Great musicians have said their musical inspirations come from their surroundings. In some roundabout way, the same goes for Yeti on a Budget.

“It all kinda started since we practice on an old abandoned farm,” says Wally Neal, singer and “trash kit” player for Yeti on a Budget. “There’s a ton of crap laying around.”

“Like this mannequin?” says Jeff Wall, guitarist for the band, while pointing at a disfigured mannequin sitting on the floor.

“Yeah, just like that,” Neal says. “We would get together and play, and after practice I would just go rock out on a barrel for a while, and think to myself ‘Hey, we should use this barrel,’ so then we started using stuff like that,” Neal says.

Yeti on a Budget is known for its unique instrumentation. The Ames band uses a homemade “trash kit” along with a homemade bass guitar to create its off-the-wall sound.

The “trash kit” is constructed from buckets, a washboard, an old bent cymbal referred to as the “tower of power,” and several other items found laying around the old broken farm that Yeti calls home.

“The ‘trash kit’ is great,” Neal says. “It will have something different on it pretty much every show.”

Bassist Corey Marquardt thinks the instruments are interesting, but they can also be a hassle.

“We have enough instruments for a seven-person band, but it really sucks to haul them around to shows and stuff,” Marquardt says.

The band’s homemade instruments got them a spot in a big showcase in West Virginia this summer, where Yeti will be featured alongside other bands that also make their own instruments. The show is just one of many the band aspires to play on the road.

“We’re hopefully going to line up some other shows on the way down and the way back and go on a mini-tour,” Neal says.

Yeti on a Budget has been together only since September 2003.

For the founding fathers of Yeti, it was the first time any of them had ever been in a real band.

“Yeah, Jeff [Wall] started playing guitar when we started the band — so he pretty much sucked,” Neal says.

“True dat,” Wall says.

“Our first show was a Halloween show that we played and we really sucked, but our friends told us we were good — so of course we believed them and kept playing,” Neal says.

Shortly after the birth of Yeti, the band was brought to a halt with the death of its drummer Isaac Stenback.

“When Isaac died, it really caught us off guard,” Neal says. “But we’re all right with it now.”

“Our band actually used to be called Barfwagon, and Isaac didn’t like the name, so we changed it for him,” Wall says.

Marquardt says the phrase Yeti on a Budget has no special meaning or hidden significance.

“We just made a list of possible names and we crossed them off starting with the worst,” Marquardt says. “It works great, though, because we have a great theme song,” he says.

“I enjoy ‘Theme for a Yeti,”‘ says Matt Dake, drummer for the band.

The band says “Theme for a Yeti” is featured on its entirely self-recorded album, “Dinner Theatre,” which was released April 9.

“We did everything ourselves,” Dake says. “We used an 8-track cassette recorder for the bass and drums, and mastered everything on Wall’s computer,” he says.

“A bunch of people have told us that we sound like a train wreck,” Neal says.

“I think we sound more like a train wreck on ADD. We like to explore different genres with every song, but our trash kit tends to give off that ‘train wreck’ effect.”

The band says it would like to write songs in several other genres.

“There’s still, like, 20 genres we haven’t done yet,” Wall says. “Eventually we would like to evolve into a freeform, pretentious, really douchey jazz band.”