jasper. 

The band is releasing a new single EP that will actually feature two of the group’s newest tunes. The “single” will be available online, and download cards will be available at each live performance. One of those songs will be The Otters Song. 

“The Otters Song is inspired by the people that we have met and continue to connect with and the mountains on fire inspired by a dream our accordion player had,” Nichols and Mynett said in their email.

The other half of the single was recorded in a cellar at the bottom of a 400-year-old building, the artists say. They got access to the unique recording studio through a friend they met during their travels. 

“The kindness that is constantly extended to us is a blessing that we don’t take lightly and appreciate fully in our hearts. Thanks in advance to anyone that comes to the show, and thank you to everyone who has ever supported us.”