***Preliminary liner notes, subject to change. ***

A FAN’S NOTES

I first became aware of Honk while hosting a “hoot” night at a little club in San Clemente, California called The Four Muses. They came in all happy and ready to rock and right in the middle was a kid I grew up surfing with, drummer Tris Imboden. And they blew everybody away that night.

I followed them through doing the soundtrack to Five Summer Stories, playing midnight concerts at the Laguna Beach Theater, at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and opening for Chicago and the Beach Boys. In that time period they became good friends and my favorite band.

Honk is a unique blend of great musical talents that, together, are just nothing short of magic. The warmth of their music and pure joy that comes through it is amazing. And they rock. The songs are also great. From Beth’s sweet vocals on songs like “Buckeyed Jim” and “Circles in Sand” to Steve’s rock-solid voice and keyboards, Craig’s amazing horn playing, Richard’s point-perfect guitars and rock vocals, Willy holding it all in balance with precision bass work and of course the great Tris Imboden on drums, this band of individual stars combined equals a sum far greater than the total of its parts. And that is saying a lot because each of these parts is amazing all on its own.

That night at the Four Muses was something over thirty years ago. A few weeks ago, I attended one of their reunion concerts at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and it was the same magic as always. As Steve put it, “It is incredible that we can just stick the key in it and it still goes.”

I don't know what else to say, except that Honk is still my favorite band of all time and if you haven't experienced this music, you have been missing a truly wonderful gift.

Corky Carroll

Huntington Beach, California

Longtime Honk fan Corky Carroll was named #1 Surfer In The World by Surfer magazine.

A SHORT HISTORY OF HONK, 1970-1975

1973: The last few citrus groves that had given Orange County its name were about a minute and a half from being plowed under to make way for tract homes and parking lots. The local congressman, John G. Schmitz, was better known for replacing George Wallace on the 1972 American Independent Party presidential ticket than for being Mary Kay Letourneau’s dad. Laguna Beach was arguably the only city south of the 37th parallel where it was remotely okay to be gay. To say the area was riddled with paradox is an understatement of the first order.

Honk’s home, Laguna Beach, was a sleepy little burg just up Coast Highway a dozen or so miles from the Western White House in San Clemente, where Nixon retreated from the ever-increasing rigors of Beltway life. Ozzie and Harriet had made their retirement home within walking distance of Main Beach, where the city’s official greeter, a grizzled Dane named Eiler Larsen, waved at passersby for forty years. The price of gas hovered around fifty cents a gallon, the minimum wage was still under two dollars an hour, and you could call anywhere within the city limits using a five-digit telephone number.

Looming up the freeway to the north was Los Angeles, the big, provincial cultural bully that sneered down its palm-lined streets at anything from “behind the Orange curtain.” In song and story, it was the glitz-dusted Hollywood Hills, the counter-culture of the Sunset Strip, and the famed “ladies of the canyon” that reigned.

Well, we had our own canyon, damn it. And this is what it sounded like.

Honk first came together in 1970 as a quartet comprised of Steve Wood, Tris Imboden, Don Whaley and guitarist Mike Caruselle, whose bluesy style set him off in a different musical direction mere months after joining the band. Needing a replacement, Steve Wood reached out to the most logical locale: Vietnam. Fellow Lagunan Richard Stekol was serving a tour of duty, and Wood knew his service there coming was to a close. Upon Stekol’s return in 1971, he joined the band. After the better part of a year as a quartet, Honk enlisted reedman Craig Buhler.

“In March of 1970,” says Beth Fitchet, “I played on an open-mike night at [legendary Huntington Beach club] The Golden Bear. It was me, Honk, James Harman and Cheech & Chong. I know I got hired, and so did Honk. I’m not sure about the other two.” Fitchet started gigging with the band at the end of the following year, and she joined full-time about a month after Buhler. By the spring of 1972, the lineup was complete.

That same year, local filmmakers Greg MacGillivray and Jim Freeman approached them to score a surf movie called Five Summer Stories. Code-named The Last Surfing Movie during production, the film turned out to be a cult masterpiece, and one tune from the soundtrack (“Pipeline Sequence”) was adopted as surfing’s anthem of the decade. In fact, the track shot to #1 at KPOI radio in Honolulu. Honk had no interest being pigeonholed as a surf band, though, and they weren’t going to let “Pipeline Sequence” turn them into the Chantays of the Seventies.

As you might guess, Honk is comprised of six fiercely independent individuals. In the spirit of those who had grown up in the Sixties, the band made a daring choice to proceed as a collective, rather than having a single leader. They had two outstanding songwriters in Stekol and Wood; Fitchet’s gorgeous and distinctive vocals and rhythm guitar support; Buhler’s one-man reed section (he frequently accompanied himself on simultaneous tenor and alto saxes); and a rock-solid bottom end in drummer Tris Imboden and bassist Don Whaley (replaced in 1973 by Will Brady, who remains to this day). In retrospect, it’s amazing that, in the 32 years since Five Summer Stories, the band has had but one personnel change, and that one three decades ago. Tight knit? They’re siblings.

Flash forward to Labor Day weekend, 2004. The band is preparing for their annual reunion gig at their home base, the Coach House in San Clemente, California. Richard Stekol asks the other members in the dressing room, “Would you guys go on doing this if I died?” With immaculate comic timing, the other band members answer nearly as one, “Yes.” Stekol responds with mock shock and disappointment. “I would have thought you’d at least think about it before answering,” he rejoins. Point taken; they’ve only had a third of a century or so to work it out.

