September 25, 2023 - 7:00 pm -9:00 pm
Steve Boyd, he of Nashville’s legendary White Animals is coming to the Beaches Museum Chapel Concert series Monday September 25, 2023, and you dear reader would be well-served to be there to greet him. The man is back in the saddle, and that’s some of the best news coming out of Nashville pop scene these days: the land of the new skyscrapers and condo kudzu. It’s been tough on the local musos lately, but cream still does manage to rise to the top, and Steve is rising like a phoenix. He has new tunes, an album in the works, and he’s playing shows now under his own flag for the first time ever in the 42 years since he got into this crazy business. It’s high time. His new songs like the soulful gospel-tinged “The River Was Dry” and the smooth groove of “Venus Shivers” are not throwbacks to the mousse-headed New Wave of the White Animals heyday. It’s 2023 and Steve Boyd is living here.“You do the best you can these days,” Boyd says with typical humility. “The listenership isn’t what it used to be. But you get those people from somewhere far away who follow what you do, and that makes it worthwhile. They think you’re the greatest, so that kind of keeps me going.”
Boyd’s songwriting was always key to the White Animals, with his bringing in standout tunes like “Constant Attention” and the tour de force “This Girl of Mine”, one of the most beautifully written, sung and recorded pop songs anyone in Music City has ever produced, showing off not only Boyd’s considerable writing chops but a voice that evokes just the right amount of emotion – heartfelt and tasty without overdoing it. That’s an all too rare thing these days.
This work-in-progress album is not his first solo artist toe-dipping. “I recorded an album about six years ago of new material, and Will Kimbrough did the guitar work on that record. And now I’m working on a new one that’s got 11 or 12 songs, but it’s not completed yet.”
Boyd is that rare bird who was actually born and raised in Nashville. He played horn in marching band and translated his nascent knowledge of musical theory into playing in a couple of rock bands – the high school types of bands that make some noise and dissipate. “So I started college at David Lipscomb and didn’t really want to be there. And then I got the opportunity to join the White Animals, and that was it. I dropped out and hit the road.”
That road stretched on for seven years, and following the band’s breakup, he hopped right back into the saddle, forming The Claimstakers, who made one acclaimed album and then died on the vine. And thus began the wilderness years, which are now over.
Jacksonville is his maiden voyage into solo performing. “I just need to get this one under my belt and get a little package together, get the photo, and hopefully get the word out that I can do this kind of thing.” He can and he will.
Doors open at 6:30 p.m., concert begins at 7:00!
