There’s a reason the Toadies’ 1994 alt-rock hit Possum Kingdom remains a classic 30 years on: It has a knockout guitar riff, slamming ensemble playing, impassioned vocals and a ghoulish lyric about a murderer who haunted Possum Kingdom Lake in North Texas in search of a woman to take as his bride. As the song explains, one night the killer found his victim, and horror ensued.
There’s just one caveat.
“It was complete B.S.,” says Vaden Todd Lewis, the band’s singer-guitarist and chief songwriter. But Todd stuck to his story at the time, and as a result, he says, “fans came up with their own interpretations that involved serial killers and the occult.” He chuckles. “But it’s cool that people dig it. I can’t complain.”
The origins of Possum Kingdom are found in an earlier Lewis song, I Burn, which was inspired by his “hell on wheels” girlfriend of that time. “I had a dream in which she got me to this party where I set myself on fire as a way of reaching otherworldliness,” he says. “After I wrote it, I was like, ‘I’m breaking up with her.’”
Instead, Lewis decided to continue the theme in a new song. “I thought, What would this guy do now?” he says. “He’s smoke, so now he has to convince somebody to do the same thing so he’ll have a partner. That’s what Possum Kingdom is about.”
Lewis found that his lyrics suited a syncopated riff and rhythm chord pattern he’d come up with while noodling on his Epiphone Les Paul. “It’s in 7/4 and 4/4, but the words fit, so I kept writing,” he explains. “I had fun smooshing it all together.” Using a cardboard box for drum accompaniment, he laid down a demo on a Tascam four-track recorder and played it for the band. “They changed little flourishes, but the meat of it was there.”
The Texas-based Toadies – which included lead guitarist Charles Mooney III, bassist Lisa Umbarger and drummer Mark Reznicek – recorded the track for their self-produced 1993 indie EP, Pleather. “We did five songs in five hours,” Lewis recalls. The release caught the attention of Interscope Records, who signed the band to a sizeable deal. With a major-label budget and the hot production team of Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf (fresh off a big hit with Beck’s Loser), the Toadies set about recording their debut album at Record Two Mendocino in Comptche, California.
Fans came up with their own interpretations that involved serial killers and the occult
There was one catch, however: The label strongly suggested that the band remake Possum Kingdom. “Nobody said outright, ‘That song is why we signed you’ – which is good, because I would have resisted,” Lewis says. “But they wore me down. I was like, it’s a decent song – fine. At least I’ll get to hear it the way I want.”
Lewis attempted to perform his parts on a Gibson Melody Maker (“I played it through some sort of homemade amp,” he recalls), but the instrument wouldn’t stay in tune. Eventually, he switched to his trusty Epiphone Les Paul. Darrel Herbert, who replaced original lead guitarist Mooney in 1993, re-created the lines that Lewis had written. Recalls Lewis, “I remember listening to the recording on my headphones and thinking, Wow, this sounds really great! This is what it’s supposed to sound like.”
Possum Kingdom was an immediate radio hit, reaching the top five on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart. Its accompanying video, which alternated shots of the band in performance with eerie images of a body bag being dragged from the water, scored big on MTV. The combination fueled massive sales, and before long the album Rubberneck was a million seller.
As for the song’s legacy, one which has been mythologized by everyone from vampire enthusiasts to conspiracy theorists, Lewis is now happy to let sleeping urban legends lie. “For a while, it was out of control,” he says. “I had goth kids in Florida coming to shows, and they had so many crazy ideas of what the song meant. We did a documentary a while back, and I finally came clean and was like, ‘No, this is what it’s really about. I was just pissed off at a girl.’”
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