By Ray West
What is a music scene? What makes Key West’s special?
Let’s start with the music store. Sure there’s the internet for music supply orders, but that 100 miles from the mainland adds a day for delivery. Inherently, the music store is more than just a retail store, it’s a hub, a place where gossip, information, gigs, news and shop talk are the reasons I buy strings there every week. I could order a bunch online and maybe save a buck, or buy a month’s supply at one time, but I don’t.
The bar/wait staff. They’re the unsung heroes of our music scene, the reason people will stay for hours and keep coming back. With life’s stresses momentarily put aside, they help the musicians keep the coveted Friday and Saturday night energy high. They’re also, occasionally, babysitters; the art of “peopling” is an admirable skill. We all rely on the staff to keep the revelers served, smiling and feeling like of all the places they could be, this is where they want to be.
The people. Moving past the obvious, your applause fills the hole in my soul and your dollars help pay our rents, but there is an unspoken reaction from you that we respond to. Are you feeling what we are intending? Are you tapping your feet and smiling, talking loud and laughing, hitting on each other and failing? Are you quiet and affectionate, reflective and grateful, jumping and yelling? Are you in this moment with us?
Your tips matter, not just for the money, but for the interaction. We know that to come up to the stage to put money in the jar can be uncomfortable, and you could just leave. That walk means as much as the money. (Though $10 beats $5 every time.)
Then of course, there’s the players, and we have more than our fair share of great ones. From when Alfonse opens Two Friends Patio at 8 a.m., until Jack Wolf closes Willy T’s at 2 (or 3) a.m., there is great music in Key West all day every day. It’s a rare and invaluable situation. If you want to meet the person who books music at a venue, you probably can. Those folks give a chance to many aspiring troubadours. It’s a feat that’s much more difficult in any other city I’ve been to.
While our music scene has great players, great venues and great wait staff, we also have something else that makes us special: We know one another. We date each other. We live in the same houses, and we eat at the same places. When one of us is hurt, we all know it and we do something about it. When one of us rises above the din of this world and gets heard, we praise it and we derive some motivation from it. We know all of us are out here doing this at a cost.
All of our costs are different. But this life is not free of sacrifice, worry, self-doubt or the knowledge that our future is not assured. And this is what we love to do. That means we need each other even more, and here we can help each other and make a living.
We embrace the moments when the sound is right, the vocals are harmonious, the crowd feels it, the guitar solo rips your soul, the groove is deep, the drums are ancient and the spirits are swirling in the crowd.
We need you for that. We need each other for that, and we love each other for that. That is our music scene.
