Sixty six years old and I’m still playing pirate along with Maggie and our friend, Greg. After almost 20 years we’re still hired as the Pirates of the Florida Seafood Festival in Apalachicola. Swordfighting, singing, costumes and whiskey just seem to go together, and the pay we get for being pirates would make a folksinger want to put on an eyepatch and learn to fence.
We just presented our 40th (actually 80th since it’s twice a week) Americana concert here in the Florida panhandle. Every Thursday night at Topsail Hill Preserve State Park, 1600 beautiful acres at the Destin end of 30A, that shining beacon for songwriters along the beaches of Walton County. A great outdoor stage and rows of benches, and a nice clubhouse in case of inclement weather. The kind that rages in from the wild Gulf of Mexico, makes the snow-white sand along the beach dance like dervishes ahead of the heavy rain.
That’s only happened three times so far in this concert series. Once was our 4th of July extravaganza that started with Lucky Mud followed by an absolutely magical performance by The Bridget Kelly Blues Band, featuring Tim Fik on lead guitar. Pierce Pettis was our closing act as rain pounded the roof and flash flood warnings kept most of the crowd at home.
But the show went on.
Our weekly Sunday concerts take place in maybe the most perfect listening room any singer/songwriter has played and it shows in the performances. Standing ovations and encores are not a given at Roberts Hall, where Hank Williams played in the late 40s as a very young man. But both happen in that room – a combination of perfect sound, a rapt audience and nothing but top shelf music.
We began this series last February 3rd on a 38 degree night outdoors lit by a roaring firepit circled by the audience, and we’re headed back into Winter darkness again. Lucky Mud rents Roberts Hall and pays the musicians with a 4 day vacation in a great cabin at the beach, a chance to reach an attentive audience and a very meager budget.
We think it’s a good trade for touring singer/songwriters who are more used to sleeping in backrooms, on couches, in old vans than almost a week in a lavish cabin and an hourly tram to carry them to the beach.
Most weeks we don’t break even. We use our tour money and pirate cash to augment these shows. I know it would help if we knew how to promote these concerts but we’re not promoters. We’re a band with hopes of introducing great music to our native soil, and introducing a great audience to surprised bands. Surprised by the lush beauty of the panhandle, the fantastic crowds and a change in time zones no one from the east or around the bend of Florida is aware of….but it’s all here.
It’s almost the same distance from Mobile to Key West as from Beaumont to El Paso. Florida is a very long state with over 500 years of European history. A state that has been carpet bagged since Andrew Jackson was sent down here to run off or kill anyone who got in his way, and he did it for Big Money who, even back then, saw the fortune to be made in this state.
Pierce Pettis will be back in January. Dana Cooper, Buddy Mondlock, Sally Spring, Paul Kamm and so many others are on the way, and we’re already booked into May, 2014.
A look on our website will give you an idea of the talent we’re bringing through here – www.luckymudmusic.com
We are actively looking for the next wave of great music, and look forward to hearing from you.
Mike and Maggie
Lucky Mud
