How Iowa ended up with Van Hayden, college football's most unique cover band

• 

  Dave WilsonOct 8, 2026, 07:00 AM ET

  Close

  Dave Wilson is a college football reporter. He previously worked at The Dallas Morning News, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- As Jake Olson sat behind a drum kit in the Tigerhawk Beer Garden on the south side of Iowa's football stadium with a statue of Hawkeyes legend Nile Kinnick staring back at him, tears welled up in his eyes behind a pair of aviator sunglasses.

For Van Hayden, the world's greatest (and only) Van Halen cover band that is also a tribute to legendary Hawkeyes coach Hayden Fry, this is the big time.

Olson and his bandmates are all devoted Iowa fans and cargo-shorts dads, living their dreams of being hyper-regional rock stars while paying homage to the idol of their youth. Outside Kinnick Stadium, there's no time for sentimentality. There's a big game against Ohio State about to kick off, and the university has invited Van Hayden to get the party started in the plaza on the south end of the stadium, the same entrance that Olson and his brother Andy, a guitarist in the band, used to walk into as kids.

That's why a group of Midwest business professionals, including a pharmacist, a health plan consultant, a former tax accountant and a web developer, are misty-eyed as they prepare to rock. The longtime Iowa tailgate enthusiasts set up shop in front of the Vanbulance, the band's Van Hayden-themed ambulance, and start shredding. Van Hayden kicks things off with its version of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," which is called "Ain't Gonna Stop Our Run" and ends with a repeated chant of "Let's Go Hawks!" instead of Van Halen's "Hey hey hey!" It gets the people going.

David Lee Roth told Rolling Stone in 1984 that his motto was that it didn't matter if you win or lose -- what mattered was if you looked good doing it. In 1978, Fry took over an Iowa program that hadn't had a winning season in 17 years and began his program makeover by asking the Pittsburgh Steelers for permission to mimic their look, because he wanted the Hawkeyes to "look like winners." He even hired a designer to create the iconic Tigerhawk logo. "Where I come from," the West Texan said, "it's called selling the sizzle before the steak."

Van Hayden would make him proud. Aside from lead singer Robby Marvin, aka Hayden Lee Roth, the crew sports Fry's standard game-day attire: black pullover with a Tigerhawk logo over a white-collared shirt, aviator sunglasses, a fake mustache and white pants. The Vanbulance, striped in the style of Eddie Van Halen's yellow-and-black "Bumblebee" guitar, pulls off the look in black and gold with its own winged VH logo. The back features a pair of the aviators with the word HAYDEN underneath it. There is total commitment to the bit.

Dale Arens, who recently retired after 40 years with the Iowa athletic department and worked closely with Fry and his family, said the band has their full blessing, and both Arens and Fry's son say that Fry would appreciate the sizzle being sold.

"My dad would've gotten the biggest kick. He would've been honored on this thing," Fry's son Kelly told Arens. "Dad would've probably said, 'I don't know who Van Halen is, but that Van Hayden is sure a good-looking band.'"

VAN HAYDEN WAS born, like many necessities, out of the boredom of the COVID era. Olson, a 51-year-old pharmacist in Milwaukee and a longtime musician, made a pact in spring 2021 with a longtime friend to learn Van Halen's entire "5150" album.

"Just the kind of funny dumb things you do when you're having a couple barley pops talking to your friends," he said.

But then they did it, and decided it'd be fun to shock their friends by playing the songs live, maybe at a tailgate. They just didn't know how they'd sneak up on them, or what their name would be.

What about Van Hayden, Olson thought? Two icons of the 1980s mashed up into a perfect Iowa band. "Once you have it, it's like, how come nobody else did this?" Olson said.

But how would you surprise someone with an entire band? A flatbed trailer would give it away, and it seemed onerous to lug the equipment around. Then you'd have to figure out a power source. The idea rattled around in Olson's head, until one day when he was driving through a small town in Wisconsin and saw the city's ambulance for sale.

It's perfect, he thought. It had storage. It had seating. It had a power source. He could load it up with speakers and the audio equipment and everything would be self-contained. He told Andy about the idea. In April 2023, things got real.

"My brother, who thought the idea was hilarious, actually bought an ambulance for $8,000," Jake Olson said. "And then we kind of went, 'Uh-oh, this is serious. We actually have to do this now.'"

So they set out to find a band. Jake (Alex Van Hayden, drums) and Andy (Eddie Van Hayden, guitar) got things started. Their friend Brent Buresh (Michael Van Hayden), 51, a longtime actuary, is on bass, playing an appropriately cheesy Jack Daniels-themed guitar. Andy's daughter Willow (Wolfie Van Hayden) even joined up on keytar, but has since gone off to college at Johns Hopkins.

Now they just needed a singer. In the spirit of the original Van Halen lineup, they valued having a showman over all else. Then they remembered they once saw Marvin do the entire "Thriller" dance at his sister's Hawkeyes tailgate. Nobody was sure he could sing, but then again, did it matter that much? Eddie Van Halen famously said of Roth, "I'm a musician. Dave's a rock star."

