Antsy McClain and The Trailer Park Troubadours

Antsy McClain is hilarious. He is also insightful and heartwarming.

Whether he’s performing solo or with his incredible band of musicians called the Trailer Park Troubadours, Antsy McClain will have you “laughing til your cheeks are sore,” and tearing up over “the good stuff”: love, family and friends. As a songwriter, Antsy wants to touch every emotion. “I love to make people laugh – if we can laugh, we can heal – and that will always be a big part of my shows. But without something deeper, it’s just a superficial cartoon: me with the big hair, plaid pants and funky clothes, the band with their antics. We have a good time up there, but we want to leave you with tears in your eyes from laughing and from recognizing that life is short so enjoy the ride.”

Antsy calls what he does “humor with heart.” Funny without ridicule. Sentimental without saccharine.

The friends of Antsy’s music (more than 20 albums to date) call themselves Flamingoheads, after the iconic plastic figurines that have adorned trailer park lawns for decades. They are a caring bunch of people who call themselves cousins, per Antsy’s wishes on social media to not only “friend” him, but “cousin” him, as this all seems too much like family to use any other word. “I am confident that I have more cousins than anyone on Facebook,” Antsy recalls with a smile. “Last count it was in the hundreds. That’s a big family. I’m a lucky man.”

The backdrop for these characters and stories is the semi-fictional mobile home community called Pine View Heights. It was designed after his own upbringing in several Central Ohio trailer parks where he lived with a blue collar family, raised by a truck-driving father and an Avon-selling, stay-at-home Mom. “You can’t make this stuff up,” Antsy recalls. “It’s like the Blues. You gotta live it.” And live it, he does, honoring those who mentored him with grace and dignity, albeit exposing the foibles and occasional scar tissue that makes us all unique and endearing.

When asked if there are common threads that run through his music, Antsy answers in the affirmative: “Don’t clutter your life with stuff that doesn’t matter. Hug your loved ones. Appreciate each moment. Use your powers for good. I’ve been writing that same theme paper for years and setting it to music – from my first album in 1999 to the most recent one this past Summer.”

Antsy McClain’s latest album, released in 2023, is the self-produced The Indelible Man and covers the emotional range his fans have come to expect from this wildly creative and diverse songwriter.

His new song, “Cover Up Lover,” is the story of a man and his tattooed betrothed who bears the name of a previous love interest on her arm. He takes her to a tattoo parlor and tells her: “I’m your cover up lover / You’ll never need another tattoo / With someone’s name / I’m the road that meets the rubber / The one who’s gonna see you through / Life’s joy and pain.” Antsy ends the song by giving us the album’s title, saying, “Now, let’s get all the ink that we can / Now that you’ve found your indelible man.”