The Holy Modal Rounders was an American folk music group, originally the duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who formed in 1963 on the Lower East Side of New York City.

As the Holy Modal Rounders, Stampfel and Weber began playing in and around the Greenwich Village scene, at the heart of the ongoing American folk music revival.

Their sense of humor, irreverent attitude, and novel update of old-time music brought support from fellow musicians but was controversial amongst some folk traditionalists who saw it as disrespectful.

The Holy Modal Rounders' expanded lineup notably included famed playwright Sam Shepard as a drummer and many short-lived members before it stabilized in 1971, with a band that would later back Jeffrey Frederick as the Clamtones.

"[1] Music critic Richie Unterberger noted that they "twisted weathered folk standards with wobbly vocals, exuberantly strange arrangements, and interpretations that were liberal, to say the least.

"[12] Stampfel himself described his approach to music at the time: "I got the idea in 1963: What if Charlie Poole, and Charley Patton, and Uncle Dave Macon and all those guys were magically transported from the late 1920s to 1963?

"[16] Author Jesse Jarnow also recognized these influences, commenting the Holy Modal Rounders were "overtly inspired by both Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and drugs.

"[5] Ariel Swartley of The New York Times retrospectively remarked that they stood out in the New York folk scene, in which performers were usually reverential to the material they covered, for "shoe-horning one old-time melody into the middle of another, slipping updated references into archaic laments, making scatological asides or a casual segue to an unrelated fiddle tune and throwing in enough grunts, woofs, whistles and squeals to put both an aging steam engine and a seventh-grade classroom to shame.

"[18] Despite their seemingly irreverent approach, however, Swartley noted the duo "pursued traditional American music with an archival passion to rival that of the New Lost City Ramblers.

Concurrent with the Rounders' original incarnation, Stampfel wrote a regular column for the folk music magazine Broadside called "Holy Modal Blither.

[9] The duo's arrangement of the traditional song "Blues in the Bottle" opens the album and went on to be covered by the Lovin' Spoonful and the Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band.

"[38] On February 24, 1965 at Ed Sanders's bookstore Peace Eye, the Fugs performed their first gig, which was attended by Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, William Burroughs, and James Michener.

[21] Richie Unterberger later reflected that the Rounders joining the Fugs "instantly multipl[ied] the group's instrumental skills many times over... A real, albeit ragged, band was beginning to take shape.

[35][44] In July 1965, Stampfel left the Fugs and quit the Holy Modal Rounders, later citing his frustration with Weber, who would not work on new songs[3][28] and whose drug abuse was making him increasingly erratic.

[53][55] In June 1967,[34] Stampfel and Weber briefly reunited at the behest of ESP-Disk founder Bernard Stollman to record another Holy Modal Rounders album.

[12][50] A departure from the old-time music Stampfel and Weber had previously played, Mark Deming of AllMusic later noted that "even by the standards of The Holy Modal Rounders' first two albums, 1967's Indian War Whoop is a thoroughly bizarre listening experience" with "neo-psychedelic fiddle-and-guitar freakouts and free-form (and often radically altered) interpretations of traditional folk tunes.

[53] Thus, Weber came with the Moray Eels, who by this time had added bassist John Annis (sometimes spelled Annas) and dropped Levi,[57] as they briefly moved to California in March 1968 to record an album.

[59] Richie Unterberger retrospectively reflected that "no acid folk album mixed inspiration and lunacy in as downright deranged a fashion as The Moray Eels.

"[12] The album opens with "Bird Song," which was written by Antonia and notably included in Dennis Hopper's 1969 counterculture film Easy Rider and its soundtrack.

[60] Stampfel later expressed dissatisfaction with The Moray Eels citing the fact that he, the rest of the band, and the producer used amphetamines excessively during recording and Weber again refused to rehearse any songs before entering the studio.

[65] Not long after the band returned to New York City in early 1969, Shepard left the group to focus on a movie meant to star the Rolling Stones.

[35] Soon after the band's return from a three month tour of Europe which Stampfel did not participate in, Weber relocated the Holy Modal Rounders to Portland, Oregon in late 1972.

[91] While Sam Shepard was still a drummer for the band, the Holy Modal Rounders played a brief set on season 2, episode 5 of the sketch comedy television program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in 1968.

"[99] For the band's retrospective compilation I Make a Wish for a Potato, John Swenson reflected that the Rounders "resolutely pursued their eccentric muses despite an almost complete lack of interest from the general public.

"[14] Writing for AllMusic, Richie Unterberger called the band "almost the very definition of a cult act... Their audience was small because their music was too strange, idiosyncratic, and at times downright dissonant for mainstream listeners to abide.

"[5] NPR noted that the band exhibited "self-destructive behavior" that led to an early breakup and an inability to capitalize on the inclusion of "Bird Song" on Easy Rider's commercially successful soundtrack.

"[102] Despite the band's limited critical and commercial success during their initial run in the 1960s and 1970s, they have since earned significant praise, in particular for their groundbreaking reworking of early 20th century American folk music.

If music history is often a game of Who Came First?, then the Rounders can be said to be the first psychedelic hippie freak band and the first aggressively anti-purist folkies, making them a crucial missing link between early- and late-20th-century pop.

[2] However, in the fourth edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, Tom Hull re-evaluated Indian War Whoop and The Moray Eels as "curiosities, conceived as psychedelia and sloppily executed" while more highly recommending 1 & 2.

Writing for New Haven Independent, Eleanor Polak discussed how the band had not just had significant influence, but that they had also inspired "countless other musicians to take deep dives into American folk music to find the dark and weird within.