Playing an amalgam of roots rock, country-rock, blues, rockabilly, folk-rock, and just plain rock & roll, the Beat Farmers possessed a genius for silliness while also featuring a handful of excellent musicians, and wrote songs that were honest, heartfelt, and sometimes poignant as often as they were beer-sodden fun. They cut their teeth playing countless San Diego bar gigs before a hipper audience in Los Angeles discovered them, and the bar band ethos stayed with them -- they were eager to entertain, determined to give the audience a memorable show, and were reliably smart yet unpretentious while doing it. They defined their studio sound on their debut, 1985's Tales of the New West, and 1990's Loud and Plowed and...LIVE!! captured them in their natural environment in front of a crowd of fans.