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Down-Home Country Coming To Palm Harbor
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Published: February 21, 2009
Stephen Grant Wood has always been around music. Even as a child growing up in Michigan, he wrote lyrics and taught himself to play music on an old acoustic guitar he found under his mom's bed.
But it wasn't until Wood and his partner Rachel Lynn moved to Ypsilanti that Wood found his true musical voice. In the city in southeastern Michigan he hung out with factory workers whose families had come to the Wolverine State from the South.
They shared their old-fashioned country music with Wood and Lynn. "They played George Jones and Johnny Cash and Hank Thompson, and they were doing it right," he recalled.
The transplanted Southerners started Wood and Lynn down the road of the country music on which they will focus during their performance next Saturday, Feb. 28, at The Witch's Brew, in Palm Harbor.
That music has a different sound from that of modern country singers, who spice up their country with a rock sound, noted Wood. "It has more twang. That generation of country musicians, they were living it."
Wood has been inspired to write his own songs in the style of the old-fashioned country singers. "I love it for the simple style of the lyrics," he noted. "When you hear those guys singing their sad songs, you really believe them."
His and Lynn's passion for the music paid off. They nabbed a number of Detroit Music Awards over the years, including Best Country Album, Best Country Instrumentalist and Best Country Vocalist.
The two moved to Florida last August to escape the Michigan cold. In addition to playing with Lynn, Wood has a weekly solo gig at Bamboo Beach Bar & Grill in Madeira Beach.
Next Saturday's appearance at The Witch's Brew will be the duo's second one there. "It's a very intimate outdoor setting with a fire pit," Wood said. "It's almost like playing at a campfire."
The lowdown
The Hummingbirds will perform 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 at The Witch's Brew, 1219C Florida Ave., Palm Harbor. For more information, go to www.thehummingbirds.com.
Cheryl Bentley can be reached at 727-815-1069 cbentley@suncoastnews.com.
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