Back in 1972, after “Pipeline Sequence” had its first radio success, Russ Regan of 20th Century Records signed the band. “I remember being on the floor in an office above the studio when he was listening to the album,” says Steve Wood. “He played the first side, then the second side, then the second side again. He told us, ‘I love the second side, hate the first.’ So we threw away half the album and started a new side one.”

The so-called “puppet” album was released in 1973, having gotten its nickname from the figurines in the cover photo. If they remind you of, say, the California Raisins and Will Vinton’s “Claymation” movies, it should come as no surprise. James Robbins “Bob” Gardiner, who teamed up with Vinton for the Academy Award-winning animated short “Closed Mondays,” sculpted the band members for the album cover.

Over the course of assembling the tapes for the re-release, we uncovered a radio spot for the album voiced by the legendary radio personality B. Mitchel Reed (if you back up from track one on the disc, you can hear it). We also found a second album. The previously-unreleased record was produced by the band, with assistance from engineer Steve Desper, at Cherokee Studios in Chatsworth. Unlike the first album, Wood joked, “Russ [Regan] hated both sides.”

The band was released from its contract, and then-manager Terry Wright negotiated a deal with Epic, where a second album entitled Honk (with three of the songs from the abandoned album) was released in 1974. It turned out to be the last studio album the band would make.

The record company had Honk out on the road, usually doing 30-minute opening slots for the likes of Loggins & Messina, the Beach Boys, and Linda Ronstadt. As anyone who’s ever been in a band will tell you, abbreviated sets in front of largely indifferent audiences don’t make for the most satisfying gigs. It wasn’t a particularly nurturing environment for a band that was still developing.

“If the band was a tree,’ says Fitchet, “it was a particularly brutal pruning. We got stifled musically, and extremely frustrated. It seemed like the world was pulling us in a direction that was counter to our original ideals for the band.”

“It wasn’t like there was one single event,” says Steve Wood. “It’s just that, as we got that taste of success, we really began to feel the pressure.” In 1975, the pressure grew to be intolerable, and the band broke up.

With Honk, as with perhaps any band, a string of “what-ifs” hangs like a piñata, ready to burst, given sufficient prodding. What if they had embraced surf music? What if they had beaten Linda Ronstadt to the punch with their recording of “Heat Wave”? What if they’d decided to proceed on a single path, rather than the half dozen musical routes that comprised their two non-soundtrack albums?

The reality is that they would have broken up by now anyway. Think of the bands that were together in 1973 and still are. Of that miniscule number, only the tiniest fraction offer anything more than an echo of their glory years. Honk, on the other hand, has bottled the energy that would normally leak out during a tour and focused it into a single show each year. They clearly enjoy one another’s company, they revel in incorporating new musical ideas into their repertoire. Even “Pipeline Sequence,” which has been played at every Honk concert for over thirty years, gets a little detailing each year. And there’s always a new song or two.

“It’s a ball,” says Wood of the occasional reunion shows. “We’re all still really good friends, we’re all still challenging each other to make great music. It’s just an extension of our original idea: find the best musicians we can, and let them do their best.”

Thane Tierney

Santa Monica, California

October, 2004

FROM THE BAND

In January, 1972, I was sitting in a cheap motel room in freezing, windy Richland, WA, when Honk asked me to join their band. The decision to sacrifice the security of a top-40 road gig for the uncertainty of a recording band took 5 months of soul searching. My life was transformed from black & white to Technicolor overnight. What an amazing group of musicians, seasoned by constant recording & concertizing experience. Our reunions still blow my mind 30 years later.

Although I now live a wonderful life - as a Christian married to Molly, hiking the Olympic mountains & swimming Puget Sound, teaching musicians to improvise, & playing with the Stardust Big Band - the music, fellowship, & ocean swimming I find at Honk dates are incomparably wonderful.

Craig Buhler

Sequim, Washington

I have continuously been struck by the strange multiplying effect that the group Honk has had since its beginning, a volatile chemical reaction that continues each time we get together. When the band first formed we shared a passion for music that superseded everything else in our lives. That quest for new solutions and musical change has not diminished to this day. Thirty plus years and every member is still totally dedicated to their music and continues to make whatever kind of living that commitment allows.

As the years pass, I have come to see what a rare and precious gift it is to know from an early age what one wants to do with their life. Honk is what happens when six of those rarities come together.

One tends to be startled by people whose passion is the musical half of the “music business.” Fortunately Thane Tierney is a keeper of the flame whose efforts have finally allowed this music to once again become available for our fans. A special thanks goes out to him from the members of Honk for his energy, care and nerve. Also thanks to Gavin Lurssen for a remaster that is vastly superior to the original.

Steve Wood

Laguna Beach, California

What do I write about this band?

When we're onstage playing music, I am guaranteed at least quite a few moments that Richie describes as “coma-like.” That happens when the communication between us all is so good that it resembles a feedback loop, and the tiniest sub-aural nuances are picked up by everyone and amplified. Often the audience picks it up, and then the feedback loop gets really big. It's an incredible experience. To continue to feel that through each others’ music, year after year, 30 years after the band broke up, is nothing short of miraculous. Maybe it has to do with some of that stuff Steve said.

Beth Fitchet Wood

Laguna Beach, California