Static Live Magazine November 2018

By Rick DeYampert
During my tenure as the rock/pop/hip-hop writer at the Tennessean,
the daily newspaper in Nashville, about every other
week I’d catch a music act that would mutate my DNA
and make me think: I swear by the balls of Zeus and Elvis,
these bad-asses are gonna be on the cover of Rolling Stone
within a year!
However, of the thousand or so non-famous but good, great
or gonzo-great acts I heard in Gnashville’s music clubs over
2½ years, only one ever went on to the big time: India Arie.
(Although years later the amazing Ghana-born singer Ruby
Amanfu teamed with Jack White for an amazing duet on his
single “Love Interruption.”). And Gnashville, by the way, is
my name for the gritty, rockin’ side of the city known for its
country music.
All these kick-ass bands and solo artists – the Evinrudes,
the Honeyrods, Lennon Murphy, Ruby, etc. -- who I thought
were destined for Olympus instead were destined to remain,
more or less, “local acts.”
Which is a damn shame, but that leads me to my even greater
point: Music happens – most of it – in the local trenches.
Yes, we’ve all been blessed to see our fav superstars live,
and I was privileged to see more than most people because
of my 30 years as an entertainment and music writer at daily
newspapers. I’m grateful I got to see U2, McCartney, Pearl
Jam, Public Enemy, Springsteen, Prince, Ravi Shankar,
OutKast, Common, Erykah Badu, Daytona-bred Diplo, Tool,
Wu-Tang Clan, Emmylou Harris and others do their thing.
But 90 percent of the live music that has rattled my brainpan
and made me ecstatically yell “Holy shit what the freak did I
just hear?!” has been made by “local” artists.
When I returned to the Daytona newspaper for a second tour
of duty there after my stint in Music City, I brought the lesson
of Gnashville with me: Yeah, it’s nice to have talent, but it
ain’t got shit to do with who becomes famous.
The opposite of the Ruby Amanfu case taught me that in
Gnashville: At the fabled Ryman Auditorium, of all places,
I saw this teen girly-girl singer open for a barely known boy
pop group called N’ Sync. The teen girl was an OK singer but
far from spectacular. She performed in front of the curtain,
for Hank’s sake, with canned music and two – count ’em, just
two – backup dancers.
If someone had said, “For $500, you can have 20 percent
of all future earnings of this wonderful girl-pop singer!” then
I would have said, “Are you shittin’ me?! No way. Get outta
my face!” Her name: Britney Spears.
But talent does have shit to do with making great music,
something I continued to experience in Daytona-area venues
after returning from my Gnashville trip. Gnashville certainly
has more quantity of local music talent, mind you, but
Daytona’s A-listers – and there are many – exude quality on
a par with those Gnashville cats.
If I start naming names, then inevitably I’ll wake up the next
day and pimp-slap myself for leaving out local artists X, Y
and Z. So I’ll leave it at this: One way to get an adrenaline
shot of the Daytona-area music scene is to attend one of the
gobsmacking original music festivals staged by Phil Weidner
and his organization Songwriters Showcases of America.
Those fests include the 18th Annual DeLand Original Music
Festival on Nov. 3, the Seventh Annual Daytona’s Mainstreet
Live Original Music and Art Festival on Feb. 9, or the Eighth
Annual DeLandapalooza Original Music and Art Festival on
April 13. Details are online at ssa.cc.
Here’s hoping you find more Rubys and Britneys. I have a
feeling you will.
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