Ha Ha Tonka, courtesy: Jason Gonulson.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

The Oscar-nominated film “Winter’s Bone” portrays the Ozarks region of Missouri as dirt-poor, dreary and rampant with methamphetamine production. Brian Roberts, lead singer of Ha Ha Tonka, a southern rock and bluegrass band from the area, says the view is a little limiting.

“(The movie) presents one side,” Roberts said in a recent phone interview. “It’s like if you watch ‘Trainspotting’ (a film about drug use in Scotland), you wouldn’t think that’s exactly what Scotland’s like.”

There are many stories to tell about the Ozarks; Ha Ha Tonka, which performs Saturday at Hotel Utah Saloon in San Francisco, prides itself in telling them through its songs.

“We try to sing about lots of places and people and things that we know about from that area,” Roberts said. “While we haven’t been as successful as ‘Winter’s Bone,’ we have always tried to export the Ozarks to people outside that might not know about that region.”

Roberts, along with Ha Ha Tonka bassist Lucas Long and drummer Lennon Bone, grew up in West Plains, a small town near the Missouri-Arkansas border. His parents, and their parents before them, ran a large hog farm.

“It was a great place to grow up; small town life was pretty interesting,” Roberts said. “Hogs are some of the most intelligent creatures on the face of the Earth.”

The first incarnation of the band formed in 2001, while Roberts and Long attended Missouri State University in Springfield. Roberts, who studied German in school, met the band’s original drummer, German Robert Mueller, while on an internship for the American Consulate in Leipzig, south of Berlin. Brett Anderson, also a student at Missouri State, was recruited as a guitarist and keyboard player.

Calling themselves Amsterband, the quartet released an album in 2003. Mueller left the following year and was replaced with Bone. The band had learned by that point that at least two other bands were using the Amsterband moniker, so it adopted a new name – Ha Ha Tonka, after a state park.

“It’s like a really neat state park in the heart of the Ozarks,” Roberts said. “We wanted to always have that theme to our music. We thought it would be a way to talk about the Ozarks.”

Counting Radiohead, early REM and traditional bluegrass music as heavy influences, Ha Ha Tonka released “Buckle In the Bible Belt,” which the band members consider their true debut, in 2007.

“You’re just trying to mimic your favorite artist,” Roberts said. “You can’t play it as well as they can. So you stumble onto something that sounds different. Then I guess that’s your own sound.”

Much of the album, as is the case with the band’s other work, is story-based, often pulling lyrics from local history and folklore. “Caney Mountain,” for example, is about a traveling preacher who stole a horse and was hanged by a mob.

“We always try to take maybe a traditional story, like a legend that we’ve heard, and then put a little bit more of a modern twist on it,” Roberts said. “If there’s any formula that we use, it would probably be one close to that.”

Another is soulful four-part harmonies, which can be heard on “Caney Mountain” and “St. Nick on the Fourth in a Fervor.”

Ha Ha Tonka released a second album, “Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South,” in 2009, before touring. Then the band went back to the studio to record “Death of a Decade.” The new album, recorded in a 200-year-old New York barn, will be released April 5.

Intended to be the band’s coming-of-age album, “Death of a Decade” is highlighted by two tunes with arpeggio mandolin parts, “Usual Suspects” and “Made Example Of,” that make it just as much of a folk and bluegrass record as it is a rock record.

It also sees Ha Ha Tonka trying to reach a level of success that peers such as Kings of Leon and the Black Keys have achieved.

“I think it’s great that ‘Winter’s Bone’ or Kings of Leon or Black Keys have become mainstream,” Roberts said. “I think that’s wonderful. It can only open doors. Like they say, ‘A rising tide lifts all ships.’ ”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.