How Key West Was Sung! — The Origins of the Annual Key West Florida Songwriters Festival

by Drew Reid

Anyone who knows me or has been to my website knows that a huge influence on my music was the time I lived in Key West from 1973 to 1984. After playing in rock bands in bars and nightclubs around the Northeast for millhawks and bikers, this was quite a change. My initial gig was with another rock band, mostly playing the military venues. I then started many years of primarily solo work on Duval Street and numerous other situations: tour boats, dinner clubs, greeting tour buses...Key West was full of work and they liked original music, too.

So instead of the fairly rough trade I'd started out with, I'd look up and see Tennessee Williams or David Carradine in my audience. My bluegrass band opened for Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefers. I did some day work for Phil Caputo. A few years later I was working with Shel Silverstein, whom I knew as writer of Cover of the Rolling Stone and A Boy Named Sue. I didn’t learn about The Unicorn [made famous by the Irish Rovers] and the children's books until later. It was in Key West that I learned people actually made a living as writers.

I did two and three gigs a day for years, and started to write songs. I got married in Key West. It was and always will be home.

Fast-forward twenty years. I moved to Tallahassee in 1984, and Nashville in 1992, but always kept a hand in in old Key West. For one thing, my brother lived there. For another, I continued to do business there and occasionally would come down and play a few gigs. Every mayor until recently has been a friend of mine, and let’s face it; once you get the sand in your shoes, you always come back.

I appeared at the Frank Brown Songwriters Festival at the Flora-Bama Lounge for a stretch of ten years from 1988-1998. In 1995, I was recruited there to play a songwriter's event on Sanibel Island in Southwest Florida in January 1996. This coincided with a recent string of gigs at the Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West, and it made good sense to try and book a mini-tour of sorts in that part of the world, as it's a long haul from Nashville. When I called Charlie Bauer, the GM of the Hog's Breath, we talked briefly about the event in Sanibel. Charlie has long been a proponent of good music, and the Hog's Breath is one of the few places today in Key West that still promotes artists playing their own material.

The crux of the conversation went like this:

"How come none of you Nashville hotshots ever come down here? I'd like to see more songwriters in Key West."

"Uhhh...Charlie are you saying you could get behind a songwriter festival in your place?"

"Well, we’d be a sponsor, for sure. We've got our steady schedule, but ask around, you’re an old hand here, see what you come up with."

With the initial backing of the Hog's Breath, the Green Parrot and the Bull [& Whistle], the 1st Key West Songwriters Fest became reality five months later in May 1996. I continued to produce and promote the event through 2002, when Charlie and the Hog's Breath took over.

It continues to rock, even as we speak. The KWSF 2008 is slated for April 30-May 4. Get there if you can...you can’t go wrong.

Editors note— Following is a list of writers who appeared at the 2006 Key West Songwriters Festival: Max T. Barnes, Wayd Battle, Lee Brice, Chuck Cannon, D-Tox, Patrick Davis, Dillon Dixon, Scotty Emerick, Rob Hatch, James Dean Hicks, Randy Houser, Brett James, Jamey Johnson, Brett Jones, Chuck Jones, Scott Kirby, David Lee, Vicki McGehee, Shane Minor, Wendell Mobley, Rivers Rutherford, Kylie Sackley, Jenn Schott, James Slater, Chris Stapleton, Jeffery Steele, Amber White, Phillip White, D. Vincent Williams, and Craig Wiseman.

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