They moved to Key West to start a band? Musicians find paradise on a tiny island

David Bryce Warren earns a living playing music in Key West.

He didn’t have that plan when he landed in the Southernmost City six years ago. He wasn’t a professional musician. He didn’t even know a soul on the island.

These days, Warren’s name rings out as a must-see musician on live music calendars packed with nightly options.

Warren plays seven nights a week. He turns down gigs. On a recent night, his band’s set list included tight renditions of “Gimme Three Steps” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, along with Pearl Jam’s “Alive,” and Kid Rock’s “Cowboy.”

He writes his own songs, having just released his third album, recorded in his home studio. He made his first one in an attic where he was living in Key West.

But he still plays what the audience wants.

“I just discovered I had a voice when I moved to Key West,” said Warren, 33. “I didn’t know it.”

Paying the bills in the pricey Keys is one thing. But true success here can be summed up in one action: Warren bought a house in the Keys.

On a recent Sunday night, Warren was between jobs and had time to reflect on what it takes to succeed on this expensive island, with its vibrant, crowded music scene.

“I’ve developed a reputation in town as a hard worker,” he said. “I’ll crawl to a gig if I have to.”

Warren was dressed island casual, fresh off the stage in a white, wide-brimmed hat, one of those wildly bright flowery button-down shirts, shorts, sneakers.

But his mindset and work ethic are anything but casual. He pointed out that he made his own luck in Key West.

“I’ve built my name down here from the ground up and that’s really just a beautiful thing,” Warren said. “I love this town. Life is just incredible. It’s just a beautiful thing.”

’It can be very lucrative’

How is Key West’s music scene doing?

“It’s alive and thriving,” said Rob Benton, a musician and partner and director of management and marketing for Hank’s Hair of the Dog Saloon.

Benton landed a spot on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” a year ago and has headlined in Las Vegas. But he considers Key West a music mecca.

“There’s an immense amount of talent on this island. Some of the newcomers, I’ll include myself in that, are kind of raising the bar a little bit. There’s a clear difference between musicians who show up for a paycheck and a tip jar and some coming down here to leave their mark.”

The demand for live music in bars, hotels and restaurants is staggering.

“The amount of work that’s available does not compete with any other place in the world for a musician,” said Claire Finley, who plays in duos, trios and bands. “As long as you keep it together and don’t get lost in the sauce, it can be very lucrative.”

Finley moved to Key West in 2014 and quickly decided she made the right decision leaving the big city for a little island.

“I made more amazing musician connections in the first three years living here than I did in 10 years in Boston,” she said.

Key West, with its sunsets, ocean and tight-knit community filled with artists, is the perfect spot for a music scene to thrive, Finley said.

“More people are finding out about this amazing place,” she said. “Key West really fosters creativity and originality and they want people to break the mold a little bit.”

Playing music here has another benefit.

“It’s not really fair how much fun we have,” Finley said.

‘Stronger than ever’

Key West’s music scene depends on tourism, like just about everything else in the Florida Keys. But it’s become a selling point for the island as well as its own community, attracting newcomers who want to play professionally.

It’s heavy on the singer-songwriter side, male-dominated and largely reliant on cover songs.

“It’s stronger now than it’s ever been in terms of the number of people playing,” said Robin Smith Martin, managing partner at Our Key West concierge service. “More and more people are coming to Key West to listen to music,”

Smith Martin, a Key West native, has roots in the Key West music business. His mother, Sunshine Smith, helped Jimmy Buffett create what would become its own industry with his Margaritaville brand.

Whether it’s original music or covers, the live music brings in the crowds, he said. “In the end, as long as you’re keeping people there drinking, it doesn’t matter what you do.”

A musician’s paradise

A talented entertainer in Key West can build a career on the tiny island while getting paid to play music for people from all over the world. They don’t have to tour. The audience comes to them.

“It is for sure one of the few places in the country where you can come and make a living, especially if you have the work ethic,” said Charlie Bauer, who helped build the music scene as founder of the Key West Songwriters Festival.

