Poi Dog Pondering: Aloha to Austin
Read an excerpt from Cary Baker’s new book on busking
Poi Dog Pondering originated in Hawaii and later became based in Austin, Texas and Chicago, Ill.
The band was formed in 1984 by Frank Orrall, lead singer and songwriter. The band’s musical style is a blend of folk, rock, soul, world music — and perhaps a bit of inevitable island influence.
The band’s busking roots trace back to its early days in Hawaii. Poi Dog Pondering started by performing on the streets of Honolulu, playing their music to passersby and gathering a following through their performances.
According to Orrall, founding band member and Poi Dog’s only constant member from the band’s 1984 inception: “I grew up in Hawaii. I moved there when I was three years old [having been born in Sac Peak, N.M.]. So all then I went to Europe when I was probably about 22, and that’s where I first saw buskers. So it went in my head: It was like, Oh, wow! Look at, you know, like in Paris or Amsterdam and stuff, and I would see buskers, and it wasn’t really something that people did in Hawaii.…so this was the first time I’d seen it.”
It also occurred to Orrall that in busking, there was strength in numbers.
“I noticed that when I first started busking then, I was just by myself. It’s kind of like everyone looks at you like you’re panhandling,” he says, “But we were five people — one woman, a Frenchman, one New Zealander and two Hawaii local boys — so they gave us the time of day. People are curious about your story. So that was kind of a thing that helped us because I’ve done a lot of busking. Busking by myself [was] hard going for sure…And then finding quiet place [is important] of course — places that have a resonance behind you, like the open front of a movie house.”
When the original band came together, they test-marketed their act on the streets of Waikiki, Honolulu.
He explains: “There were not many places to play original music in Honolulu. Most bars wanted you to play cover songs, as there were so many tourists. Playing on the street allowed us to play whatever we wanted, and served as a great way to work out new songs (without the pressure of the stage).”
“Right out of the bag, we had a really big crowd going one evening — and a beat patrolman came and arrested us. There were three of us playing. And they arrested us for peddling. They had us down on our knees handcuffed, and the crowd was bewildered that we got arrested. And then the squad cars came to pick us up. [Drummer] Sean Coffey was younger. He was 17. So he went to juvie [juvenile detention center]. And me and Kalea went to County. Shawn had to spend the night, but me and Kalea got out — we were in there with a guy from Canada who tried to stab his girlfriend. But they let us out after about four hours. The next day, then they set a court date for us, and the judge just read everything and said, “’Case dismissed.’ So I [asked the judge] if it’s always OK if we go back on the street and play? He said, ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. They’re just trying to clean up Wakiki. They’ll arrest you again.’”
Besides, Hawaii had become a dead end in the band’s career development.
“In Hawaii, there’s not many places to play. You’re usually you’re playing 50% covers because you’re playing for tourists a lot of the time 50 tourists vs. locals. So when I started writing my own songs, I started playing them on the street in Waikiki. That was like the place to go play — and it was kind of emulating that European experience. And then around that same time, The Pogues came out, and, and The Pogues are an acoustic band, you know, using acoustic instruments or with post-punk mentality. So it kind of went in my head that, ‘Oh, you can do that. You’re using acoustic instruments, but with a post-punk sensibility.’ So that’s that and then we started enjoying playing on the street so much, and we thought that it would just be a nice way to go across the United States, across the continent, and have an adventure — and that’s exactly what we did. We did it for a year. We left and we flew to the mainland and bought like a GMC Suburban in January of 1986 and started playing on the street. And it was pretty hard-going for a long time.”
First stop was Los Angeles as the band had signed with Santa Monica’s indie-credible Texas Hotel Records (also the home of albums by Henry Rollins and Vic Chesnutt), for whom they issued seven albums. They also owned a retail record store that carried independent releases.
“[Texas Hotel] gave us an in-store,” Frank recalls. “We did that and then we’d play [other locations in] Los Angeles, where it was really rough to find a place to play. We would sleep outdoors; we’d drive outside the city and drive down like San Diego and sleep along the beach there and on eucalyptus groves and then come back up and play in Santa Monica. then we went up to San Francisco and had a great time there but we’re making very little money just like making just barely anything to get gas in the tank.
“It wasn’t until our car broke down in Davis, Calif. and we played in front of a college coffeehouse. That’s when we discovered a new mode. There were students there that were more our age. We’re a little bit older than we were probably in our mid-20s. And they’re younger but they were inviting us to play their college party. They’re letting us sleep on their floor. You know, they were kind of we were making, you know, like, $17. So that kind that became a model, and we started doing that.”
They might have stayed in California. But by then, wanderlust got the better of them. So from San Diego, they set their sights on the city known as the “Live Music Capital of America,” Austin — by car, west by southwest:
“So we’re going up the Western seaboard, and we’re playing college coffeehouses by now,” Orall explains. “And we’re everything everything’s going kind of smoothly. We’re like, alright, cool— you know, we didn’t have to sleep outdoors as much. We’re having a nice adventure. We’ve [went] up to Canada, and we came back down and we’re just staying along the Western seaboard, you know, Seattle, Oregon… And then we got down to San Diego. We knew we wanted to go to Austin because we had friends of ours who there from Hawaii, like tattoo artist Rollo Banks, who was always telling us, ‘Oh, it’s really it’s amazing music scene.’ New Orleans was high on our list and we wanted to see it. So we started crossing the States.
