Ohio metal band Lo-Pan loves to tour.
“Most of us are very strongly connected to our performance,” said drummer Jesse Bartz. “That’s how we want to earn our fans.”
How much does Lo-Pan like touring? So much so that Bartz’s answer to almost every question ended up related to hitting the road:
On the story behind the title of the act’s latest album, “Salvador”: “We have an equipment dolly that we’ve been carrying around for the past four years. We nicknamed it that.” (Salvador, the equipment dolly, even appears on the cover of “Salvador,” the album).
On the disc’s topics: “The album is based around us being on tour. It’s music that we wrote or were experiencing while we were on the road. ”
On the benefits of living on said road: “The whole Midwest is becoming our local, our hometown. Those are like our second homes. We’re hitting them regularly. We have a stronger Midwest presence than anything.”
On the type of people you’d have to be to like touring so much: “We have a different mentality than other bands. We get off on live performance. Not everyone does. It takes someone driven, or someone who’s just stupid like us, to put up with it.”
On where Lo-Pan got its name:
On having been to Oklahoma before: “The Conservatory is one of the clubs that we showed up at, and it just felt right.”
On why people should see Lo-Pan on Sunday: “They’ll definitely be impressed by the live performance. We’re comfortable. We’re a solid unit. Just get out and do it.”
On the future of Lo-Pan: “We’re really comfortable touring. We’d rather do that than anything else in the music industry. Hopefully, in five to 10 years,we’re a well-oiled machine. We realize we’re at the beginning stages, and we have a long way to go. ... We’re in it for the long haul.”
On what they do when not touring: “All of us are working jobs between to make it work.”
In fact, the guys of Lo-Pan are so into touring and the live experience that they shy away from even talking about what their music sounds like.
“We want it to be an individual experience. It should almost be like blind people listening to music, to not be swayed,” Bartz said. “We try to not describe our music and influences very much. It’s good time rock ’n’ roll. You won’t be disappointed.”
