The Honkeys are St. Louis’ only premier surf/instrumental rock ’n’ roll sensations. With lightning-fast Fender and Mosrite guitar-picking artistry; tons of fuzz and reverb effects; heart-pumping bass; foot-stomping, big-beat percussion; mysterious, spine-tingling organ riffs; and intriguing melodies bristling with excitement and adolescent menace, these fine young men lay down the wildest, sexiest, and most exotic surf and instrumental rock ’n’ roll stylings ever attempted around this part of the landlocked Midwest! And their voluptuous, alluring go-go dancing duo, appropriately dubbed The Saltines, adds an extra spicy ingredient to the band’s live show that you just don’t get with too many live bands these days.

Indeed, the bustling river city of St. Louis, Mo., may seem like one of the least likely places for an instrumental, surf-influenced band to form, but that hasn’t stopped The Honkeys, who have taken only a short period of time to attract the attention of the local music press and music fans alike, becoming one of the area’s most exciting up-and-coming young bands. And, although it’s an easy peg, the foursome is more than a just a traditional, retro-sounding surf band. They avoid this type of narrow-minded pigeonholing by appropriately incorporating elements of other instrumental music and mixing them all up with their own brand of reverberated artistry.

The Honkeys have managed to forge ahead despite the genre's unpopularity in modern mainstream America and have attained an unmatched level of local notoriety. With only one 7" single and a relatively new CD under their belts, the band’s local popularity and success can be attributed primarily to the tremendous word of mouth ignited by their now-legendary live performances, as well as some crucial radio airplay (including a live in-studio performance) on St. Louis’ weekly garage rock ’n’ roll/surf showcase, The Wayback Machine on the local community radio station, 43,000-watt KDHX-FM (88.1).

For a few years there from around 1999 to '01, The Honkeys were regularly performing around the St. Louis metro area at such popular venues as The Hi-Pointe, The Side Door, the Galaxy, The Way Out Club, the Creepy Crawl, and the all-ages punk rock collective, Centro Sociale. Their gig-hustling fever led to opening slots for Dick Dale, Los Straitjackets, The Bomboras, The Hang-Ups, The Kung Fu Monkeys, The Delstars, Knuckel Drager and Thee Phantom 5ive, amongst others. The past year or so has seen the band playing out a lot less often, but they are not broken up. Jeff Positive is just away at music school in Chicago and can naturally only play with the band when he's back home in St. Louis over holidays or school breaks.

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The Honkeys date back to sometime in 1996, the year a group of bored high school musician friends bumped heads in a suburban St. Louis basement and, after rubbing the feeling back into their skulls, decided to form a rock ’n’ roll band. With respect to what William Tecumsah Sherman did to the state of Georgia and what Marcel Duchamp did to modern art, The Honkeys decided to do to rock ’n’ roll music, and bagan to pick at its crusty scab, hoping to both cause further infection and leave a very noticeable, permanent scar.

The Honkeys experimented for a while as an instrumental noise band, but soon realized that if they were really going to make it work, they had better tighten up their sound. They did this by downsizing their lineup from nine people to four. And, inspired by their love of ’60s go-go movies, reverb, chili, yo-yos, and the occasional professional wrestling match, they molded their noise into a groovy modern interpretation of instrumental surf music that is both unmistakable and unforgettable. The obligatory influences would be, of course, artists like classic instrumental artists such as The Ventures, Davie Allan & The Arrows, The Trashmen, Link Wray, Dick Dale, The New Dimensions, The Pyramids, The Astronauts, as well as such modern surf/instrumental acts as Satan’s Pilgrims, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, The Bomboras, The Tiki Tones, Los Straitjackets, and, of course, Man or Astro-Man?.

And while they remain overwhelmingly uninterested in the banal predictability of the jam band resurgence or in the generic mind-numbing malaise of modern rock or alternative music, The Honkeys don’t find rock ’n’ roll’s original language to be exhausted. They are faithful to their instruments’ traditional vocabularies as they strive to create the instrumental sound of NOW; contemporary in attitude, fresh and exciting in execution.

The Honkeys are: Dave Devine, drums, percussion, skinslapper; Cullen "Stab" McGrane, 4-string reverb, wookie stoicism; and Jefferey Positive, six-string reverb, hand-held drink mixer specialist, and walker of the spinning yo-yo dog.

The Honkeys were included on the recent Landlocked & Loaded! compilation CD that was released in May of 2000 on Trouble In River City (TIRC) Records. They have a 7" single featuring two of their most popular tunes, "Tossage" and "Tell ‘Em Large Marge Sent Ya!", also on the Trouble In River City label. Their 16-track CD (Tequila Mockingbird), which was recorded at Zero Return Studios in Alabama (the very same studio where surf/instrumental luminaries Man or Astro-Man? recorded their extensive catalog), was released in 2002 and is available from Golly Gee Records. The cutting-edge CD art was designed by Mark Wightman at Phoenix Creative in downtown St. Louis. The future is definitely bright for these hungry young musicians, and they have many plans on taking their sound to new audiences by releasing more records, doing more recording, and hitting the road for a short mini-tour sometime soon. Rumors even exist that drummer Jovian and keyboardist Micah may be rejoining Jeff and Cullen for some shows this summer! So be on the lookout for the hottest young surf/instrumental band to come out of the Midwest, The Honkeys!