From Hanna, Alberta
Nickelback is one of the most commercially successful rock bands in Canadian history — and it was formed in an east-central Alberta town of about twenty-seven hundred people.
- Founded: 1995, in Hanna, Alberta
- Members: Chad Kroeger (lead vocals, guitar), Mike Kroeger (bass), Ryan Peake (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), Daniel Adair (drums, since 2005)
- Founded by: Chad Kroeger and his older brother Mike Kroeger, both from Hanna, with schoolmate Ryan Peake
- Records sold: more than 50 million worldwide
Hanna — where it started
Nickelback was formed in 1995 by three young men from Hanna — Chad Kroeger on lead vocals and guitar, his older brother Mike Kroeger on bass, and their schoolmate Ryan Peake on guitar. They rehearsed in Alberta basements, played covers in Alberta bars, and by 1996 had moved on to Vancouver.
The band’s name reportedly came from Mike Kroeger’s day job at a Starbucks in Vancouver, where he would hand back change with the phrase, “Here’s your nickel back.”
The commercial arc
The band’s third studio album, Silver Side Up, released in 2001, pushed them into international rotation. Its lead single, How You Remind Me, became the most-played song on U.S. radio in 2002. Silver Side Up sold more than ten million copies worldwide.
Daniel Adair joined on drums in 2005, replacing earlier drummer Ryan Vikedal, and has been the band’s drummer since. By the 2010s Nickelback had sold more than fifty million records worldwide, making them one of the best-selling rock bands of the 21st century and among the most commercially successful Canadian musical acts of any era.
The mockery — and the small-town response
Somewhere in the mid-2000s, Nickelback also became the internet’s favourite band to mock. Critics called the songs formulaic — viral videos overlaid multiple tracks to show how alike they sounded. Years of radio ubiquity, a few crude lyrics, and Chad Kroeger’s rock-star image did the rest. By the early 2010s, mocking Nickelback had become shorthand for having musical taste — a running joke on Family Guy, South Park, and across the internet.
The band, meanwhile, kept selling out arenas.
Hanna’s response to the mockery has been the opposite of embarrassment. Two large highway signs proclaiming “Proud to be the home of Nickelback” stood at the entrances to town from 2004 until May 2023, when they were taken down as part of a provincial sign-replacement cycle. The murals stayed. The tour stayed.
Alberta artist Donna Brink has painted a series of Nickelback album covers across the exterior of the Hanna Curling Rink. Her most recent addition was the cover of Get Rollin’, the band’s 2022 studio album.
“This is Where I Grew Up”
The town runs a self-guided walking tour named after a lyric from Photograph — the 2005 song most closely tied to Hanna, and the song most fans arrive humming. The video was filmed in Hanna in July 2005. The tour threads visitors past the school the band members attended, the mailbox and roundhouse that appear in the Photograph video, and the curling rink murals. Each stop is marked with a QR code that opens a short narrated story about the location — many told by the band members themselves.
For visitors, the tour begins with a map picked up at the sign at the entrance to Hanna on Highway 9. It is produced by Harvest Sky Economic Development — the local economic development organization — and hosted on their website at harvestsky.ca/nickelback.
Chad Kroeger, in the Photograph video, holds up an old class photograph and sings the opening line — “Look at this photograph.” The town behind him in that photograph is the town he came from. It is still there. It still keeps his picture on the wall.
Hanna, Alberta
Hanna is a town of about 2,700 people in east-central Alberta, on Highway 9, about three hours northeast of Calgary. Historically a coal town and a railway town — the Hanna Roundhouse from the old rail line still stands and appears in the Photograph video. Since 2004, Hanna has quietly run one of the most creative small-town tourism programs in the country.
