songs
Dave Foster and R.D. Willis met in the San Francisco Bay area in 1987. Dave started playing guitar with the band R.D. played bass in, Dash Vandal. The band was a Levis and t-shirt “straight ahead” rock band in the heart of '80s Hair Glam and the East Bay thrash metal scene. In 1990 their musical path would change, when they joined up with Cowpunk legend Texacala Jones after the breakup of Tex and the Horse Heads. R.D. Willis says "Tex brought me back to the music I was raised on, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and others that I had stopped listening to when I heard Aerosmith at 13. She also introduced us both to the music of Hank Williams Jr."
"She really showed me a deeper exposure to blues. Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf especially, as well as Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday and others" says Dave Foster. Even though they were in her band, everyone contributed to the songwriting. Never trying to fit any certain sound, nothing was off limits-as long as it was good, Rock, Country, Cow punk, Punk and whatever else, in any combination.
By the early '90s the three had left San Francisco to all end up together in Hollywood. They joined up with Haunted Garage drummer Johnny Hell and were playing the Hollywood punk clubs regularly. In 1996 Tex left LA and moved to Austin. R.D. and Dave stayed and became two of the three founding members of Piss Ant. Two decades later Piss Ant was still a Hollywood staple in the punk scene, although R.D. left in 2000 for the East Coast. Besides Piss Ant, Dave would tour and also become an accomplished producer/engineer.
But before they parted ways R.D. and Dave wrote their first "straight ahead" Country song, "She's Like Drivin' 'Cross Texas". It may have seemed as a one-off at the time, but it kept R.D. writing more Country songs. Then the rumblings of a 2023 Texacala Jones archival release involving songs written while they were in the band, led to the two friends trading to ideas again. This immediately became what we have today. A songwriting duo forged over decades yet with a fresh, sly, unbelievably catchy take on a Country, Outlaw Country, Americana, Alt-Country, etc…This website is a showcase of the songs written by TA-HO (pronounced like the lake), the pen name of Dave Foster and R.D. Willis.
Please use the contact information regarding the recording of any of these songs. Thanks for listening.
TA-HO
"4 chords and a story"