Artist description Geeks playing ska. Not enough soul to be traditional, yet more talent than the usual ska hangers-on.

Music Style Attempted ska

Musical Influences Herb Alpert, Esquivel, Lightnin' Hopkins, Perez Prado, Sun Ra, Stevie Wonder, Frank Zappa, The Pacers, James Brown, Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, David Byrne, The Police, Ornette Coleman, The Skatalites, T-Bone Walker, The Ventures, Tchaikovsky

Similar Artists There's no one popular we sound like. If they sounded like us, they wouldn't be popular.

Artist History It was 1994. "Ska" was not a common word. And yet deep in the bowels of the practice rooms that were the proverbial primordial soup of Burnt Toast, this word was being whispered a lot. Some would argue that something like Burnt Toast had existed for some time before then, but I wouldn't know. They certainly never played any shows or produced any records - maybe it was a constant lack of key personnel. I showed up at practice one day at the bidding of my next door neighbor, who had been trying to convert me to ska for several months, and knew that I played drums. It was scary, that first practice. They, now we, were a ragtag bunch of ivory tower academians, trying to pull off the rock star act. Somehow, we managed to collect a large enough number of songs to get a show. Most of the songs were covers, or they were awful. That was the dichotomy back then. We opened for Chicago's amazing Blue Meanies on December 9, 1994 at the now-defunct Abyss (back in those days often amusingly labelled the Skabyss).We went on to ride the coattails of Houston's burgeoning ska scene, always filling in somewhere in the middle of a set. We never headlined, butwe never cared. It was fun. We got to open for some of our favorite national ska acts. And we got to dance around like idiots and sometimes get free beer out of it. Time passed. Our original bassist, Colin, left for greener pastures outside Texas, and Jay joined on. We got better at writing songs, and eventually wrote some that we really liked. We would have kept it up, but people graduated and moved and stuff. On April 27, 1996, we played our last show at Fitzgerald's with The Suspects. (There was rumored to be another show after that, but we all deny it to this day) We released our only CD, "...A Burrito Every 40 seconds", around this time. The title refers to the estimated cost, in Taco Bell terms, of our studio time. It was frequently mentioned to the horns, as they wasted time composing solos in the studio. Now spread to the four corners of the earth, the largest Burnt Toast alumni concentration is the Pacific Northwest. For whatever that's worth.

Group Members Mark Deggeller - guitar Hermann Gartler - lead vocals Oren Hayon - trumpet Brandon Kirby - alto saxophone, vocals Chris Roberts - trombone Todd Stadler - drums Jay Sullivan - bass

Instruments guitar, trumpet, alto saxophone, trombone, drums, bass

Albums ...A Burrito Every 40 Seconds

Press Reviews "...Houston's newest ska band" - The Public News (RIP) (1995)

Location Houston, TX - USA

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