Old as Dirt: How the Banana Slug String Band has stayed relevant for 40 years

In 1986, the students at UC Santa Cruz voted in a campuswide referendum to adopt the banana slug (Ariolimax dolichophallus) as the university’s official mascot and symbol. To the degree that the radioactive-yellow slug is known at all outside the redwood-adjacent communities of Northern California, UCSC has probably been its best and most effective public-relations agent — with a nod to Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction,” which outfitted John Travolta in a UCSC Sammy the Slug T-shirt.

But let the record reflect that, a year before that referendum, four Santa Cruz-area environmentalists/educators/musicians — none of whom were affiliated with UCSC — formed a band for kids which they promptly named the Banana Slug String Band, vaulting the banana slug into prominence while it was still something of a joke on campus. In terms of cultural throw weight, the BSSB is a pipsqueak compared to the University of California. But UCSC wasn’t sending performers across the country to play before school groups dressed like giant bananas. But the BSSB was doing exactly that.

Maybe next year, UCSC will mark the 40th birthday of its slug, but the Slugs, as the band is often called, has gotten the jump yet again, by marking 40 years together this month, with a big concert at the Rio Theatre on March 29.

The Slugs are Larry Graff, Mark Nolan, Steve Van Zandt and Doug Greenfield, known by their eco-friendly stage names Airy Larry, Marine Mark, Solar Steve and Doug Dirt. Their 40 years of continuously playing together with no changes in personnel is more than The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd, KISS, the Doors and countless other more famous four-piece bands.

But, despite their remarkable longevity (their ages range from mid-60s to early 70s), BSSB is not just another band. From the beginning, they have had a specific mission — to impart genuine scientific and ecological knowledge to the youngest of listeners, mixing the commitment and sense of purpose of a teacher with the showmanship and chops of an entertainer (and more than a modicum of hippie, Grateful Dead-style mellowness). Many of their most well-known songs — “Dirt Made My Lunch,” “Water Cycle Boogie” — illustrate specific scientific concepts that students might resist, or might not fully grasp, coming out of a textbook. 

With 40 years of performing and a dozen recordings, often playing up to 150 dates a year, the band has only a fuzzy sense of the impact they’ve made on people’s lives. Because they typically reach their fans at such a young age, the influence they’ve had is likely deeper and more fundamental than many other bands. How many fans have become environmentalists, or even professional naturalists, they can never know. Commonly, fans who first heard the Slugs when they were kids will return to them when they are parents of their own young children. The band estimates they have performed for more than two million young people over the years. They’ve also participated in collaborations for adult audiences with such luminaries as Laurie Lewis, Tim O’Brien, Victor Wooten, Joe Craven and others (the pop star Pink! is a fan, having attended BSSB workshops).

Perhaps the Slugs’ most dependable stage has been at the annual Strawberry Music Festival in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where they have been a regular going back decades. This year, they’ll be featured on the main stage at Strawberry to celebrate 40 years.

“The last couple of years at Strawberry have been really heartwarming,” said Van Zandt. “We’ve seen four generations come out to our shows. And it’s cool because the teens and the 20-somethings are all doing the hand motions and everything. They’re feeling good enough in their skin to do everything as if they’re reliving their childhoods.”

The four were friends for several years before forming a band together, bonding over a love for education about nature and the outdoors. In the mid-1980s, the modern environmental movement was still in its adolescence and traditional education wasn’t paying much heed to concepts such as conservation, recycling, restoration or organic farming. The guys who would later become the Slugs wanted to communicate ecological ideas in a form that kids could understand.

“It was pretty cutting edge,” said Nolan of the environmental curriculum he was teaching as a student teacher. “It was really a revolution at that point.”

“There wasn’t anybody doing environmental teaching through music the way we were doing it,” said Van Zandt of the band’s early days. Most of the music with environmental themes were written for adult audiences and was often “doom-and-gloom-type songs,” he said. “And we consciously decided we wanted to be positive and uplifting and get kids excited about the environment.”

The idea was somehow to blend sophisticated scientific understanding and education with a sense of zany humor and even fun. (Van Zandt tells the story of how, as a challenge, he wrote a catchy kids tune containing the scientific term “pyroclastic blastification.”) It’s a language that works even outside the redwood-scented bubble of the West Coast, the banana slug’s natural habitat. It’s a point of pride for the Slugs to perform in starkly different places in the country.

“Some of our best shows,” said Larry Graff, “are out in the boonies, because they don’t usually get live entertainment of any kind, y’know, out near Modesto somewhere, or in Iowa, or out on the bayou in Louisiana, where we’ll get the janitor to play with us on accordion.”

Many of the artistic differences and creative pressures that have destroyed other bands don’t apply to the Banana Slug String Band. Other than an album of lullabies, they have never strayed from their primary purpose, and they’ve always been able to re-address themselves with each new generation of children and young people. 

“We’ve always been clear about our intentions and what we’re trying to write,” said Greenfield. “And we’ve always been able to share a [method] using theater and humor and movement. And we really love each other, and what each other has all brought to the band.”

“And there’s something else,” said Nolan. “It’s when the four of us get on stage, there’s a synergy. We’ve done it for so long that we are able to transcend the music, the performance, all of it, and find something special on stage.”

The Banana Slug String Band’s 40th anniversary concert takes place Saturday, March 29, at the Rio Theatre. Showtime is 4 p.m. 

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