( Courtesy, NBC.com)In May of 2016, Saturday Night Live closed their show (and their season) with an ensemble musical number that was the talk of the town in Fayetteville the next day.
The skit featured then-former cast member Fred Armisen, who was back on the show as the host performing as in a Southern rock-style band called The Harkin Brothers. The band played in a fictional community center in an untold city. Armisen fronted the band, which was made up of most of the cast that season along with his Portlandia cast mate Carrie Brownstein and special guests Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph, Andy Samburg, and Larry David who had made appearances on the show that evening, as they performed a song called “Summertime in Fayetteville.”
The sketch didn’t have an immediately obvious punch line, though it certainly poked some good-natured fun at the state of Arkansas and southern stereotypes through the song lyrics as it unfolded.
The chorus was pretty darn catchy, though, and of course, the whole thing had locals wondering if there was a story behind the song. The answer? Kinda.
We sent a note to Armisen at the time, who we assumed was behind the sketch, to see what was up. We know he had been in Fayetteville before when he performed at JR’s Lightbulb Club in 1994 as the drummer of his band, Trenchmouth. That’s really the only connection we could think of.
He didn’t respond at the time, but he did shed some light on the sketch when he visited Fayetteville for his show “Comedy for Musicians But Everyone is Welcome” last weekend at George’s Majestic Lounge.
“I was trying to do like an Allman Brothers, Doobie Brothers type of band called the Harkin Brothers, and I was trying to figure out what would be happening in Arkansas,” he told the crowd at George’s. “I think it was almost, pretty much on.”
Amrisen then proceeded to perform the song for a crowd for the first time ever, he said. As it happens, during the summertime…in Fayetteville.
The crowd sang the chorus right back to him.
The lyrics to the song are below. The original SNL video isn’t loading for some reason this morning, but we found a parody video that Fayetteville ad agency The Richland Group created in advance of Armisen’s performance featuring some familiar faces that includes edits and audio from the original.
Watch Armisen perform the song here (Thanks Sarah for sharing the video).
Summertime in Fayetteville lyrics
Frogs are jumping up on the lily pads
I’m eating plates of honey ham all day
Commuting to a tired swimming hole
Arkansas is calling out my name
Hot Hot summertime
Nothing like a nap in a burned-out pickup truck
Fireflies fly right into my mouth
Running barefoot on a pile of rocks and stones
Then I see Henrietta.
Summertime in Fayetteville, hot hot summertime
Summertime in Fayetteville, hot hot summertime
