 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. Tarr, sing and play harmonica. I'm Amanda White. I sing, play percussion, and a little kazoo. I'm Sean Richter. I play drums and a little bit of background vocals. How did the fattening frogs first begin? Started with me and a different drummer and a different guitar player, kind of having the idea of playing old time music. So we started, we put a little group together to play early country blues, early country just type stuff and just kind of went from there. And where does the name come from? The name comes from a Sunny Boy Williamson song, Fattening Frogs for Snakes. We wanted to find a name that was sort of like, we liked how the Rolling Stones got their name from a Muddy Water song. We just kind of looked at other old blues songs that would make for kind of good evocative band names and that's the one we all liked. You know, kind of not too serious, kind of fun, but kind of evokes that older era. I'm just an old bridge, strong and tall, but my time is coming gone. I'm supposed to pull the ties and the train. You don't need the trains, you're saying the trains don't, the trains don't. What are some other influences on the Fattening Frogs sound? I like a lot of the early jazz vocalists, a group listening to a lot of that, early blues too. And I also like a lot of 60s soul and that's the neat thing about living in the time that we live in is that I can peer back at all these different eras and different genres and they all kind of rub off on me in their own different way. First time I ever heard them. I saw them play at a couple of different blues festivals while I was playing with different bands and stuff and just the uniqueness of their sound and the style that they were playing, no one else is really playing that much anymore. It's stuff that I kind of influenced me growing up and stuff like that. So when I heard them, found out they needed a drummer and said, hey, guys will have me, I'd love to be your drummer and they took me so. Minnesota in general is one of those scenes where everybody seems to play in at least two or three bands. There's very few people that I know that had their one dedicated project that that's all they focus on playing music. It's fun to play with other people sometimes, you know, make somebody else into the mix and it becomes less like a job and I think that's a nice thing about the Minnesota scene. It also reinforces that sense of community too. You know somebody that's played with them if you haven't. Yeah, we're all one big family and musician family in Minnesota here. It is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. If you enjoy watching Backroads Online, please consider making a tax deductible donation at lptv.org.