Inspiration struck like a speeding bus. Two of them, even, headlong from different directions.

“We’d been on a road trip,” writes in Geoff of the up-for-anything band GOTM, “and we got tired of the board games and the mystery novels and the videos. We really enjoy playing music together, so somebody is always playing or practicing or writing.

In one city, one of those cars with the big bass speakers in back, blasting the hip-hop, pulls up next to us. As a joke, we start playing back, loud as we can. Suddenly we’re in this musical drag race to the corner. Could have gone either way, guy could have been a total asshole, but he was great and we had a lot of fun.”

Then, in a college town, GOTM was wandering the campus after their gig and noticed one of those electric folk duos—almost always a male guitarist and a female singer—doing one of those increasingly popular routines where they play in the driveway of a student-populated house, using their car as a stage and an electricity source. “It struck several of us at one,” Geoff says—meaning the idea and not the car. “It seemed so wrong for the car to be parked.”

The band already mingles electronics and live acoustic instruments, so they felt up to the challenge. Within three weeks they’d written a song cycle which could be played and enjoyed through the open windows of a moving vehicle. The driver is allowed to play along on the car horn (“it happens to be a perfect B flat,” according to Geoff) while the rhythm section (bass sounds via keyboards) occupies the back seat and the singer rides shotgun.

So far, this street symphony has sounded along the highway, on residential streets on Saturday nights, and in a town parade. This Wednesday it will be performed in the round driveway at the Arthur K. Nifferstein High School (affectionately known as Rat Fink High). It’s an official school event, arranged by GOTM keyboardist and RFH alum Christopher Snook. The crowd will sit within the grass oval while the GOTM car circles at 5 mph. The school is being filmed for a driver’s safety class. (We made that up.)