The best moments in a show are when there is a collaboration between the performer and the audience. A call-and-response moves to a whole new level when hundreds of people are taking part in it, and the experience is often a memorable one. With a rhythmic blend of electronica, hip hop and pop, Koo Koo from Minneapolis engages their audience in a way that’s fun for the whole family.

Their unique brand of music, which has a ton of videos on YouTube, centers on various topics such as pizza, secret handshakes, air guitar and dipping french fries in ketchup. The duo of Neil Olstad and Bryan Atchison have been doing this act for more than 20 years, and they’re headed to The Park Theatre on June 14 for a 1 p.m. matinee.

Olstad and I talked about what inspired this musical endeavor, performing in front of families and sometimes with rock and punk bands, and looking forward to having a lobster roll.

Rob Duguay: What would you say was the main inspiration for you and Bryan starting this dance music project that involves audience interaction and sing-along lyrics?

Neil Olstad: We were inspired because of experimental purposes, really. We were both in a rock band in college and there were a lot of other rock bands in the Minneapolis/St. Paul scene, so we started figuring out what we could do to stand out. What we could do to shake things up and make people notice us a little bit more, so we entered a battle of the bands with no instruments while utilizing crowd participation, antics and gimmicks and stuff like that. We’ve always liked it when bands go above and beyond where they don’t just play their songs, they get the crowd involved, have a big production and bring theatrical experiences, so it’s kind of what we wanted to do.

RD: That’s awesome. Along with the live performances, Koo Koo also has a bunch of videos on YouTube that take place in a variety of different settings that are either animated or in real life. Do you guys make these videos yourselves or do you hire someone to make them? How do you come up with the concepts?

NO: We’ve collaborated with so many different people on making videos. We’ll usually find them on the internet or through mutual friends in the Twin Cities and they’re eager to work on something different. We come up with the concept together and then they go off and make it. We love hiring other creatives that we’re really inspired by, but it’s also important thing to know your own limits, so we want to do as much DIY work as possible while running the business end of things ourselves. We do all our own social media and we run our own merch store out of Bryan’s basement, but we also have the things we hire somebody else to do, so in the video world, that’s mostly what we do.

RD: When it comes to the songwriting, how would you describe that process? We’ve talked about how Koo Koo embraces audience interaction with the music, so how do you implement that element when it’s just the two of you?

NO: A lot of times, we have an idea of what we want the crowd to be doing. A good example is the song “Shake ‘Yo Foot”, which is meant to be performed with the crowd circling around us. It’s kind of like the hokey pokey of the future where you’re putting your foot in the middle of the circle as you dance. Most of the time, we’re just trying to write a funny song or a silly song that has an interesting topic to us. Our song “Glitter” is half about how people love glitter with the other half being about how half of the population despises it because it’s so messy and it gets everywhere.

It depends on where we want the crowd to be and how we want to present the song, but we want to make it as fun as possible, make it into a cool video, play it live and hopefully everybody dances with us.

RD: Koo Koo has performed both at children’s events and at clubs with rock and punk bands, so is there a setting that you prefer out of those two? What do you think contributes to the versatility of your music where you can fit in at various atmospheres and scenes?

NO: The reason we’re able to do it is because we didn’t set out to be in a kids band. When we were in college, we started the band in the first place to just make our friends laugh while exclusively playing 21 plus shows. The songs have always been clean, there’s never any swearing, but there was an intense, crazy, sweaty show that kind of fit in with the bars in that way. The concept has always been clean with silly topics, and then the dance-along music videos caught on with elementary school teachers who would play them in their classrooms. That cemented us as a kids band, but we love to walk that line.

The most fun part about what we do is that we try to do something that adults might like as much as kids might like. That gives us the versatility, we started off only for adults, and then when we started getting popular with kids, we realized that we found a niche. I guess I like playing bar shows a little bit more because they’re so much less frequent. We play one bar show for every 30 or 40 family shows or whatever, so they’re very rare. We don’t do them very often, we’ll do them in Minnesota during the holidays or something like that, but we might do it at a club in Rhode Island sometime, who knows?

RD: Speaking of performing in Rhode Island, what are your thoughts on coming to the Park Theatre? It’s not a club, but it’s an establishment that recently celebrated 100 years.

NO: Oh, man. I love playing places that are old and historic theatres, those are cool. The only thing is that they have seats, and we want people to stand up, but I love Rhode Island. It’s really fun to go there, we have a friend who is an artist at AS220 in Providence and we have a lot of love for that institution. We’ve played some shows at that place as well and I’ve had a good lobster roll in Rhode Island. We don’t play there that often because we do so well in Boston, but I’m glad to be coming back.