“It’s pretty unique in the United States,” said Bauer, a managing partner of the Smokin’ Tuna Saloon, which opened in 2011 as a bar built around live music. “You can’t go to New Orleans and make a living unless you’re well-established. And here ... it’s hard to get any gigs because the people who live here have the established slots at all the places that have live music.”

When Bauer got to Key West in 1988 to help open Hog’s Breath, only a few places — like Sloppy Joe’s, the Green Parrot, the Bull, Rick’s — had live music.

“Everybody realized, ‘Hey, if I have live entertainment I’m going to do a lot better,’ ” Bauer said. “And everything’s kind of grown like crazy after that.”

The money adds up quickly.

An average three-hour slot can pay from $150 to $250, but that doesn’t include tips, which add up. If you’re not walking out with a large stack of cash, several musicians said, you’re doing something wrong.

Taking requests

The island’s live music is heavy on classic rock and country, designed to cater to visitors who toss cash into a tip bucket on stage to hear their favorite songs from musicians they’ve never seen before.

They demand to hear “Sweet Caroline” or “Wagon Wheel” over and over and over again. Mention “Brown-Eyed Girl” to some musicians and they can’t count the number of times they’ve played it.

Sure, original songs can be played at these shows. But they’re sandwiched between a catalog of overplayed pop and rock hits from the past several decades, the comfort food of songs.

Musicians in Key West have their Tom Petty down pat. But many can pivot when in front of a crowd yelling requests.

At the Halo Rooftop Lounge one night, solo artist Kari Wolf stopped strumming to make a requested song happen for a bar customer.

“Digital Underground,” she repeated, looking into her phone. “I’m not sure this is gonna happen.”

She finds it online, studies it for a couple of minutes and starts playing “The Humpty Dance,” a 1990 hip-hop classic with long-winded lyrics.

Wolf pulled it off as if it were an old favorite of hers.

“Nailed it,” she tells the crowd. “Twenty bucks is twenty bucks.” She follows it with her own singer-songwriter styled version of Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ But a G Thang.”

Sometimes, musicians compromise on requests that stump them.

“Smashing Pumpkins,” someone called out one night at General Horseplay to Elle Haley, who within several months this year went from restaurant server to full-time musician.

Haley, 22, was affable but moved on.

“I was born in 1999,” she said, pausing as she looked over at the Smashing Pumpkins fan.

“That’s the reaction I was hoping for,” Haley said. ”I can do Britney Spears.”

She broke into “...Baby One More Time.”

Haley grew up visiting Key West with her family on vacation. She’s now playing the same bars where she went to see musicians as a kid.

“I’m a little in disbelief that I’ve gotten to where I am so quickly,” Haley said. “I’m pretty shocked that it all blew up.”

She played RockHouse Live Key West on Duval recently, with her whole family in town for the show.

“It was a big crowd,” Haley said. “I saw them looking at each other being like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening right now.’”

Down the street from Haley, a small crowd sang along to a musician’s version of “Sweet Caroline.”

“You guys killed it!” he tells them after.

‘I’m not Jimmy Buffett’

Key West has its fixtures in the music business. They’ve played professionally for decades, grateful for what seems like a never-ending gig.

“To pay the bills playing the guitar, it’s f---ing awesome,” said “Caffeine Carl” Wagoner, 55, a native Key Wester who has been a part of the music scene since 1998. “It’s my dream. I can’t wait to get up there and play.”

Wagoner plays regularly with Zack Seemiller, 53, a longtime Key West musician who has never had a job other than playing songs.

In 1992, Seemiller came down to Key West and played at Mallory Square for a year to pay the bills.

He then went off with a band to tour for 10 years, in the U.S. and Europe.

“And I settled right here,” Seemiller said, before a daytime gig at Smokin’ Tuna. He wrote a song called, “I’m Not Jimmy Buffett.”

The father of three plays two shows a day except for Sundays, mixing in original songs with crowd-pleasers.

Seemiller and Wagoner had humble beginnings, loading up their own gear and plugging in.

“You’re breaking down a sound system after you’ve been rocking for four hours,” Seemiller said. “Now when you got a gig you unplug and go home.”

“It still hasn’t hit me,” he said of being a full-time musician. “I’ve done the math and I realize we are blessed. You can drive three miles, less than that, and got endless amounts of gigs here.”

