Beach-flavored indie pop band Paper Holland played Company Brewing Saturday night along with electropop artist LUXI and Twin Cities-based Graveyard Club. The Riverwest24 had recently concluded, which certainly made the neighborhood exhausted…but friends and fans came out and had a dance party nevertheless.

Paper Holland is fronted by vocalist/guitarists Joe Tomcheck and Andy Kosanke, although the band’s usual lineup had not been present. Steph Lippert played trombone and keys, Tori Yocum played bass, Josh Evert (who produced Galapagos) played keys, and Andres Crovetti played drums.

“We love our normal lineup but tonight was different, fresh kind of energy,” Tomcheck said. “We played a song none of them had rehearsed at all! They were just down to do it.”

They recently celebrated their “Galapagos” vinyl release party at The Cooperage.

“We did it a year later because vinyl is expensive,” Tomcheck said. “We ran out of time and money releasing Galapagos in the first place. We were tracking until weeks before the release show so there definitely was no time to get it pressed.”

“We wanted a grand release with the vinyl so we did “Galapados” as well,” Kosanke added. “Just reinterpretations of songs by Milwaukee artists. It’s on Bandcamp for sale and all our sales are donated to Arte Para Todos.”

Paper Holland is fresh off a Midwest Tour that took them through Kansas City, Omaha, Iowa City, and the Twin Cities. The band cites Omaha as their best show.

“It had a sweet arcade bar right by the venue,” Tomcheck said. “We have a couple members of the band who are hardcore pinball enthusiasts, so whenever there’s pinball nearby, that’s a deal maker for us.”

Tomcheck had been out in LA for three months along with Paper Holland’s normal bassist, Mark Yencheske. He speaks on his takeaways from the experience.

“I went out to a lot of shows and I was living with Abby Jeanne. I learned that Milwaukee is legit. Milwaukee music is amazing. It absolutely stacks up to LA – any perception of talent gap or anything like that is just a perception. I went to so many shows where I thought about Milwaukee artists who should be out there…that would just kill it out there. My biggest takeaway was how good Milwaukee is, really.”

They have some collaborations with the likes of Genesis Renji, Shle Berry, and Vincent Van Great in the works.

“We’re in this mindset where we want to be doing as much collaboration as possible and share the energy with incredible Milwaukee artists,” Tomcheck said. “For a long time I had these pretenses about who it made sense to work with but in recent years and the LA experience made me forget all of that. We’re having a lot of fun working with anyone who wants to be doing it. It’s very invigorating.”

Paper Holland is currently working on new songs for another album. They play Arlo Fest on Friday, X-Ray Arcade on August 16th, Cactus Club (with Hear Here Presents) on September 14th, and Cactus Club again on September 27th.

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