Marvin was willing to sell it at all times. He ran track and played football in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at Coe College, and even backed up legendary Coe running back Fred Jackson, who went on to star with the Buffalo Bills, so he had Dave's hops, too.

"I'm not the most vocally gifted person in the world, but I'm kind of willing to put all inhibitions aside and just make a fool of myself to put a smile on people's faces," Marvin, 43, said. A former tax accountant and father of two who now restores historic homes, he embraced the role of frontman.

"Let me tell you, I wasn't in the market for men's leggings -- we call them 'meggings' -- up until that point," Marvin said. They are almost as uncomfortable for the crowd as they appear to be for him, and he got them trimmed with black and gold fringe and paired with a No. 84 Van Hayden jersey, and they all coordinated the mustaches and shades. They just started practicing whenever they had time, and Jake figured out how to power an electronic mesh drum kit with 9-volt batteries where he could set up and tear down quickly, and the Vanbulance helped keep it moving. If they sucked and people didn't like them, Olson said, they could just hop back in and drive off.

They got the taste of rock star life. A suburb of Iowa City with an ordinance banning amplified music told them to kick rocks. "We were kind of like, 'Can the cops show up and give us a ticket?'" Olson said. "That would be great for footage."

The family men don't have much time to practice. They keep the Vanbulance in a storage unit, and after their 9-to-5s all week, show up in Iowa City on game-day mornings, pull that bad boy out, hook up their rigs and rehearse for about an hour. Then they head out to entertain Hawkeyes fans, sacrificing their own tailgating days for a non-paying gig fighting game-day traffic in an ambulance for multiple stops.

"We're doing this for fun. We've loved tailgating for so long, and we just want to provide that energy to the fans and get them hyped up to go into the stadium," Olson said. "We're not doing this for money or fame or anything else. It was all just to make one tailgate and our group of friends laugh."

Van Hayden got its first Iowa game-day break, in true Midwest fashion, via a Rotary Club connection. One of Scott Raecker's Rotarian buddies told him about this Van Halen tribute band. The Raecker Family Tailgate has been a constant since 1924, has a prime spot outside the Dental Science Building, and they like to put on a show, so they asked the band to come play. The Van Hayden crew showed up and were a perfect match for Raecker, a former Iowa state representative who knows how to work a crowd.

"Never forget, they got their start at the Raecker family tailgate, as many people do," he said Saturday while manning the Blackstone and making his signature sausage, egg and cheese "McRaecker" sandwiches. "Days like this for many of us are like an escape from reality. All the pressures and challenges of the real world, you just escape that. Then you've got these guys that roll up in an ambulance with fake mustaches and they start playing these songs and people just get energized."

Arens said that's why he, the university and the Fry family all love what the Van Hayden guys are doing. It's the highest compliment to a man who changed the course of football history in Iowa City.

"Losers don't have people trying to satirize their accomplishments," he said.

VAN HAYDEN IS not the first college football-themed cover band. The Dead Schembechlers are the most famous of the genre. They're an Ohio State Dead Kennedys-style punk band dedicated to mocking the University of Michigan.

The guys in Van Hayden are fans of their work, but they prefer to keep things Iowa Nice. Their songs are about the glory of the Hawkeyes. Olson said he and Marvin have written about 30 songs.

"Panama" becomes "Iowa"

Ain't nothin like us, uniforms clean
Got the defense on the field, punting is winning
Hawks fans, lined up Melrose Avenue
Here comes a pick-six straight to your living room

Then of course, "Iowa! Iowa-uh." Van Hayden's got 'em dancing in the streets.

"Pretty Woman" becomes "Caitlin Clark"

Caitlin Clark, make them pay
Caitlin Clark, the Hawkeye way
Caitlin Clark, make it rain down 3s

But their magnum opus is "Punt" in the style of "Jump." Ah, might as well punt.

While the Hawkeyes did have the 133rd-ranked offense in 2023, around the time the guys were playing for crowds, Olson wants to make it clear that they'd never take a shot at their own team, even in self-deprecating fashion. This song is about the Hawkeyes' stellar defense, he says, and is only encouraging other teams to go ahead and punt.

Olson and Marvin both wish they'd see their opponents get inspired by the spirit of the thing. The Foo Fighting Illini. The Purdoobie Brothers. Nittany Spears. The Kornhuskers. Fleetwoody Hayes. Bobby Knight Ranger. All there for the taking, Olson said. During a song, Marvin encourages an Ohio State fan to get the Dead Schembechlers back in action so they could share a double bill.

But first, after performing in the Raeckers' spot, the Vanbulance has three more stops. First up was with the Press Box, Carey Ash's tailgate featuring former Iowa basketball players including his son, Austin, in a spot across from the football alumni tailgate featuring several of Fry's former players. They were introduced to the crowd by Hap Petersen, a captain on Fry's best team, the 1985 Hawkeyes team that went to the Rose Bowl.