The two still get excited about their jobs.

“Getting to work’s work but by time you’re playing it ain’t,” Seemiller said “Carl last night sent me a text: ‘Can’t wait for tomorrow.’”

Key West success stories

Others are just like David Bryce Warren. They came to Key West without plans only to be inspired to become musicians.

The singer Sharese, 28, came to Key West seven years ago. She picked up a guitar at her 24th birthday party and a friend told her she was good enough to get gigs downtown.

She got some songs together and ordered business cards online.

Then she stopped by Captain Tony’s bar to introduce herself and was asked if she wanted to come back the next day to play a few songs while the scheduled musicians were on a break.

“ ‘Hotel California,’ some Jewel song and ‘Simple Man,’” Sharese remembered.

They asked her to play Thursdays from 1 to 4 p.m.

“Now I’m booked out two months in advance,” she said. She’s also recorded two of her original songs. Her Facebook page has 12,000 followers.

“I came here wanting to sail,” the Mississippi native said. “I haven’t ever went sailing once since I’ve been here.”

Tony Baltimore thought he’d live in Paris or Manhattan about 20 years ago. He followed a buddy to Key West instead and has been performing ever since. He’s put out albums. Recently he released a new single, along with a video starring locals, called “Let’s All Go Insane.”

He’s got a simple formula for his success.

“Work hard, show up, do what you’re paid to do,” Baltimore said, while setting up for a show at Schooner Wharf bar on a recent afternoon. “It’s kind of unlike any other, it’s not cutthroat. Musicians generally care about each other and take care of one another. We’re all friends.”

Kristen McNamara already had a music career before moving to Key West a decade ago. She was living between Los Angeles and Nashville when friends invited her to the Songwriters Festival.

She liked the feel of Key West more than the big cities.

“You don’t have as much of an opportunity to connect with an audience, eye to eye like you can in Key West,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d be alive right now if I hadn’t come to Key West. I think the music business could have possibly eaten me alive if I hadn’t come to Key West.”

McNamara started out playing at Mallory Square, the place where tourists flock nightly to see the sunset, and then at gigs where she hauled her own equipment, including her painting supplies so she could paint on stage during breaks.

“I was riding to work on my bicycle balancing my paints on my basket, my speakers and my guitar,” she said.

McNamara became well-known in Key West on her own terms. She will play the back listening room at the Key West Theater in January with Nick Norman.

Between gigs

As David Bryce Warren tells his story of making it in the Key West music scene, he has a show that night at the Bull bar in the 200 block of Duval Street, where tourists flock and booze flows. There’s also Hank’s Hair of the Dog Saloon, Willie T.’s, Hog’s Breath Saloon, the entertainment complex anchored by Rick’s bar and Smokin’ Tuna. Even small restaurants book musicians.

“I’m in about five bands,” said Warren, who also does solo gigs. He’s in the blues-rock duo the Raw Dawggs with another Key West favorite, Nick Brownell, plays regularly in the Southern-fried rock band Cayo Hueso Riot at the Bull, and on Sundays steps in as lead singer for the Durtbags, who deliver explosive shows centered on covers of pop and rock songs.

While he talked, Warren was due to sing with the Durtbags, who play from 8:30 p.m. to at least 1:30 a.m several nights a week. Six months ago, the band enlisted Warren to sing on Sundays.

Warren needed a coffee between gigs. But he wore a smile walking out of the Bull, having finished a Cayo Hueso Riot show.

“I get to be a different version of myself every night of the week,” Warren said.

Coffee Butler played here

Key West’s musical history is steeped in the neighborhood of Bahama Village, the island’s historic Black community.

It’s where jazz pioneer Fats Navarro is from, before he went on to greatness and a tragic early death at 26.

“Bahama Village is the center of the music universe in all the Keys,” said Ralph DePalma, a Key West music historian and photographer who has documented Coffee Butler’s career as part of his “Soul of Key West” book series.

The group of greats include Cliff Sawyer and Robert Albury and Lofton “Coffee” Butler, 93, for whom the city named its amphitheater in 2019.

“These are world-class musicians that would never leave town,” DePalma said.

