Melvin Newton, aka Toko Irie and his music family In the Spring of 1970 Melvin Newton was born on a small island near Grenada named Carriacou in the beautiful Eastern Caribbean. Life could be difficult in this beautiful paradise and you were often forced to improvise. They would sometimes make their own musical instruments. Most […]
Sandra Lee – no language barrier here Sandra Lee Resch (aka Sandra Lee) is originally from Germany, by way of Switzerland. She began playing music early in school, joined the choir and loved vocals. Her mother played guitar and sang along with Sandra and her two sisters while they were growing up. Sandra’s vocal teachers […]
Jillian Todd – pure serendipity Jillian Todd was born in 1999 near Potsdam, New York, in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains, close to the Canadian border. At age 6, she began taking piano lessons from a really cool hippie lady who lived across the street. Her father, Ben, played guitar in an 80’s rock/country […]
George Chapman ”making memories for people” George Chapman was raised in Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. He played drums in the school band and, at age 11, started playing guitar. When he was 12 years old, George started playing drums in his guitar teacher’s wedding band but had to hitch a ride to gigs […]
Ron Gregorcic – all over the map About 30 miles east of Cleveland, Ohio, in a small town called Chardon, young Ron Gregorcic was hanging with a sleepover buddy when they discovered Mötley Crüe (“Looks That Kill”) and were introduced to hard rock on the new Headbangers Ball on MTV at midnight. Until that night, […]
Memories of Margaritaville Everyone remembers that first Jimmy Buffett song. We all thought Jimmy would live forever. The music and those memories will live forever. Since 2012, I have interviewed over 155 musicians in Key West for my Soul of Key West books. I tried to present interesting facts and stories from all of them. […]
Local restauranteur Richard Hatch was born in Miami and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. He played both violin and standup bass in grade school through high school. He loved music but said he was not a gifted musician and his violin teacher was just plain mean. He attended University of North Carolina and studied political […]
Soul of Key West Volume 1, second edition Now Available An updated version of the original Soul of Key West, Volume I, first released in 2013, has arrived and currently shipping. This was the first book ever written about our amazing Key West music scene. The Soul of Key West is a 104 page anthology […]
Martin Sedlak “…heard the violin from the first moment he was born” In 1987, Martin Sedlak was born in Benesov, Czechoslovakia, (now Czech Republic), a small town about 25 miles south of Prague. He has two sisters and is the middle child. He remembers vividly the sound of his grandfather, Antonin Sedlak, playing the violin […]
Nick Brownell was born in Kansas but raised in Sandusky, Ohio. He always loved to sing and had teachers that encouraged him. He has five brothers. When Nick was sixteen, a younger brother got a guitar. They learned to play together. Barry Ross, who was a little older, took Nick to house parties, and […]
