Ha Ha Tonka
All Of The Secrets In A Pabst
Jul 7, 2008
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Patrick Stolley
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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12-inch 3-Speed Oscillating…
unreleased
Written by Scott Young (Cousin to the members of Big Smith and part of the San Francisco based band Red Meat) Big Smith is the best band to ever come out of the Ozarks. Their de facto front man, Mark Bilyeu, kindly took us under his wing when we first started up as a band and helped us out in ways too numerous to list here. We worship him as our own personal Ozarkian demigod. We usually play this song at our live shows as tribute and to help spread the word about this incredible band. Our version really doesn't even come close to theirs so please do check them out "here":http://www.myspace.com/bigsmithband. We felt it especially appropriate to play this number during the Daytrotter session since Phil from SSLYBY, who's also a huge Big Smith fan and fellow Ozarkian, was jamming with us. He adds a little acoustic guitar flair.
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Caney Mountain
original version appears on Buckle In The Bible Belt
Thematically, this tune is loosely based on an old Ozarkian tale in which a flashy, traveling preacher comes through the country and fornicates with a young local girl. He then drowns her in the process of baptizing her with the belief that she will go straight to heaven unblemished by the "sin" they'd committed together. It's twisted, but the preacher is more than willing to live with the guilt. He's chased to the West by an angry mob and a swift sentence of justice is carried out on Caney Mountain….or maybe he escapes…I think the ending is somewhat ambiguous. Phil from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin helped us out with tambourine, auxiliary percussion and was part of the angry mob.
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Falling In
original version appears on Buckle In The Bible Belt
This is a love song… it also takes place during the summer. Apparently, we like the summer a lot and rivers even more. Brett wrote the melody and lyrics for this little ditty, which finds the protagonist floating down Meramec River, getting sunburned and fretting about what's next with his lady friend. I think it's by far the prettiest song on our record. Phil from SSLYBY plays Fender Rhodes.
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St. Nick On The Fourth In A…
original version appears on Buckle In The Bible Belt
The 4th of July is during the summer. So are canoe trips. On some level, this song deals with the dangers associated with wishful thinking. On another level, it alludes to the dangers of nationalistic tendencies and overly fervent true believer-ism. And on a completely different level, it's about a carefree, idyllic adolescent float trip on the North Fork River. I think the line "this glimpse of brilliance is much better than a long look at mediocrity" sums up absolutely nothing quite nicely. Phil from SSLYBY contributes some more tambourine and yells on this one.
It doesn't seem exceptionally random or constructed to feel Springfield, Missouri, band Ha Ha Tonka is a slightly sweating Pabst Blue Ribbon can. A can is preferred when Pabst is what it's filled with and that has so much to do with the aesthetics of the can that in no small part probably would have helped the formula win that first-place blue at the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago had the beer already had that name. There must have been some changes made to piggyback that victory, but the can - as far as most of us are concerned - is a legend of patriotic colors, old-fashioned refreshment and simple, navigational design. It and those Bud heavy cans are not to be messed with when tradition is at the table, tucking a napkin into its collar.
Babies, who have never imbibed a sip of the golden drink, can recognize those trademarked cans in a lineup from the time they're 2 ½ years old or earlier. They'll sloppily, with a couple buckets of drool lubricating the exclamation, shout out "Bud" or "Pabst" and they'll get a joyous round of, "Atta boys" from all of the pink-cheeked men standing around cracking the tops of those cans. They're more iconic than the Campbell's Tomato Soup cans because people take to one of them not just in cold months or times of illness. There's the thick blue and silver-outlined ribbon with a beefy red stripe crossing from left to right behind it and at the bottom of the design is a banner of barley and hops (that somehow looks like raspberries and wheat - but that's sacrilege when talking about an iconic beer can, questioning the look).
Below the design is a short graph in antiquated font that says, "This is the ORIGINAL Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Nature's choicest products provide its prized flavor." This is something that was established is 1844, they say, back before all of the oil and gold were found and back when having a good, hard-soled shoe was the only way that you wanted to operate. It was all about how you walked across the earth that mattered. The American Indians wore moccasins, touching the soil as gently and benevolently as they could. The battalions of soldiers during the Civil War wore boots that were wearing out thin from the marching and the same went for those trying their damnedest to eek out a living in a piece of country that wasn't quite ready to be lived on yet. Those traveling westwardly were forced to make their own luck, to forge on through the heat and the dust and the drought, planting seeds in a soil that might become an unforgiving enemy.
Ha Ha Tonka embodies many of these bygone rites of passage that were not happy adventures, but scary ones, only the band of Ozarkians doesn't dwell on the hard-scrabble existence of living life with only a single loaf of bread to your name and some rusty water to drink. They focus on the folk tales of dirty dealings, the horrific stories of misdeed and even more so, the carefree leisure time that never seemed to have interruption back before distractions were invented. Listen closely to the bluegrass picking and playing, the harmonious belt of voices all cannonballing into the deep end of the water at the same time, splashing all of what could be called excess out and over the sides, and you're bound to pick up little subtleties that could sound like hard-eyed BBs plinking against an old soda can sitting on a ledge for target practice.
It could sound like a prickly, frayed rope and an old tire rubbing against the big old branch it's hanging and swinging from, after all of the children have been called into the house for dinner. It could sound like gravel roads and bottle caps tinging against the wall out of boredom. It's sitting in the shade of a massive, 200-year-old oak tree, thinking about all of those various years and just trying to stay as cool as possible. Ha Ha Tonka endorses the time when it was a badge of honor to only have a couple cases of Pabst to drink on a weekend afternoon, when there was nothing better to do, no one could reach you and you didn't want to be reached.
Click here to visit Ha Ha Tonka's myspace page.
Ha Ha Tonka Official Site
Bloodshot Records
