Joe Tougas & Associates

Joe Tougas & Associates includes a rotating cast of musicians, including Joe Tougas (second row, second from left) and Ann Fee (first row, last on the right). Tougas and Fee wrote and recorded a song that won the KMSU “Shuffle Function” Smash Hit of the Summer.

When Joe Tougas and Ann Fee set out to write the song “Daddy’s Car” several years ago, they thought it’d be funny, and that Fee’s sorrowful lyrics would be a humorous riff on the 1970s-era country music trope of songs being sad enough to make you cry.

“We thought it would be an homage or a parody of that era of country songs,” Tougas said. “And we thought other people would laugh right along with it.”

But then …

“The very first time we played it there was a woman in the front row and she was crying like this was the saddest thing she’d ever heard,” Tougas recalled. “And I’m like, ‘This joke backfired. Bad.’”

所以两人,忙,在th的高度eir popular “Hank and Rita” country music operetta phase, put “Daddy’s Car” away for a while.

Then, during a mid-pandemic KMSU pledge drive week, the pair performed “Daddy’s Car” live on air. And that was enough to prompt the duo to breathe new life into an incredibly sad — and oh so memorable — song. The pair, which now performs together with a host of other local musicians known collectively as Joe Tougas & Associates, recorded the song (with percussion and production assistance from musician Scott Rahe).

“I was just listening to it and thinking this is genuinely kind of well done,” Tougas said, “like we’d fit the template of the sad, broken heart, crying child, drinking daddy song.”

Fast forward a few months, and their newly recorded diddy about a dad who spends all his time at a saloon is ripe for inclusion in a quirky KMSU tradition.

“Shuffle Function,” the morning radio show hosted by Tim Lind and Shelley Pierce, each year holds a contest called the Smash Hit of the Summer where listeners vote for their favorite among the nominees. The song garnering the most votes is declared the winner. They’ve been conducting the contest for 12 years.

But it’s a little different than your typical Top 40 station. True to the program’s tagline of “Nobody plays fewer hits,” you won’t find among the nominees any compositions by Katy Perry, Justin Bieber or Billie Eilish. You will, however, find songs you’ve likely never heard before — especially if you’re not a regular listener of “Shuffle Function,” a show known for helping expand listeners’ musical horizons.

例如,今年的提名者是“老虎Feet” by Mud, “Pictures of Me” by Kelley Stoltz, “Uncommon Weather” by the Reds, Pinks and Purples, and “Daddy’s Car” by Joe Tougas & Associates.

“We’ll open it up and take submissions from listeners,” Lind said, “But Shelley and I will also dig around for songs. They can be newer songs, or they can just be new to us. So for instance, this last time around, we had the song ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud, which was a European hit in 1975. But we had never heard it before because it never got a release in America.”

Joe Tougas & Associates2

Joe Tougas & Associates practices in Tougas’ living room. The band includes Tougas and Ann Fee, who wrote the contest-winning song “Daddy’s Car” as a parody, but that intention backfired.

Voting wrapped up last week, and it didn’t come without some drama. There was a tie, with the winner being declared by coin flip. It was the first time a local band has won the honor.

(It should be noted that Pierce, a bass guitar player, is among the “associates” in Joe Tougas & Associates. Lind denied there was any wrongdoing, fraud or tampering in the tabulation or certification of the votes, and no Dominion voting machines were used to determine the Smash Hit. Also, there is video footage of the coin flip in case anyone wants to do some Zapruder-level analysis on it.)

Lind said he surprised himself with his own vote.

“It’s a beautiful song. I love it,” he said of “Daddy’s Car.” “I love all the songs that we had in the running. And the one that I thought I was going to vote for was Mud. But for the whole week, the only thing I had running through my head was the chorus to ‘Daddy’s Car,’ like nonstop. And so, full disclosure, I ended up voting for it just because it was that’s part of the criteria. It’s got to get stuck in your head.”

Fee, who wrote the gut-wrenching lyrics in about 24 hours, said she’s long been a “Shuffle Function” listener and recording a song that wound up a Smash Hit Song of the Summer contender was a low-key goal for her.

And now she has one. But it comes with a smidgen of irony; she’s written a tear jerker of a song, and now anytime anyone calls KMSU and requests the Smash Hit Song of the Summer, they’ll hear the story of a family that drives past a strip mall early one morning to see Dad’s car parked near a saloon. She somewhat regrets that. But she also said this summer might be the only summer such a song is needed.

“I think we are all due a catharsis,” she said, “so that’s where I would defend it. This is actually the smash hit song of the summer we need in 2021. Because it hurts, it’ll break you open, and then you can go on with your life.”

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