Spencer the Gardener

While you were chowing down on mashed potatoes and gravy last Thanksgiving, a music video filmed at Farmers Market on State Street was conquering the World Wide Web. Reaching the coveted front page of YouTube.com by turkey time was “The Gobble Song” by Spencer the Gardener, a brilliantly simple and ferociously catchy seasonal ditty about America’s national holiday.

Since then, the Russ Spencer-produced video-which features the musicians interspersed with familiar faces dancing like poultry-has been viewed by a half million Web surfers planet-wide; it’s been on radio and television stations around the country; it’s led to teachers asking for copies of the song to play in class; and it’s poised to be America’s first real Thanksgiving ditty. (There is, of course, Adam Sandler’s “Thanksgiving Song,” but that’s rather abstract-not to mention its talk of masturbation, thereby making it decidedly unfit for mass holiday consumption.) Indeed, there’s no need to fret if you missed it last year, for as Spencer Barnitz warns us “Here it comes again.”

For this go-around, Barnitz is sending singles to radio stations around the state, putting the song on the ASCAP Web site, and expecting another big YouTube blowout. He hopes to ride this wave of quirky success as far as it goes, and he’s pretty sure this is only the start due to three factors: It’s seasonal for a season that has no popular songs; the word “gobble” is fun to say and has lots of connotations-and the song is “something mothers can sing to their little kids during the whole week of Thanksgiving.” So far, “The Gobble Song” hasn’t made Spencer the Gardener any money, but Barnitz is hoping it will sink into the consciousness of America-much like the Halloween hit “Monster Mash”-and begin paying its dividends later.

So raise your drumstick and toast “The Gobble Song,” America’s first true Thanksgiving tune, straight outta Santa Barbara.