The Herschel Tucker Band started like a lot of bands do, with some guys who worked together at a truck wash in central Pennsylvania, guys with big dreams of owning their own truck wash someday, but whose credit had been bollocksed up by a credit agency site hack traced to a server farm outside Chengdu, so that dream was DOA.

“What now?” asked Cotten.

“Dunno,” replied Mike, hosing down a Peterbilt. “I got a cousin sells stuff on the dark web.”

“Start a rock band,” mumbled Ted. He was the newest member of their “semi suds squad,” having drifted up from Maryland in the past few months. “I saw a movie where people made money doing that.”

“Can we still wash trucks?” Cotten asked.

“No chance,” said Mike. “We’d have to leave the life.”

Ted nodded gravely. Cotten looked down at the soapy water running past his boots to the drain, knowing things would never be the same.

Over the next few months they read everything they could get their hands on about rock music. Then they listened to some of it on the radio. They seemed to understand.

Then they rolled multisided dice, wrestled, and consulted the I Ching for who would play which instrument. When the sun came up, it was settled: Cotten would play guitar and sing; Ted would play the drums; Mike would play a longer, fewer-stringed guitar called the smallmouth bass. One meticulously-planned megachurch-basement heist later, they had their gear. Now they needed songs to play and sell to people, maybe through Mike’s cousin.

How should their songs sound? What should the words in the songs convey? The three were flummoxed. They had already had written one song, about Cotten seeing soapy water running past his boots and knowing things would never be the same (that was the song’s title too).

“Should I write another song about the soapy water that was laden with meaning?” Cotten asked his comrades.

“No, that’s enough of that one,” said Mike.

“What if you wrote one about water coming out of the power washer nozzle?” Ted asked. But that made them all uncomfortable.

So, they hatched an idea: ask the men (it was mostly men) whose trucks they washed how their band’s songs should sound and what their lyrics should be about.

“ZZ Top,” said one, climbing down from a muddy, salt-rimed Mack. “But early ZZ Top, before their beards got cliché-length.”

CHECK.

“Well, I always did like the post-punk and power-pop stuff,” said another, smoking outside the waiting room. His cap read: Wanted: Good Woman Must Be Able to Cook, Clean, Dig Worms, and Clean Fish. Must Have Boat and Motor. PLEASE SEND PICTURE OF BOAT AND MOTOR. Ted silently observed that that was a lot of words for a hat. Mike noted there was no address to send the requested photo. Cotten wrote the whole thing down, hoping he could work it into another water-themed song. “I mean like, Hüsker Dü, Stooges, Dinosaur Jr., My Bloody Valentine, Shellac. I gotta go now—hauling fries to a Wendy’s outside Bangor, Maine.”

CHECK.

We braced a group of drivers in the lounge, kind of a focus group, Mike called it. He put on some coffee and offered to Irish up anyone’s mug who so desired. Ted told us he would watch us from behind a two-way mirror, but he was really just sitting there in the room wearing mirrored sunglasses from the convenience shop, still with the tag on them.

“Well, I tell you what,” said the first contributor, “rock songs have to be about love, but not too lovey-dovey.”

Mike asked if he might unpack that a bit.

“Well, it’s like what that guy says in that song—‘You want a piece of my heart/You gotta start from the start.’ It’s kind of about love, sounds a little bit arrogant, rhymes, and ultimately makes no sense.”

“Exactly,” said another, rubbing his bleary, white-line-fever eyes. “Or what’s that other, uh—‘You wanna be in the show/C’mon baby let’s go!’”

CHECK. Cotten thrilled inside. He was confident he could write lyrics like that.

Mike leaned in. “Can you give us a more granular sense of the thematic content of the songs you’d play habitually in your cabs as you traverse our great republic?”

“Attractive women,” grunted one.

“And the difficulties we have relating to them openly and authentically,” grunted another.

“Politics is okay,” chimed in a driver in suspenders (and a belt). “But the references should be oblique so as not to get you in hot water with the goddam IRS.”

“If you’re playing a show in a town, sing or say that town’s name in a song.”

“Can you Irish this up a bit for me, Mike?”

“Sometimes break it down and have just the drummer play while the other two of you sing some gibberish about everyone gettin’ together.”

“Just to piggyback if I may on that last point, I strongly suggest dropping the ‘g’ off of most gerunds and replacing them with apostrophes.”

Cotten made a note: “droppin’ gs and replacin’ them (‘em?).”

CHECK. DOUBLE CHECK. TRIPLE CHECK

“Sweet bleedy Jesus!” cried a small voice in the back of the room. It issued from a wiry, bent man of indeterminate years, clad entirely in tartans and tweeds. He stood and surveyed the cowed assembly of truckers, clutching the tweed cap he had angrily plucked from his head. “I’m here to tell you lot, and”—he nodded at Ted—"I see you there, mister, behind your fancy two-way mirror. Rock music cannot be reduced to themes or gimmicks or frippery. It comes from HERE, damn you”—he gestured sharply at his pancreas or possibly gall bladder—”and if it doesn’t it won’t stand the test of time. It’ll disappear from human memory, like soapy water flowing past someone’s rubber boots and down a drain.”

QUADRUPLE CHECK.

The name of that man, who was not a driver but a stowaway from “points north” en route to Branson, Missouri, was Herschel Tucker. Neither Mike, Ted, nor Cotten ever saw his tweedy, tartany keester again, and hope no cease-and-desist letter from his attorneys ever darkens the inbox of the band into which he breathed the fire of life and to which he gave his good name.

press kit

Booking Contact: herscheltuckerband@gmail.com

BIO

Herschel Tucker Band started, like a lot of bands do, with some guys who worked together at a truck wash in central Pennsylvania, guys with big dreams of owning their own truck wash someday. So they set out methodically building a plan to cash in from rock music.

First decision: fewer members = more $$. Second decision: Cotten Seiler on guitar and singing; Ted Sadowski on drums; and Mike Monti on the smallmouth bass.

From a wiry, bent truck driver clad entirely in tartans and tweeds their purpose was revealed: rock music cannot be reduced to themes or gimmicks or frippery. “If it doesn’t come from the gut,” Herschel Tucker said, “it’ll disappear from human memory, like soapy water flowing past someone’s rubber boots and down a drain.”

They never saw his tweedy, tartany keester again, and hope no cease-and-desist letter from his attorneys ever darkens the inbox of the band into which he breathed the fire of life and to which he gave his good name.

Today Herschel Tucker Band plays original songs located between post-rock and post-punk, always with a sense that there was a time when the future looked ripe for ruining.

Full origin story