Someone just shared this song on facebook and it joyfully brought it back. This song is about as perfect as a song can get.
From wiki:
Toadies are an American rock band formed in 1989 in Fort Worth,Texas, best known for the song “Possum Kingdom”. The band’s classic lineup consisted of Vaden Todd Lewis (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Lisa Umbarger (bass guitar), Darrel Herbert (lead guitar), and Mark Reznicek (drums). It formed in 1989 and disbanded in 2001 after Umbarger left the group. The band reformed and released the album No Deliverance in 2008. In 2010, they re-released the album Feeler with Kirtland Records (the album’s original release had been denied by Interscope in 1997). The band’s most recent album, The Lower Side of Uptown, was released in September 2017.
The story behind Possum Kingdom per wiki:
The song’s origins lie in folklore from the band’s native state of Texas. Possum Kingdom Lake is a lake in North Texas near Fort Worth. In the documentary “Dark Secrets: The Stories of Rubberneck”, Lewis further elaborates that he intended “Possum Kingdom” to be a continuation of the story told in the song “I Burn”. While he envisioned “I Burn” to be a story about cult members immolating themselves in order to ascend to a higher plane, “Possum Kingdom” was about one of the immolated people becoming “just smoke, and …he goes to Possum Kingdom [Lake] and tries to find somebody to join him.”
So…. because I want to here them in the order they were intended, first is “I Burn”:
I can see where Possum Kingdom could be a continuation. The video tells a little bit different story, but that’s ok. It’s all about the music.
UPDATE ON 9/1/2022:
I added the song to my spotify playlist when I wrote this post, and spotify gave me two different versions, both excellent, but that’s not why I’m doing an update. Well, sorta, but obliquely. I went to pick up a grocery order at the store (still doing curbside for almost all shopping d/t covid et al) and Possum Kingdom started playing on the spotify list, so I cranked it. (How will I ever get rid of the earworm???)
I was surfing email and getting into the song when the shopper arrived at the car. She said, “I love this song, but it gave me a black eye.”
I asked her how, and she said she was with a friend at a party and they were “moshing” to it and her friend accidentally elbowed her in the eye. Now this I consider worth an update. Hell yeah!
Tao Talk 
I am listening to it now. I have never before heard it.
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What do you think of it?
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It’s pretty good but not my usual style
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Been to that lake many times and not once did I see a possum. A few skunks and coyotes and an old woman riding her personal electric scooter with a beer cooler in her lap. Sounds bout right for PK.
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LOL. You didn’t see any mysterious body bags floating? The beer scooter lady has the right idea.
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I hadn’t heard the I Burn song before, but I love Possum Kingdom. I’ve featured it a few times on my blog. Possum Kingdom isn’t all that far from where we live. My dad and uncles used to go fishing there all the time. 🙂
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I Burn was new to me also. So neat you like near Possum Kingdom! Did they ever see any weird stuff out there?
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I don’t know if they did or not. If they did I never heard them say anything about it. The area was in the news awhile back because of a wildfire that burned a lot of houses at the lake.
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I’m completely new to the Toadies. Both of these tunes sound pretty good. “Possum Kingdom” is my early preference.
When I hear the word cult, sick figures like David Koresh come to mind. Obviously, these groups can be highly and pretty self-destructive.
Interestingly, it appears the Toadies recorded the album around the same timeframe of the Waco disaster.
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Aha! Thanks for the tidbit that might/would help explain the content.
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Funnily enough I mentioned to Max I heard that song in a local supermarket last week….I haven’t heard it on radio since the ’90s (it was their one hit that made it into Canada). Pretty good song that still sounds decent. And to Christian, yep, and coincidentally they view Waco as more or less their second home.
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Interesting and cool both. I just “liked” a fb page, AOR Rock, and it was on there. One other tidbit about the song: guess who has an earworm of it? It’s been playing in my head ever since!
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Like those buzzy guitars in the first one. I can kind of see a thread between them, (K)
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Kerfe it has been my earworm since I posted this (and added both versions to my spotify playlist.) Could be worse. Could be the theme song for Gilligan’s Island 🙂
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Or an advertising jingle. Those are the worst.
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I have heard Possum Kingdom before but I didn’t recognize the name for some odd reason…very 90s. I had forgotten about these guys. Good stuff Lisa
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Glad you like the song, Max. I learned that when the bass player left, so did the lead singer and I think the band broke up at that time. Too bad because I really like the guy’s voice.
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Oops, I see they re-formed. Now I need to find those albums.
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He does have a good voice…the title alone is enough to bring you in. You gotta listen with a title like that.
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