FIELD NOTE// THE KAW TIKIS AT SOUNDBITE SOCIAL| KANSAS CITY SURF ROCK
FIELD NOTE// THE KAW TIKIS MAY BE SECRET AGENTS
FIELD NOTE // KANSAS CITY SURF ROCK
FIELD OBSERVATIONS AND PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE COLLECTED BY Laverna the Rockin’ Raccoon WRITTEN & PHOTOGRAPHED BY Alethea F. Mehdipour- Slightly Feral Media PUBLISHED BY My Midlife Crisis Creative Inc.
THE KAW TIKIS
It was a rainy Saturday, heading into evening. That night was Doctor P at Warehouse on Broadway.
But first: the Kaw Tikis at Sound Bite Social. The raccoon had read the descriptions. She had done research. She had collected what could reasonably be considered preliminary evidence.
She was still not entirely sure what the hell she was going to see.
The initial evidence suggested a range of genre influences extensive enough to rival the Hickoids—which is saying something. Surf. R&B. Spaghetti western. Honky-tonk. Punk. Rock and roll. Bits and pieces of American musical history apparently tossed together by a group of Kansans operating under the deeply suspicious premise that surf music does not actually require an ocean.
What exactly IS spaghetti western? So she went to investigate.
The raccoon arrived just after the music had started. Still sitting inside Elvira in the parking lot, she could hear it wafting out of Sound Bite Social. And there was something vaguely familiar about it. Not familiar enough that she could immediately place it. More like something pulled from a part of her brain that had been quietly collecting cultural debris for decades.
She knew this sound. She just did not know yet why she knew it.
The raccoon has spent significant time at Sound Bite Social over the last few months. The place has gone from a trendy venue she was not quite sure about to familiar territory—a habitat that has begun to feel remarkably like home. She slipped through the door and claimed a booth toward the back with a clear view of the stage.
Almost immediately, she made an executive decision. This one was going to require more video.
The Kaw Tikis were tricky.
What she was seeing onstage did not quite explain what she was hearing. Their appearance did not immediately suggest the peculiar atmosphere beginning to fill Sound Bite Social. The music belonged somewhere else—or perhaps somewhenelse.
There was that familiarity again. Something twangy. Something theatrical. Something slightly absurd and vaguely spooky. It felt less like recognizing a song than recognizing the opening credits to something she had watched decades ago.
And then the raccoon’s brain finally produced the evidence.
The fucking Munsters.
THE KAW TIKIS// THE MUNSTERS
This required investigation. The Munsters premiered in 1964, and its instrumental theme was written by composer and arranger Jack Marshall. The theme lives in that strange intersection of twangy rock guitar, suspense music, and playful menace. Writer Jon Burlingame described the sound as Bernard Herrmann colliding with Duane Eddy. Which explained quite a bit.The Kaw Tikis did not sound like The Munsters in the sense of imitation. What the raccoon’s brain had recognized was older than that. It was a musical vocabulary. Electric guitar that could suggest a beach, a hot rod, a western, a spy movie, or a monster climbing out of a television set. Instrumental music that still somehow told you exactly what kind of world you had entered. Music with a wink in it.
The kind of thing that could make something slightly ridiculous feel completely committed to itself. And suddenly, the word the raccoon had written down earlier made more sense.
Ironic.
Not ironic in the lazy sense of doing something badly on purpose and pretending that was the joke. This was something more deliberate.
THE KAW TIKIS// MEN OF MYSTERY
The Kaw Tikis date themselves to 2018. Their own mythology does not describe anything as mundane as forming a band in Lawrence, Kansas. According to the available records, they emerged from a Kansas river sandbar. This was already useful evidence. Their original mission involved guitar instrumentals with vintage flair, curious aliases, purple velour suits, continental ties, and a frontperson who communicated largely in French. They called themselves Men of Mystery.
Well. That seemed unnecessarily incriminating.
Their first full recording, Kaw Tikis, arrived in October 2023. Even the track names read like fragments pulled from some lost mid-century television schedule:
Catwoman in Bat Cave.
Pistolero.
Bass-A-Go-Go.
Surf Betty.
Rumble at Muscle Beach.
There is no actual Muscle Beach in Kansas. This did not appear to concern them.
By 2025, the Kaw Tikis had apparently decided existing genre terminology was insufficient. Their second album was called Amerikawna, and they supplied a definition: surf, R&B, spaghetti western, honky-tonk, shards of punk, rock and roll, and AM radio. Mostly instrumental. Occasionally interrupted by what they describe as primitive lyrical shouting. The raccoon’s earlier Hickoids comparison was not entirely unreasonable.
This was not a band operating inside one genre. This was a band rummaging through several decades of American music, television, roadside culture, western mythology, surf imagery, and general cultural debris—pulling out whatever still made a good noise. And somehow it worked.
