In the beginning was the "L."

Why, Jessica, thank you for asking. I would love to explain how Lava Toad began! I'll start with the title song.

Once upon a time, Uncle Joe lived happily in a little HUD house in the upper-white-trash town of North Bend, forty long, twisted miles east of Seattle, with his wife, Aunt Tammy, and their daughter Sta--let's call her Barb. Inexplicably modest, she would most likely wish to remain anonymous.

Joe, a mild-mannered grocer by day, was, by night, a mild-mannered singer/songwriter/connoisseur of inexpensive wines. Whenever his niece Megan came to visit, along with her husband Chris and Chris's sister Sally (later known as the Punk Rock Goddess), the little house was filled with warmth and song and big hairy dogs, who would later appear in . . . but that's getting ahead of myself.

None of us remember a time when Joe was NOT making up songs, or when exactly we first heard the one that would become the name of our band; what we do remember is the story behind it--the ALLEGED story. It goes like this: Joe was watching one of those nature shows, so he says, with his daughter "Barb" and a friend of hers. Yes, that's right: there are two other witnesses that the elusive Hawaiian lava toad does exist. Why there is no mention of this toad in any encyclopedia, dictionary, or web site--including that of the Museum of Natural History (in HAWAII)--is a mystery, but Joe claims this little toad lives on the Big Island, frolicking among the volcanoes, surviving because it looks like an ugly clump of igneous rock. (This fools the lava into thinking that it's one of its own.) He claims that, in spite of the toad's hideousness, its manner of hopping is so adorable that Joe was moved to write a song about it. Why the original song was sung in a French accent, he does not explain, but he says that it was an instant hit with "Barb" and her friend.

The next time we came to visit, we all sat on the back porch roasting kosher marshmallows on the barbecue. (Joe, Barb, Chris, Sally, and I are vegetarians of about twenty years each--making a century of vegetarianism if you stack us end to end.) Joe, of course, had his guitar, and performed for us, for the first time, the song "Lava Toad." Little did we know that, ten years later (and just a few weeks ago today), our lives would change because of that song.

It was a couple years before we made the first recording of "Lava Toad," and, unfortunately, we no longer have that version, which included Punk Rock Sally in the backups. (The one on the CD, alas, does not.) That was in 1997, and we were recording onto a tape, using Sally's four-track which was later stolen out of her house. Being lazy, lazy fuck-ups, we didn't get around to recording the CD *Lava Toad* until 1999.

The story of how *Lava Toad* made it all the way down the coast (git along, git along) has to do with a very important four people who were strangers to us until we received their first e-mails on January 9th, 2001, at 9:31 a.m. I still have those e-mails. You folks know who you are: if you'll give your permission, I will reprint them here. (If you'd like to see them first, let me know.)