Coffee Butler Amphitheater – the missing piece of the puzzle The story behind the Coffee Butler Amphitheater starts about twelve years ago with a Mason jar of blackberry moonshine and two guys floating in a pool at a campground on Sugarloaf Key. Real Estate mogul Joe Cleghorn and good friend and musician Howard Livingston were […]
Izzy Zaidman – Izak Gabriel Zaidman (aka Izzy) was born in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. His father was a professional guitarist, teaching and performing roots blues and ragtime in the New York area. Izzy was twelve years old when his father bought him his first guitar. He attended Charles Evans Hughes […]
Tantra Grillo “…….. practices gratitude a lot” Tantra Grillo, a Southern California girl from a small suburb of Tustin near Santa Anna, began writing poetry at age fourteen. She was influenced by the pain and poetry of Tupac. She started recording at Hot Tracks Studio but the head of the studio told her that it […]
John Vagnoni ” The management works tirelessly avoiding progress.” John Vagnoni grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and graduated from Temple University in 1969. He arrived in Key West in 1972, after the Navy had closed the submarine base (now Truman Annex) and Key West’s economy was devastated. Duval Street was mostly boarded up, rents were cheap, […]
Les Greene ”Sam Cooke saved his life.” Les Greene, youngest of three brothers and one sister, was born in Baltimore, Maryland but his family moved to Guyana where he lived until age nine and then, they returned to Baltimore. His mother, Pinky Greene, home schooled him. Interestingly, Guyana television stations did not broadcast commercials. Instead […]
Raven Cooper “Singing is like a natural high” Raven Cooper grew up in Hot Springs, Arkansas and was a competitive freestyle and butterfly swimmer and diver in high school. She began listening to Janis Joplin at an early age, and it was a major music influence. Her grandmother bought her a classical guitar while on a […]
Chris Burchard. – his face is hurting from smiling so much Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Chris Burchard spent time in California but his formative years were spent in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He began playing piano at six years old and received his first guitar in the 4th grade. Early in high school, he played […]
Rob DiStasi Born to a large Italian family in Belleville, New Jersey, Rob started learning the accordion at five years old. Later he took piano lessons but they were overtaken by a larger interest in baseball. While in Belleville High School Rob’s music interest was renewed and he became part of the chorale group and […]
Collette Campbell – she bet on herself and is here to stay Collette Campbell and her two younger sisters Lauren and Katherine are from Rockville Center, Long Island, New York. Her mother Sue and father Joe, encouraged her to sing classical and opera and when she was in middle school, Collette began taking formal voice […]
Nancy 3. Hoffman – In these shoes? Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio to a musically inclined family, taking piano lessons at an early age. She started at Brown University in 1968 then moved to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. After graduating from college in 1975 with a degree in architecture and a […]