“We started in San Diego, then going into Phoenix…We started pawning; one of us pawned a camera…another, a trombone… kind of like a boat throwing stuff off the ship. But we were not catching up [to our expenses] and it’s a long way from El Paso to anywhere. So in El Paso we decided we were gonna start picking up hitchhikers and then ask them to contribute for gas. We picked up this guy who looked a little rough and tumble…looked like a trucker actually, but there was a little bit of an edge to him. We picked him up and then we said, ‘Hey, can you contribute to gas?’ He said, ‘I gotta get to San Antonio. But if you get me to San Antonio, I’ll give you $40.”
Band singer Abra Moore did not have a good feeling about the rider; Orrall admits he should have heeded her “female intuition.”
Fast forward: “By this time we got to San Antonio about three in the morning and or two in the morning something like that. And he went to make a phone call and then, you know, we never saw [him again].
“He left, and we realized he wasn’t coming back. So we drove into Austin. It’s now pre-dawn. And we didn’t know the town at all, and that’s our usual mode of assault: You get to the outskirts of town, sleep, and then go to college coffeehouse, take a shower, and then go play on the quad. And so we’re we pulled up and it was cold. This was in December of ‘86 and I just I was cold, so I went slept on the hood of the car where it was nice and warm because the engine had been running all night. I woke up to a cop shaking me. I started making excuses right away: ‘Oh, sorry. I was tired and we pulled over and you know,’ and he said, “No, it’s OK, just making sure you’re still alive. I came up here and found a guy with four bullet holes in his head a month ago.’
“So there we were in Austin. We went to the college coffeehouse, got some coffee, got cleaned up and then we played on the [University of Texas] quad. And miraculously made that $40 we needed. We closed the [guitar] case and went to the store and bought groceries. We ended up staying in Austin for two months after that…we were tired. We’d been on the road by them for five or six months, something like that…sleeping outdoors half the time and sleeping on people’s floors the rest of the time. And that’s how we grew to know the town, and wound up back there after we finished the [cross-country] trip.
“There was really only one place that in Austin [that] we used to play, and that was Guadalupe Street, The Drag, on the university side, across the street from Captain Quackenbush’s — a great coffee shop — or in front of Quackenbush or to Austin Film Society building on the Drag. East 6th Street or South Congress were always too noisy. And the thing about The Drag is that you could play on the street, or you could play up inside the college like towards the Cactus Café, and get a little further away from the road. And yeah, the burritos were 50 cents for one.”
Longtime Austin journalist and scene observer Michael Corcoran wrote of Poi Dog’s years in Texas’ capital city in his Substack blog Michael Corcoran’s Overserved: “In late ‘86, Frank and Abra and a couple other haole scruffs made it to Austin. ‘Our truck was on its last legs, we were completely broke and hadn’t eaten in two days,’ Orrall remembered. When Poi Dog set up next door to the Co-op, they were like no other buskers Austin had ever seen…They identified more as beatniks than hippies, but they also had a very melodic sound. People danced. Frank had a strong pop voice…and his lyrics came right from the heart. But after an hour that first day only one guy had tipped them, tossing a couple bills in the open guitar case. ‘I went over to get the money, and it was two $20 bills,’ Frank said. ‘That’s when we decided to stay in Austin a little while.’”
After which, according to Orrall, “We continued onto New York and more solid busking. And then we then we just we stopped busking really.”
By then, the band had albums on indie Texas Hotel and later the ultimate major label, Columbia.
Orrall and the ever-evolving Poi Dog Pondering remained Austin residents for five years, followed by 27 in Chicago. By the time they hit the Windy City, Poi Dog was for all intents and purposes out of the busking business.
“We’d immersed ourselves so completely in busking for a full year. living 100% off the change in the guitar case. It was a beautiful and rugged adventure: sleeping outdoors and on floors, existing on coffee, bread & cheese, pasta, burritos and tacos. Seeing lots of cities and small towns, from the nitty gritty inside out. I satisfied my curiosity completely. The only way I think I would want to do it again is in Europe… that would be a fun way to explore Europe!”
“The camaraderie that we forged with that group of people on the trip…it was really just a means to travel and see the continent you know… Everyone gets to their moment [upon which] they don’t think they can go on anymore. And then they make, like, $12. That’ll buy a box of pasta, a bag of peas, a bottle of olive oil, and some salt and pepper — and you can make some pasta.
“And by then, you know, everyone’s cool again.”
Pre-order Cary Baker’s Down on the Corner: Adventures in Busking and Street Music here.
- Poi Dog Pondering: Aloha to Austin - October 30, 2024
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