Most of you have seen this thing before:

It is the official symbol of Herb & Hanson.  It’s on a sticker.  It’s the cover of our first record.  It’s hidden in the cover of the second and third record.  It’s on a t-shirt.  It’s on the website.  It’s all over the place.  I can’t count how many times people have asked us what, exactly, it is.  We’ve heard lots of different guesses over the years: horse, sheep, llama, dog, etc…  Some of you have been right.  Some of you (dog) have been a little off.

It’s an ungulate.  Now, I can hear you all the way through the internets, “What?  Stop making up words to make yourself sound smart.  Ungulate?  I’ve never heard of such a thing.  It’s obviously a horse.”  I assure you it’s a word.  And it means: a hoofed mammal.  It can be any hoofed mammal.  We aren’t too picky.  But it’s not a dog.  They don’t have hooves.

So where did this rorschach test of a band symbol originate you ask?  Here’s the scoop.  A number of years ago we were driving around out west and visited a Native American museum in Arizona.  It was there that Herb saw some animal effigies made of sticks and grass by the Anasazi of that region.  They were crafted before hunting expeditions to bring on a successful hunt.  Herb thought they looked cool.  Later on during that trip we were up in Idaho and he took a stab at making a couple of ’em himself.  And he was successful.  We hung one from the rear view mirror of The Golden Road (the Chevy Corsica I was driving at the time) and took a few blurry pictures of it.

Shortly after that trip we began work on our first record, the self-titled one that is unfortunately no longer available.  When the time came to pick out a cover for said record, both of us thought that blurry picture of the split tree figurine he created would be pretty rad.  So we used it.  And it did indeed look pretty rad.  Little did we know that would lead to us using it for everything.  But that was a good thing.  It’s a unique image that creates questions and conversations and drums up interest in the music and our personalities.  Win win win.

So there you have it.  The story of the ungulate.  While we may stray from the image in future merchandise (we can’t be a one trick pony.  Get it?  A pony is an ungulate.  Hilarious word play!), it will always represent Acoustic Destruction and all of its glory.

And as a special bonus for all you loyal readers out there, I’ll finish this post off with a picture of the original figure that hung from that rearview mirror so many moons ago.  I’ve still got that thing.  It only has three legs now.  But it can still stand up: