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Live music keeps Tallahassee rocking through the decades | Blake Dowling

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6 months ago

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Live music keeps Tallahassee rocking through the decades | Blake Dowling

Blake Dowling
 |  Guest columnist

You hear a lot of the same chatter from people that we don’t get great live music in Tallahassee. I had a coworker tell me recently that there was nothing to do in Tally.

I emailed Mandy at the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra and got him a ticket to their performance the next day. He loved it.

Tallahassee gets some huge shows and has tons of entertainment.

Elton John and the Eagles come to mind in years past or shows like ZZ Top/Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Flaming Lips, who both recently lit up Cascades Park and the Civic Center with their summer concerts.

I think the people that say we don’t get entertainment are couch loyalists who are not willing to leave the couch empire unless the Uber Eats driver rings the doorbell. We have all been loyal to couch nation at some point, I get it, but in my 25 years of living in Tally our music scene has provided something for every phase of life.

High school metal daze

In high school in 1988 I was putting up posters of every metal band in existence in my room on Lakeshore Drive. Me and my diesel fueled southern accent had just moved to town from Alabama and metal was life.

A friend at Maclay, Julian Headly, said on Oct. 20, 1988 that he had tickets to see AC/DC and Cinderella and would I like to go. Yes, Julian, let us rock sir. I put my Circus and Metal Edge Magazines down and off to the show we went.

This was when AC/DC was supporting the album with Heatseeker on it and they were huge! Shows by Aerosmith, Bad Company, Alabama and Jimmy Buffet followed. My friend Ron LaFace was always putting a crew together for a show and in high school we saw many legends here in Tallahassee.

Memories of college shows at Floyd’s

Fast forward to the college era on my 21st birthday my friend Jay Smith and I, who have close birthdays (Happy 50th Jbird), planned a dual outing to Floyd’s (on Tennesse Street) to hear our friends in Black Creek Band play a show.

Floyd’s always had awesome bands like Creed, Sister Hazel, even Ratt played there in the 2000s (a bit of a step down from their 1985 headlining show at the Civic Center).

I miss Floyd’s, nothing like the sound of shoes on that sticky floor.

As adulthood appeared with its responsibilities and opportunities, some amazing live shows also presented themselves.

Growing up: The Moon and Opening nights

I will never forget when Jeanne and I went to see the Indigo Girls play at the Moon with little-known opener Brandi Carlile. Brandi blew the doors off the place and stole the show from Emily and Amy. Nice job, Scott Carswell, introducing our market to that future superstar.

Or more recently when FSU’s Opening Nights brought Edwin McCain to the Moon. That was powerful. It was the first show we had seen in over a year as it was the COVID era. Just like COVID football games with only a couple thousand people in attendance and no lines or traffic, we had a COVID Edwin show with 150 people at the Moon.

I proposed to my wife Jeanne at an Edwin show, so living that again and it being the first show post pandemic had me humming his hit “I’ll Be” for days.

Speaking of Opening Nights, you can’t say enough about what they do for our music scene, and we look forward to seeing what the new Board Chair, Ron Sachs and team do in the coming year. When they brought Steve Martin and his blue grass band to Ruby Diamond Auditorium that was a once in a lifetime show here in Tallahassee.

The jokes between songs were the funniest stage banter I have ever heard.

Anyone remember when Zac Brown band played the Civic Center a few years back?

My friend Paul Chanon (his wife Shea is a Tally gal) is their tour manager and bass player John Hopkins from the band went to FSU so there was lots of Tally commonality going on. Hop has some great stories about playing shows at Bullwinkle’s when he was a student musician and then the band busted into Enter Sandman by Metallica during their set. Hearing a country band do metal is special.

Revisiting the Flaming Lips

The 2024 shows that just happened need some background.

ZZ Top was my fave band growing up. Before I discovered Motley Crue and then the Allman Brothers there was ZZ Top. I spent my summers in Texas with my dad growing up and that’s where they were from. We saw their HUGE Eliminator and Afterburner tours in the 1980s and to get to re-live that one more time this past month was awesome. Billy Gibbons singing “Got Me Under Pressure,” “La Grange” and “Just Got Paid” was memory lane Texas boogie at its finest.

Next up, Word of South.

I will say this, the Flaming Lips was one of the best shows I have ever seen. Their singer Wayne Coyne is also a rare breed of entertainer. Wayne was working the room like we were his oldest friends in the world, preshow, not some Barbra Streisand type who you can’t make eye contact with if you see her (yes that’s in her rider).

Hats off to him and festival founder, Mark Mustian and his team for bringing something truly special to Tallahassee. I talked to Mark the other day and he had this to say about WOS “We’re proud to be putting on a festival that’s unlike anything else in the country—there’s truly nothing similar.”

So, go see a show next time you’re thinking of sinking into the couch and the ottoman empire. Who knows what might happen, you could walk into Yiannis (circa 1994) and see a band called Naked Toddler playing for the first time. That band quickly changed their name to Creed due to the obvious cringe factor of the earlier name and went out and sold 50 million albums, ranking them among the biggest ever.

Or maybe you will see a show like the Flaming Lips (thanks, Word of South) that ranks up there with Motley Crue, Guns & Roses, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead as one of the best shows of all time.

For me and the next show, does Air Supply still tour? I am 50 now and about ready for the old age and easy listening phase of life.

See you out there, Tallahassee, and keep on rocking.

Blake Dowling is the CEO of Aegis Business Technologies and can be reached at dowlingb@aegisbiztech.com

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