TKATA

Art school brats formed satirical bands all throughout the rise of the East Nashville Americana scene in the 2000s, existing in a parallel universe of japes and outrage. By design, these merry pranksters were built for little more than house party fun, and few expected to achieve anything else. There was, however, one band, the ever-so-charmingly named The Kunt and The Aids*, who briefly broke out among the scores of flannel-clad beard-wearers earnestly strumming 6-string banjos and Tenor guitars.

This “mock-folk” duo, inspired by fellow smut-peddlers and country music freaks Birdcloud, used a Fun Machine keyboard, Ovation guitars, and vocoder drenched harmonies to compose hickified sing-a-longs about bestiality, the joys of revenge porn, public defecation, and other topics Willie Nelson was too chicken-shit to tackle. Their twisted, cornpone ditties were as catchy as an airborne virus and twice as funny.

Both band members were absolutely devoted to their outrageous personae. Pete Gaston, aka “The Gay Farmer,” was known to wear a tutu with overalls on stage, while the ever-unpredictable “Ginger Minge” (born Thomas Edward Grovitz) regularly appeared with dildos and VagiPals festooned to his outfit. Unafraid of cheap onstage shock tactics*, the band garnered headlines that only the best faux scandal could generate.**  

Despite a devoted underground following from coast to coast, and a decent European following to boot, a band called The Kunt and The Aids singing songs called “Flag Slut” and “Dick Pics (From Hell)” was never going to appear on The Tonight Show or Good Morning America. But Social Media and the Internet is tailor-made for such provocations and TKATA (as the trade magazines were forced to call them), whose followers numbered in the 15 to 20 thousand range according to SoundScan, more than made due playing hundreds of well-paid, PBR-soaked gigs in the clubs and houses of their devotees. Their début Lp, I Married A Teen-Age Nazi (Bludinstule Records, 2017), boomed out of college dorm speakers for a good part of the late teens, even if at least half of those listeners missed a good deal of the irony.              

Alas, the fun wouldn’t last. In 2019, Gaston was arrested for assaulting a Spotify Podcast Sales Specialist during a SXSW after-show. Speeding away from Travis County Jail after making bail, he crashed his powder blue Subaru Forrester into a guardrail on Interstate 35 while swerving to avoid colliding with an oncoming driver who was texting her husband about a mis-ordered vegan pizza. The Subaru ended up rolling several times down an embankment into a piece of construction equipment, impaling Gaston’s torso on the stick part of an electric washtub bass that he had built in art school. He died. The other driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter, but was acquitted largely, it seems, because the defense kept repeating the name of Gaston’s band. 

Back home in Music City, East Nashville was in mourning. Another legend gone. Without telling a soul, Grovitz moved to Reno to study nursing.  He has never played another note.

* According to Grovitz, The Kunt and The Aids got their name “because our first choice, Painful Discharge, was already taken by a Columbus, Ohio punk band from, like, the 80s that had a few records out, and because my dad thought that [TKATA] was was the most disgusting name for a band ever, and ‘Don’t you dare call your band that.’ So, of course, we had to at that point.” 

** Perhaps the band’s most notorious onstage stunt occured at the 2017 CMJ Conference in New York City when Grovitz, dressed as Little Bo Peep, was mounted from behind by Gaston in a lamb costume during a performance of an exceptionallly gross “The First Kunt (Is the Sheepest)”. Some people have suggested it was the reason for the music events/media company’s demise that year.

***Another amusing story involved ‘prepper’ food bucket shill Jim Bakker referring to the band, by name, during one of his already deeply weird broadcasts. The group were performing in the same town as the disgraced televangelist and, dismayed by their antics but tricked by the misspelling of the word ‘cunt’, didn’t quite realize what he was saying when he announced on air, “I pray for The Kunt and The Aids”. The band gleefully projected looped clips of Bakker’s gaffe onstage for the rest of its career.