Even in his 90s, Butler has continued to perform, along with Albury, Sawyer and others in sold-out shows at the Key West Theater.

Butler met and played with the Beatles in 1964 when they stopped in town. He’s played for President Harry Truman and Florida Gov. Bob Graham and was a Key West star at fabled old-time bars like Howie’s and the Hukilau and also the Casa Marina resort.

“If he had just went to Miami in the ‘60s when Frank Sinatra was singing on the beach every winter, a smart promoter would have grabbed him and he’d have been opening for Sinatra, Dean Martin and all those guys,” DePalma said “He is the Key West Louis Armstrong.”

DePalma said when he asked Butler about his reluctance to chase that type of success, he said he saw what happened to his friend Navarro, who died of tuberculosis and a heroin overdose at age 26.

“We’ve got a music scene that’s bigger than Miami Beach,” De Palma said. “There’s more music here by Tuesday than all week long in Miami. We have 300 live performances a week in downtown Key West. Best-kept secret.”

Move to an island and start a band

Warren, born in Virginia and raised in “the middle of nowhere” in New Hampshire, moved to Key West looking for a change.

He had been working in a ski resort out west until he decided to leave a tourism industry reliant on the seasons for one based on a neverending tropical climate. He left a job as customer service manager at a river raft tour company near Lake Tahoe and moved to Key West.

Warren got a job at a Marriott hotel. But two weeks in, he realized he couldn’t pay rent with those paychecks, so he did what many in Key West do: picked up a second job.

Now he was logging hours at a hotel and a watersports rental company on a beach. But he wanted more than paying rent. He was bored.

Warren was always a drummer, picking up the sticks when he was 9 years old. But he had a guitar. After making friends at work, he locked his sights on music.

“I wanted to play in a band so bad I taught my one roommate how to play drums and another roommate how to play bass,” Warren said. “We were playing on Duval Street within two months,” he said.

Hair metal and Rick Astley played here

The Durtbags rule the stage at Durty Harry’s, a Duval Street bar tucked inside the Rick’s entertainment complex. They’ve been the house band for years and are known to draw thick crowds.

They don’t haul amps. They show up and all the equipment is waiting for a sound check.

They’ll start at 8:30 p.m. and play straight through until at least 1:30 a.m.

The Durtbags play these marathon shows for a good reason, said drummer Dave Baron.

“Because if you throw a rock down the street you’ll hit seven or eight different bars that have live music,” said the mohawk-sporting Baron.

“Whenever bands anywhere in the bars take a break people leave,” he said. “We want to keep the people that we have.”

Even musicians who aren’t into the hair band/arena rock/pop classic material respect the Durtbags for how well they do it. They work the crowd and perform as if they’re headlining a stadium tour.

They know about 1,500 songs and encourage requests, sharing their Cash App and Venmo handles on the screens behind them on stage. And they’re not limited to Def Leppard and Bon Jovi.

During one show, the Durtbags dove into Rick Astley’s ‘80s dance-floor staple, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

“That was a weird-ass request,” a Durtbag told the crowd from the Durty Harry’s stage. “Wonder if someone was trying to f--- with us.”

Then they launched into “Highway to Hell.”

The stars come to Key West

Key West today is a place that draws newcomers and music veterans.

“It already is a music destination,” said Kelly Norman, vice president of operations for Rams Head Presents Key West. “Twenty something years ago, the songwriters festival helped implement that. The live music in this town, Sloppy Joe’s, Hog’s Breath, has been a part of that as well.”

Rams Head has upped Key West’s concert game. It brings national acts to the Key West Theater and the Coffee Butler Amphitheater with a list that has included Steve Earle, Citizen Cope, America, the Marshall Tucker Band, John Hiatt and Psychedelic Furs.

Both venues came online in the last several years. ZZ Top and John Fogerty recently played the amphitheater, which hosts the annual Mile 0 Festival. The Revivalists have played there. Kenny Wayne Shepherd is coming in February.

“We want the amphitheater to be like Red Rocks,” Norman said. “It’s not easy to get to, but it’s a very special place. Watch the Key West sunset over the Gulf of Mexico while watching your favorite artist.”

