Our favorite tour guide is taking us on another trip. The destination is “Tarkio Road.” David Lee Roth’s cover of the 1971 Brewer & Shipley single is the focus of the latest animated video released by the Mojo Dojo YouTube channel.
Roth likely heard “Tarkio Road” often on the radio in the spring of 1971. Released as the follow-up single to Brewer & Shipley’s hit “One Toke Over The Line”, it reached #55 on the US Billboard chart and #39 on the US Cash Box chart. Michael Brewer told the story behind the song in a 2011 interview with The Tarkio Avalanche: “When we left L.A., we moved to Kansas City and started a company (Good Karma Productions) with some friends. At the time, we were virtually playing every college and high school that existed in the heartland. We were driving everywhere and whenever we went to Iowa or Nebraska, we would take the same two lane highway, which went through this little town, Tarkio, MO. In fact, we played the college there as well. We found ourselves on that highway so many times that we eventually nicknamed it Tarkio Road.”