Ha Ha Tonka returns to St. Louis to spend Tonksgiving at Off Broadway

It’s 5 p.m. in St. Louis, but it’s midnight in Berlin. That’s where Ha Ha Tonka lead singer and de facto spokesman Brian Roberts talks to me via Zoom. Despite the late hour, Brian says he doesn’t mind the late-night chat, as he’s used to burning the midnight oil in Germany, where he’s lived for the past seven years. 

You see, despite a life as a working musician in one of Missouri’s most popular country-rock exports, Roberts works full time in Berlin for Mercedes-Benz doing what he calls “social media stuff.” 

So is it difficult to run the Ha Ha Tonka operations from 4,657 miles away? “No, not really,” Roberts laughs. “In some ways it makes it easier, because the German work laws give you 30 days paid vacation every year.” On the other hand, keeping the band going means a lot of travel and plenty of connecting flights, although Roberts is excited that you can now fly nonstop from Frankfurt to St. Louis.  

In fact, Roberts will fly to Missouri the day after our interview to spend Thanksgiving with his family in the Ozarks and prepare for a run of Ha Ha Tonka shows, including the annual Tonksgiving bash at Off Broadway on November 29. The show will continue a 14-year Tonksgiving tradition of special concerts in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago held over the holiday weekend. 

The Missouri cities are important satellites to Ha Ha Tonka’s hometown of Springfield, Missouri, and Chicago is home to Bloodshot Records, which signed the band in time to release its debut, 2007’s Buckle in the Bible Belt, establishing Ha Ha Tonka’s tight, tuneful alt-country boogie. The band stayed with Bloodshot for five more critically acclaimed albums, touring hard and building a loyal fanbase of Tonkheads. 

While Ha Ha Tonka officially came together at Missouri State University (then Southwest Missouri State) in Springfield, Roberts and bassist Lucas Long actually grew up in the deep south-central town of West Plains, a place of about 7,000 when they were growing up there. (And to be more exact, the boys are from the tiny hamlet of Pottersville, which Roberts estimates has a population of “about 50 people,” 10 miles from West Plains.) 

Roberts, Long, and original Tonka drummer Lennon Bone went to grade school together before graduating from West Plains High School (home of the Zizzers) in the late ‘90s. At that time, the circle of musical influences cut a wide swath around them. “We were into all kinds of shit,” Roberts says. “We were blasting country music, but we’re also way into R.E.M. and Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails and the shit your parents didn’t want you to listen to. But at the same time, we were loving the shit our parents listened to! I remember my parents’ record collection, playing the Eagles and the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and the Stones. So we were into all of it. We have always been an amalgamation of all the stuff we listened to.”

Coming of age together in the heart of the Ozarks, that amalgamation also included the legacy of legendary Springfield bands like the Ozark Mountain Daredevils and Big Smith, a musical lineage that helped inform Ha Ha Tonka’s eventual country-rock character. In fact, during his college years, Roberts interned for Big Smith’s Mark Bilyeu at Bilyeu’s MayApple Records. “Mark really helped us immensely when we were starting out,” he says. “He gave us pointers and really provided lots of advice.” 

The band’s name, of course, also sprang from the Ozarks. Going by the name Amsterdam when they first signed with Bloodshot, the band was talked into changing their name by the label since too many other bands had Amsterdam-derived names. Plus, Amsterdam sounded like a band of stoners. 

“[Multi-instrumentalist] Brett [Anderson] is from Lee’s Summit, and his family has a place on the Lake of the Ozarks across from Ha Ha Tonka [State Park],” Roberts explains. “We were like, that’s a crazy name. But we came out sounding just as high as we did when we were called Amsterdam.”

All along, Ha Ha Tonka have blended guitar-driven Americana, alt-country, Laurel Canyon folk, indie-roots-rock, and power pop, topped with floating harmonies and round, colorful melodies that are best formed by musicians who have known each other forever. “When you grow up together, you have a shorthand together,” Roberts says. “You can say things that would just ruin a relationship in any other setting. But here you’re brothers. You might get pissed off for a little bit, but it’s not going to ruin anything.”

Roberts is talking about the collaboration among members that goes into Ha Ha Tonka’s songwriting, a group effort that is made evident in the group’s complex, multi-layered arrangements. “It’s always been a truly collaborative process,” he says. “I think the bands that last the longest are the ones that share everything. It’s all those things we’re all doing that make a song sound great. Not one person who did one thing that deserves all the credit. We’ve been that way from day one, and it’s one of the reasons we’re still together after 20 years.”

And now, 20 years into it, the band has released what Roberts calls the “most Tonka album yet.” 2023’s BloodRedMoon is also the band’s catchiest, prettiest, and most immediately intoxicating album to date. “It’s the first album we did without Bloodshot,” Roberts says. “It’s the first one we self-produced. We recorded it on our own. It was a labor of love, kind of our ‘turning 40’ record.”

Roberts points out that Bloodshot was always unfailingly supportive during their tenure with the label, but when reorganizations within the company left Bloodshot idle for a couple of years, Tonka were forced to go it alone for BloodRedMoon. In any case, the album has been a big hit with the band’s fans, particularly as the new songs play to the band’s strengths as one of roots rock’s best live acts. 

“At some point the magic might disappear, and people might stop liking the stuff you’re doing,” Roberts says. “Like, ‘Oh, just play the old songs!’ But we were super pleased that everybody really dug the new album. Audiences don’t lie. You feel the energy and how people react to songs, whether they are engaging with music or singing along. You feel it.”

Fans at Tonksgiving at Off Broadway will get to feel it as the band breaks out some of those new songs. But the annual shows have also become a chance to revisit some of the old Tonka albums, which the band will play from start to finish. This year, Tonka celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their fourth LP, Lessons, a record inspired by the works of Where the Wild Things Are author Maurice Sendak. 

So for just three shows, including St. Louis, Ha Ha Tonka will dust off a pile of tunes they haven’t played in years. “We do play maybe four of those songs fairly regularly, but there are 14 songs on that record,” he says. And while revisiting old songs prompts a temptation to rework some of the arrangements, Roberts says the band resists. “It’s an internal struggle, because you want to rearrange them, but you can’t,” he says. “People want to hear what was on the record. So we do try to be honest to what we put on the record, and it is a reeducation.”

And, above all, Tonksgiving is the band’s opportunity to reconnect not just with old songs but with the fans that have been with them for years. “We can’t wait to get back to St. Louis,” Roberts says. “It’s a moment where people make an excuse to go out, an agreed-upon time where we can all see each other again.”