Nothing quite belonged where it was. Surf music in Kansas. Tiki imagery on the prairie. Spaghetti western next to honky-tonk. Monster-movie guitar wandering through a room in Kansas City on a rainy Saturday. Still, what is Spaghetti Western?
And yet once the pieces were assembled, they sounded as if they had always belonged together.
The Kaw Tikis did not stand onstage waiting for the audience to acknowledge the joke. They just played. The joke, if there was one, existed in the construction.
THE KAW TIKIS// THE SECRET AGENT POSSIBILITY
There was another possibility. Maybe these were not musicians at all.The longer the raccoon watched the Kaw Tikis, the more they developed a distinct Secret Agent Man quality—as if playing music at Sound Bite Social was merely the cover story, and at some point between songs someone would receive a coded transmission.
Their appearance certainly was not helping. They looked less like people who should be producing this mixture of surf guitar, western soundtrack, and vintage television menace, and more like men instructed to meet at a predetermined location, avoid unnecessary attention, and await further instructions. The instruments could have been part of the disguise. The audience might have been completely unaware that an operation was underway.
Naturally, the raccoon became suspicious. And then the research made things worse. Men of Mystery. Aliases. Purple velour suits. A Kansas river sandbar. A frontperson communicating in French.
At this point, the raccoon could no longer rule out espionage. Maybe the Kaw Tikis were not playing Sound Bite Social at all. Maybe she had accidentally wandered into the musical portion of an extremely low-budget Cold War operation.
Either way, she kept recording. Evidence is evidence.
THE KAW TIKIS// WITNESS PROTECTION PROTOCOL
There was, of course, another complication. The raccoon has one persistent and probably unreasonable fear about photographing live events:
One day, Alethea is going to accidentally out somebody in the Witness Protection Program.
Think about it. She photographs hundreds of people. Musicians. Stagehands. Bartenders. Audience members. Random humans lurking near the back of rooms who have provided absolutely no explanation for themselves.
Then she publishes photographic evidence that they were there.
Most photographers probably do not spend much time considering the possibility that the unassuming bass player they just tagged on Instagram was formerly known as Vincent “Three Fingers” Bellacosta and testified against seventeen members of an organized crime family in 1998. Alethea does.
So now the raccoon was sitting in the back of Sound Bite Social, photographing a group of suspiciously inconspicuous men playing music that sounded like the soundtrack to a 1960s espionage operation.
They called themselves Men of Mystery. They used aliases. Their documented origin story involved emerging from a Kansas river sandbar. And they expected her to believe they were musicians.
Fine. She would respect their cover identities.
THE RACCOON HAS LEFT THE BUILDING
The raccoon came to Sound Bite Social with preliminary evidence, a camera, and a completely reasonable question. How does a surf band emerge from a Kansas river sandbar?
She left with additional questions. Were the Kaw Tikis musicians or secret agents? Was Sound Bite Social a cover location? Had the stage been selected for its sightlines, its acoustics, or its proximity to the nearest coded transmission?
The RAW files were secure. The next habitat was waiting. Doctor P had not yet taken the stage. The raccoon collected her equipment, left the booth, and carried the evidence farther into Warehouse on Broadway.
VIEW THE EVIDENCE
CONDUCT YOUR OWN FIELD RESEARCH
The Kaw Tikis
Official site
Bandcamp
The Munsters
Theme and series background
FIELD NOTE COMPLETE
The room left evidence. The raccoon collected it.
Slightly Feral. Entirely Capable.
— Laverna the Rockin’ Raccoon 🦝🖤
Slightly Feral Media
THE HUMAN // ALETHEA MEHDIPOUR
📷 Barefoot Lifestyle Photography
This is Alethea—the photographer, stagehand, behavior scientist, and designated human attached to this operation.
She documents the people, rituals, machinery, and beautiful disorder of live culture. She carries the camera, follows the evidence, and keeps wandering into places most humans never think to look.
The raccoon provides responsible supervision. Obviously.
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REFERENCES FIELD REFERENCES
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| 📷 Barefoot Lifestyle Photography |
This is Alethea—the photographer, stagehand, behavior scientist, and designated human attached to this operation.
She documents the people, rituals, machinery, and beautiful disorder of live culture. She carries the camera, follows the evidence, and keeps wandering into places most humans never think to look.
The raccoon provides responsible supervision. Obviously.
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THE KAW TIKIS
Kaw Tikis — Kaw Tikis (2023)
Origin story, Men of Mystery mythology, aliases, purple velour suits, continental ties, and track titles.
Kaw Tikis — Amerikawna (2025)
The band’s definition of Amerikawna: surf, R&B, spaghetti western, honky-tonk, punk, rock and roll, AM radio, and primitive lyrical shouting.
THE MUNSTERS
“The Munsters Theme Song” — The Munsters Wiki
Jack Marshall’s 1964 theme composition.
“The Munsters Theme” — Sheet Music Plus
Jack Marshall’s theme and Jon Burlingame’s description of its Bernard Herrmann–Duane Eddy sound.
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