Paradise is an Outlandish Tropical Western Band: Spliff Kazoo & His Fronds

Spliff Kazoo & His Fronds

Kinda Tropical, Thursdays through October

While sailing deep in the Pacific, your boat's sunk by a wild storm. The ring buoy you've escaped on floats to a seemingly uninhabited island. Now safe on land, there's nothing to eat except the bag of psychedelic mushrooms that happened to be in your pocket, so you eat all of them and walk into the jungle.

Suddenly, you hear signs of life and run toward the sound. Astonishingly, you've come upon a tropical resort. The tiki-bartender remarks that you look thirsty and hands you a drink in a coconut shell. You sit down and watch the band. It's Spliff Kazoo & His Fronds. Welcome to paradise.

The Austin quintet, in their Hawaiian shirts and white polyester pants, plays tropical Western music – think Marty Robbins' exotica phase – interspersed with ludicrous gags. They've trademarked the "slow conga line" – not to be confused with when the titular singer dons a sleep mask and bumbles around blindly while the Fronds play steel guitar standard "Sleep Walk." They call their merch table the "Souvenir Palapa," which has its own jingle, and also spray forth an excessive amount of coconut-scented fog.

"A tasteful amount of fog is really boring to me," reasons Mr. Kazoo.

The band – lap steel, bass, guitar, and percussion – plays consummate renditions of island-adjacent classics like "Blue Bayou" and "Tiny Bubbles" with a feel-good flair that the singer insists emanates from genuine appreciation for tropicalized tunes.

"We don't take ourselves seriously, but this is not an ironic band," he states. "We like these songs, we play them the best we can, and we do comedy."