TIPPECANOE AND TIMBUK 3
"I was on the pot when you called. That’s why it took me so long to get to the phone.” There’s something very real about Timbuk 3. The station wagon has limped into Ft. Worth, Texas, Barbara is covered in axle grease, Pat is in the hotel room and now CREEM has called at the same time as nature.
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TIPPECANOE AND TIMBUK 3
Dave Kendall
"I was on the pot when you called. That’s why it took me so long to get to the phone.”
There’s something very real about Timbuk 3. The station wagon has limped into Ft. Worth, Texas, Barbara is covered in axle grease, Pat is in the hotel room and now CREEM has called at the same time as nature. It couldn’t be more cutely contradictory. In four hours’ time, they’ll be washed up, calmed down and ready to unleash their satirical soundtrack to Utopia at Ft. Worth’s Caravan Of Dreams.
It’s been a year of dreams-come-true for Pat MacDonald and Barbara K, despite the dark sarcasm of their international hit, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” Brightest of all, every iota of that success was achieved on their own terms, in their own way. For Timbuk 3 could never be more (it’s a question of honor) and will never be less (it’s a matter of talent) than New Age Buskers, the cross-breeders of computer sampling and traditional street dance, purveyors of a cornucopia of Midwestern wail, electric and acoustic guitar, violin, mandolin, harmonica and a ghetto blaster rhyming bass lines with drum patterns. The blaster is known as a “jambox” or simply as “T3.”
“No, we don’t call it ‘T3’ anymore. Barbara and I usually just refer to it as “the box.” For awhile we had cute names for it, but it’s so easy for articles about us to concentrate on the box as some kind of gimmick or some kind of focal point. We’re trying to de-gimmickify it.”
The box is, in fact, more of an evolutionary necessity than a gimmick. When Pat and Barbara met in Madison, Wisconsin back in 1978, they were both involved in their own musical projects. Although love sprouted quickly—and blossomed into marriage some five years later—the two continued to play around with other musicians. Indeed, apart from the odd casual fling with a harmonica in the back of a van, it wasn’t until 1984 that they got musically serious with each other. Out went the other musicians, in came the jambox.
Pat: “Before we played together, we really knew how to live together. Most bands have to play together first, and then learn to live together—it was kind of backwards for us.”
With a new name, sound and format, the couple moved to Austin, where Barbara grew up.
“There’s a real healthy respect for songwriters. When I was going to school in San Antonio, there was this big progressive country movement going on, and a lot of songwriters moved to Austin and thrived: Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie Nelson, Asleep At The Wheel. Now there’s funk groups and reggae groups too ... a real diverse musical pool to listen to, draw inspiration from, hang out with, drink around .... ”
In Austin, things happened fast. They abandoned street performances in favor of regular gigs at the Hole In The Wall, and the A&R men gathered. Money! Success! Fame! Glamor! All were within their grasp. They simply had to sell their jambox and their souls.
Pat: “One major record label told us they couldn’t sign us unless we had a band. They were talking about giving us some money so we could put one together, like, BOOM! Find some people, tell them what to play, dangle some money in front of their noses and say ‘You can be stars!’
‘‘I would just like for people to be open to new ways of doing things. People in the music biz figure there’s only one formula for success.”
People in the music biz are being proven wrong. ‘‘The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades”—the first single off their debut album, Greetings From Timbuk 3 received heavy airplay on AOR radio, and the video was showcased on MTV’s Sunday night new music show, ‘‘120 Minutes.” It’s a 12-bar, 24-carat gem, quivering with ironic wit and bristling with cynical venom. Pat again:
‘‘The song is about blind ambition and what that can lead to. I was thinking about a nuclear blast being a very bright and pretty sight, and how some people might need to wear shades. But I was also thinking, people wear shades to avoid seeing it ... ‘where all this is gonna lead to is too obvious, but I don’t wanna think about that.’
‘‘I hate so many things about the current administration. I’m definitely not an ‘America first’ person. We were driving into Ft. Worth and there was a billboard advertising some politician and it said ‘He wants to keep America first,’ and America was underlined. That kind of stuff makes me sick because it’s football mentality; it’s our our team against theirs, and that can’t lead to anything but war.
‘‘But I don’t really spend much time thinking up solutions to the problem. I think it comes down to the individual. Barbara and I try to have some ethics in all of our personal relationships—and all of our business relationships are personal as well. I think that’s the way it should be.”
Timbuk 3: New Age Buskers Find Utopia? Well, maybe not. But there’s something very honest, very sane and very real in the Caravan Of Dreams tonight.
