What We’re Listening To This Weekend: Ha Ha Tonka

Note: Matt is Mel’s brother and an admitted music nut. In a previous professional life, he booked bands to play at clubs and still keeps up with the music scene as much as he can with two young children and a new career focus. Matt is also a True Blood fan who seriously digs the music used on the show. Today starts a regular column featuring bands he thinks would fit the tone of True Blood and appeal to Truebies.

Ha Ha Tonka

Ha Ha Tonka

The Ozarks of Southern Missouri are known more for moonshinin’, old pickup trucks and squirrel stew than novelists and “it” bands. Sure, one of American’s most celebrated authors, Mark Twain comes to mind, but consider the fact that respected author Daniel Woodrell and alt.country band Ha Ha Tonka both hail from small West Plains, Missouri. Woodrell just had his novel, Winter’s Bone, turned into an Oscar-nominated film. Ha Ha Tonka just released their third album, Death of a Decade, to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

While Woodrell excels at describing the bleak, isolated region that suffers from deep economic and educational hardships, Ha Ha Tonka (horribly named after a state park in Missouri) celebrates their devotion and love for the bands roots and ties to the area. Lead singer, Brian Roberts says: “We don’t try to hide the fact of where we come from or who we are, we’re Ozarkers.” But, that doesn’t mean playing on stereotypes and singing about drinking and shooting guns.

Their first album, Buckle in the Bible Belt, focused on personal experiences and retelling local legends. Album number two, Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South, is an artsy collection that finds the band seeking out bigger tales to tell, but lacking some of the personal investment that makes good songs great. Death of a Decade is clearly the pinnacle of the band’s career, reinventing themselves by returning to their roots. After ten years of touring, whether playing weekend shows in small college bars in their early career, or traversing the country, opening for larger national acts, they have plenty of personal experiences to pull from on their new album.

There is an overwhelming sense of joy in Death of a Decade, even when the band is addressing their own loss and shortcomings. A band with such a tremendous gift of harmony is always going to have a difficult time keeping themselves from the enthusiasm of a Baptist gospel choir. Ha Ha Tonka seems at home at a whiskey soaked wake as they do a pew at a Southern revival. The band is comprised of a lead singer with boyish charm and a self described “Peter Pan syndrome” whose voice is not quite perfect but perfect for the band, a well-bearded drummer who just might be the key to it all, a bad-boy-next-door bass player and a preoccupied musical savant playing keys, guitar, mandolin and anything else he can get his hands on. They attack every subject they focus on without reluctance or remorse.

Death of a Decade features a heavy, heavy dose of the mandolin. Something that, in less capable hands, could destroy an album. Guitar/keyboard player Brett Anderson added the mandolin to his, and the band’s, repertoire brilliantly. “Brett is one of those guys who can pick up about any instrument and play it proficiently within 5 minutes.” says Roberts. This isn’t the mandolin you’re remembering being played by your weird uncle at family gatherings or by costumed old men at a square dance in your local community center. Anderson wields it like a rock weapon, more for foot stomping than toe tapping. Death of a Decade opens with Anderson confidently wailing away on “All The Usual Suspects”. “Lonely Fortunes”, their austerity anthem, makes you wish you were sitting with the rest of the band stomping away on the wooden floor planks in the old barn the album was recorded in while Armstrong riffs away.

Death of a Decade is drenched in Americana. A rootsy and refreshing sound that was born, not created in a talent lab. Rock music that is rebellious, clever, beautiful and fun. This weekend, we’re listening to Ha Ha Tonka.

Highlights: “Usual Suspects”, “Lonely Fortune”

Similar To: Bob Dylan, Mumford & Sons, Kings of Leon