"Any way we can honor Coach Fry in any way possible is an absolute blessing," Petersen said. "He would've absolutely loved it."

Marvin works the crowd, doing David Lee Roth-style leaps, an occasional faux blocking drill with fans, dozens of fist bumps, and never misses the opportunity to mug for a camera. He weaves in and out of the crowd, letting fans get their star turn singing "Iowa!" or yelling "Let's! Go! Hawks!"

"The tailgating environment is about perfect for that," Marvin said. "We take advantage of them having drank a little bit. You sound better the more they have."

Even the students, most of whom weren't even born when current coach Kirk Ferentz took over at Iowa, are into it, even if Olson said the generation gap makes for slight confusion.

"These college kids, they don't know who we are," Olson said. "In fact, we've been getting a lot of people saying, 'Oh, you guys are Ted Lasso.' We're like, 'We're not Ted Lasso.' And then I was like, 'Well, wait, what if Jason Sudeikis sees this?' 'Oh yeah, we are Ted Lasso. Hell yeah, we are.'"

No matter, the outfits transform the men. Olson said a friend's daughter didn't believe it was him, the same guy she sees walking his dog in the snow in basketball shorts and Crocs, playing drums. Kevin and Tami Lux were singing along with the band Saturday when Marvin, in mid-song, sang right to her face, then asked, "Are you Tami?"

"Oh my gosh," she said. "I used to work with his wife and him."

"Did you have any idea he was like this?" Kevin asked. "No idea. I had no idea," she said.

Olson said that the ability to disappear into the costumes gives the band an advantage. Members can rotate in and out, because the concept is all that matters. Wolfie "entered the transfer portal," by going off to college, so "Punt" can't be played this day without the keytar. But for such a big game, the guys brought in a ringer in Masen Funk, a 15-year-old guitar prodigy who can "do Eddie Van Halen stuff," Olson said. They have a former member of the Hawkeye Marching Band who is taking over on keyboard and a fellow pharmacist is sometimes a backup singer.

"I call it the Dread Pirate Roberts theory, from 'The Princess Bride,' because there's always one there, but they're in disguise and you never quite know who they are, so they can just continue on forever," Olson said. "We are all professionals, but none of us are professional musicians. We all have families and can't come to Iowa City every weekend. If somebody can't make it, we can still put on a show.'"

On Saturday, coming off the Hawkeyes' last-second win over Michigan, the vibes were high by the last tailgate stop of the day in the beer garden. Van Hayden hats and koozies and "Hawks by 5150" stickers were selling. T-shirts with their tour stops on the back -- someone's yard, downtown Iowa City, your mom's tailgate -- were selling along with the "Might As Well Punt" ones. Ohio State fans were plying the band with tips, and Chris Collins, a Buckeyes fan, came to watch them after meeting Hawkeyes fans at a bar who invited him to see the band play.

"This is what college football's all about," Collins said. "The pageantry and the friendly rivalries and stuff like that. It's just good fun."

The Vanbulance headed for the stadium for its final stop, going through a security check by state troopers, including bomb-sniffing dogs. Then they headed in and gazed past the rows of cornstalks in the plaza toward the stadium.

"They are all things Hawkeyes, the tribute to Hayden Fry, the '70s, '80s rock, Van Halen, them doing their own lyrics to it, Hawkeyes through and through," said Alex Lais, Iowa's new associate athletic director for marketing and multimedia, who booked them for the gig. "We want to [show] them how much they're bringing to our fan base and put them on this stage in front of the Nile Kinnick statue."

All the while, the band was inching closer to its ultimate dream.

In 1986, during a Cy-Hawk rivalry matchup with Iowa State, David Lee Roth ran out onto the field in a white fedora, ripped sleeveless T-shirt and stretch pants and pantomimed conducting the Cyclones' band as it performed his solo song "Yankee Rose," while also getting a little too close for comfort to a flag girl.

Olson envisions a more wholesome performance: Van Hayden along with the Hawkeye Marching Band in a Van Halen-themed halftime show. Maybe even bring Roth to the good side this time.

Petersen's all for it. Fry loved a good gimmick, like when he heard that Minnesota coach "Smokey" Joe Salem wore bib overalls to practice and called Iowa a team of "farmers" before their 1982 game. After Iowa won 21-16, Fry came out for his postgame interview in bib overalls over a flannel shirt, with a white straw hat and a red bandana to celebrate reclaiming the Floyd of Rosedale trophy, which is of a pig.

"I figured if we're going to take Floyd home, I may as well dress for the occasion," he said. "I didn't want to scare him and dress like a city slicker."

Petersen said Fry, the master of mind games, would appreciate how much the band worked the Hawkeyes fans into a lather. Van Hayden gets them going. Everybody wants some. And Fry would too.

"If he could use these guys to give him an edge in a game, he definitely would do it," Petersen said, telling the famous story of how Fry painted the visitors' locker room pink. He looked around the scene and said the coach loved anything that would give the Hawkeyes a psychological edge and fire up the fans.