If you think of cities with great rock and roll history of the ‘60s and ‘70s, pedigree, and performers, the usual suspects will pop up: New York. Los Angeles. Memphis. San Francisco. Detroit. Seattle. Cleveland.
But how about Gainesville, Florida? Yes, Gainesville, Florida.
After all, whether they were longtime residents or just passing through, several players now enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame first learned their craft there. Including Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Stephen Stills, and two Eagles in Don Felder and Bernie Leadon. The city’s audiences and clubs also gave full-throated and early acceptance to the Twin Towers of Southern Rock: The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Marty Jourard would find his biggest success as the keyboardist/saxophonist for ‘80s hitmakers the Motels (“Only the Lonely,” “Suddenly Last Summer,” “Take the L”). But he’s also a music-related author (Start Your Own Band) and currently teaches songwriting at the Cornish College of Arts in Seattle. He also grew up in Gainesville.
Jourard’s reissued book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town (224 pp., $19.95, University Press of Florida) is part love letter to a bygone era of the city and part musical history of a land with some fertile sonic soil.
Jourard charmingly details the evolution of the city’s rock bands, especially via their names. As groups with straightforward monikers like Jimmy & the Rockets, the Madhatters, and the Maundy Quintet give way to of-the-groovy-era Brothers Grymm, Styrophoam Soule, Froggy and the Magic Twangers, Mudcrutch, and Road Turkey. The last of which counted Jourard and a pre-Heartbreakers drummer Stan Lynch as members. The author’s personal remembrances add extra texture.
Interestingly, a large number of bands in Gainesville (like many other cities) started off mostly as cover bands. The only way to get gigs in bars and clubs was to play songs that audiences already knew, and could fight, drink, dance, and try to pick up people by. Original music was frowned upon, though enterprising groups might announce that the “next number was by Santana” or some other famous group before launching into a band-written original.
Jourard also spotlights the infrastructure that celebrated and supported the city’s burgeoning hippie community. Be it live music venues (Dub’s, Trader’s South), equipment stores (Lipham’s Music Company), headshops and coffee shops (Subterranean Circus, Bent Card), and clothing shops. Like Roman Sole, whose proprietor made and sold leather goods, called himself Jesus, and absolutely looked the part. No one seemed to know his real name.
In that vein, ‘60s/’70s Gainesville (home to the University of Florida) had a lot in common with Austin, Texas: A liberal, university town in an otherwise conservative state with a lot of local bands and a homegrown community of hippies, artists, and progressive thinkers. And cheap rents.
And yes, the city had its own strain of marijuana, “Gainesville Green.” Which was popular enough to warrant ratings and pricing in High Times magazine.
Jourard juxtaposes what was happening in Gainesville against the music charts and social issues nationally, but the Wikipedia-style text blocks seem a bit superfluous. Likewise, some of the information will mainly be of interest to Gainesvillites or Floridians.
Music Everywhere ends with Jourard detailing the wild later successes of the Big Four (Stills, Felder, Leadon, and Petty), along with the story of the Motels and latter Gainesville-bred groups like Sister Hazel (who had an almost top 10 hit in 1997 with “All For You”).
Across the United States, there are a lot of small/charming/quaint towns like Gainesville that played a part in rock history, even if their stories are not as well-known as bigger city counterparts. Thus, Music Everywhere makes alligator country more than something to just “See ya later.”