Norman has watched musicians establish themselves as fixtures on Key West’s stages. Her husband, Nick Norman, has made a name for himself on the island with his original songs.

Bar owners have their pick of musicians.

“I can’t think of any city pound for pound that produces this kind of music,” said John Vagnoni, an owner of the legendary Green Parrot bar, where national and local talent take turns on the stage. “For a small town of 30,000. Holy s---.”

The Parrot wants local singers and bands to get a fair shot.

“It’s just the right thing to do,” Vagnoni said. “First of all they’re super talented. Second of all, you want to keep the homegrown vibe. You just want to support your local musicians. Support local music wherever you live.”

Vagnoni’s booking process is simple.

“I’ll send the dates out to everybody, see who responds and make sure everybody gets some action,” he said.

Hidden talents

Key West has its share of veteran musicians with star power.

One recent evening, two of them were playing a small stage at Blue Heaven, a landmark restaurant in Bahama Village.

Terri White sang, “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” while gently tapping a set of bongo drums while her friend Larry Baeder played guitar.

They’ve known each other for more than 30 years. They used to work next door to each other at clubs in New York.

Each hit huge success in music long before they found a home in Key West.

Baeder toured the world with his guitar, playing with the likes of Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker, and in 1990 joined the house band at the Apollo Theater in New York.

“I tell people I have the best seat in the house,” Baeder said on a break, about White. “People know who she is. I think it takes a little bit more sophisticated crowd.”

White starred on Broadway and toured with production companies in shows like “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “Barnum,” “Follies,” “Chicago” and “Finian’s Rainbow,” and won an Obie Award. She was Nell Carter’s understudy in the 1988 revival of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” She worked with luminaries like Liza Minnelli, Tommy Tune, Stockard Channing and Rue McClanahan. She met Stephen Sondheim and performed in “Follies” at the Kennedy Center.

In 2011, she married Donna Barnett on stage after a production of “Hair,” with a standing room only crowd in the St. James Theatre in New York.

“I’ve performed, I’ve directed, I’ve choreographed,” White said. “I’ve done all the things I’ve wanted to do. The right place at the right time is my mindset.”

White has great stories from her Broadway days.

In 2011, she was doing Follies, the Sondheim classic. The composer later asked performers to come see him. But not her.

Instead, Sondheim came up to her dressing room and explained.

“‘The reason why I didn’t call you downstairs: You were perfect,’” White recalled Sondheim saying. “‘Have a great show.’”

Baeder and White have their place in the Key West music scene. Others play other genres, he said.

“That’s the beauty of Key West, somehow on a small little island there’s room and venues for people to do all that,” Baeder said.

Jimmy Buffett? He’ll play it

Don’t dismiss playing cover music in Key West in front of Warren.

It’s the job and it’s what pays the bills, he said.

“I play every single song,” said Warren, who can handle the long list of typical tourist requests. ”I am 100% here for the tourists. They’re here for us. I’ll play “Happy Birthday” six times a night.

Among the classic hits, Cayo Hueso Riot included a “Happy Birthday” for a customer at the Bull at a recent show.

“People aren’t buying tickets with our name on them. They’re walking into a bar and they hear something. They’re coming in there, they want to hang out with you.”

Jimmy Buffett? He’ll play it.

Cayo Hueso Riot does a punk rock version of “A Pirate Looks at Forty.”

“It goes over well,” Warren said. “I always have fun at the shows if people are having fun,” Warren said. “That just makes me happy. You look down from the stage and people who weren’t friends before now, they’re friends. That’s just the best.”

When he needed cash last year after COVID-19 caused shutdowns in Key West, Warren found out his neighbor had hired a yard guy who was a no-show.

“I said, ‘Dude, I’ll do it,” Warren said. “He paid me well.”

So he worked in the yard, sometimes on his knees.

“I basically was telling myself, once I can play guitar again, I’m not going to take it for granted.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 6:00 AM.

Gwen Filosa

Miami Herald

Gwen Filosa covers Key West and the Lower Florida Keys for FLKeysNews.com and the Miami Herald and lives in Key West. She was part of the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune that in 2005 won two Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. She graduated from Indiana University.