HOBO

I ran into Rev. Fred one night at a bar and he told me he was looking for a drummer for a project he was thinking about doing... He explained that he wanted to form a band that could play anywhere at anytime... i.e. in the back of a truck, on the street, in a bar, in a church, in a school... And he had a bunch of original material he wanted to use as a basis for the project.

A few months later I got a call from Fred and we all met up at a tiny practice space downtown and was told to just bring my snare and brushes with me. It wasn't like any other practice I had been to. We sat down, cracked open a beer and just started playing together like we'd been doing it for years. Fred would start off and we would all just follow. At the time, Nathan our guitar player was just using a Pignose guitar with a built in amplifier. It was simple, stripped down, good music. When the practice was over all of us left knowing feeling pretty magical had just occurred. This was the beginning of HOBO.

We all came from different musical backgrounds. I grew up playing rock and metal and later moved into some folk type stuff with a good friend of mine. Nathan had been in several locally known punk bands and was experimenting with electronic game music when we formed. Andy has a background in classical music but played in punk and alternative bands in Corpus and in Houston. And Fred had always just played his own music pretty much by himself, doing weird recordings on his 4 track and jamming with anyone who happened to be around and cared to join in. We are strange group of guys with completely different music tastes but we all seem to be able to mix in our influences in some form or another with the songs. To say HOBO is eclectic is an understatement.

Our first show was at a metal dive bar (The Texan) here in Corpus. We opened for a local punk band and to our surprise actually got a good response. We continued to practice and picked up some small shows at a local hippie tea room where we started to get a small following. After a few months a friend of ours had a benefit show at the House of Rock and we were invited to close out the night. The response was great and people really seemed to like the music and started asking us if we had a cd etc. I am not sure how it came about or who said it first but people starting calling our music Honkadelic and the name just kind of stuck.

From here we began to pick up more and more local shows, playing at art galleries, bars, a retirement home, on the street, in the back of a pickup truck, christmas parties, backyard bbq's and pretty much anywhere people would let us. We saved our money and soon released our first 7 inch record entitled "Hot Lettuce". The record did well and was sold in local record stores and at our shows.

With the release of the record and a good local following, we got invited to play Ziegfest 2008 and were only 1 of 2 local bands to be invited to play. It was a great opportunity and gave us a chance to play with some great musicians. It was funny to be playing on stage with all of these Texas Country guys and to be accepted and then to be able to go and play shows with local punk and metal bands and still get a good response. It felt like we kind of fit in everywhere which was a great feeling.

From here we continued to practice and learn new songs together. The band got better and we got booked for more and more shows. Playing in and around Corpus Christi and out at some bars on Padre Island. In 2009 we played San Antonio, Austin, Dripping Springs, San Marcos and Houston.

2010 has been a great year so far and we have played pretty much every weekend since it started. This year we were asked to come and play a local radio station twice as well as invited back to Ziegfest for the 3rd year in a row. We mainly stayed local but branched out in the past couple of months with a couple of shows in New Braunfels at Billy's Icehouse. We recorded the show live and hope to release it in the next few months. We were also invited to play a local elementary school after after one of the teachers heard us at The Executive Surf Club. With only 2 weeks to prepare, we learned as many children's songs as we could. It turned out to be one of the most fun shows we have ever played.

In the future we hope to release a studio album, play as many new places as possible and just keep doing what we have been doing for the past couple of years. The thing that makes it great is that it is never the same. We are ever evolving and coming up with new songs and new ways of doing things and that seems to keep people coming back again.

There is a chemistry between Fred and Nathan that is awesome to watch as well. Sometimes I wonder whether this is all really a comedy/variety show that we are just playing background music for. Their song writing styles are so different and have complete opposite personalities that somehow compliment each other. All i