The amazing King of the Hill theme song gets a bluegrass makeover for the show’s new end credits

By Steve Newton

I always thought that the theme song from TV’s King of the Hill was one of the best damn TV theme songs ever created.

Arizona roots-rockers the Refreshments originally recorded “Yahoos and Triangles”, the 30-second ditty heard during the opening and closing credits of the show’s original run, from 1997 to 2009. Back in ’97 I interviewed lead guitarist Brian Blush, who explained how his band came to record the riotous little bit o’ boogie.

“Fox Television put out kind of a casting call to pretty much all the record labels,” said Blush from a San Francisco tour stop. “We got the word from our management when we were on tour last year, and we had a coupla little things that we were messin’ around with in sound checks that we thought might work.

“At a show in Wichita, Kansas, we asked the crowd if they would help us out in getting a paycheque for this little thing. We said, ‘At the end of this thing, if you could possibly scream and yell as loud as you know how to, maybe we could end up getting this theme song for this television series.’ So they obliged us, and we sent it off, and lo and behold about two weeks later Fox called us back and asked us if we would like to come to Los Angeles and record it.”

The much-loved King of the Hill has just been brought back for a 14th season, and had its premiere last night (August 4) on Hulu. The previous closing credits have now been replaced by a new acoustic-guitar, fiddle, and banjo version of “Yahoos and Triangles” featuring Michigan bluegrass artist Billy Strings.

I love it almost as much as the original!

To hear the full audio of my 1997 interview with Brian Blush of the Refreshments subscribe to my Patreon page, where you can eavesdrop on over 500 of my uncut, one-on-one conversations with musicians since 1982.