Post-Dennis, Songwriting Trio Blows Away Fish House Crowd
Chris Manson July 28 , 2005 Issue

“I’m gonna start playing mandolin on stage tonight,” Tim Jackson of the Fish House band says. “I wrote a couple of songs we’re gonna start doing. Greg (Barnhill) and I have been writing for five or six years. Basically, we started our relationship in the studio. We stayed in contact and kept writing over the years.” The two old friends decided to write together over this summer. To offset the cost of living in paradise, they signed on for the house band gig at Seagrove Beach’s Old Florida Fish House.

Jackson left the Hog’s Breath Band two years ago. Since then, he scored a publishing deal and has spent most of his time working in the studio and writing.

“I still played on occasion,” he says. “It’s fun to go out and play original stuff and covers. At the Fish House, we only take one break during the whole night’s performance. We work really, really hard. It’s the widest mix of music I’ve ever played in my life. It’s really cool. I’ve found that working with guys like Greg Barnhill, people really respond to the original music.”

All three members of Fish House gang are songwriters—Pensacola’s Greg Pendleton completes the threesome—and the guys work hard to stay current. “We didn’t just want to be an oldies band,” Jackson says. “I’m really into Anna Nalick, David Barnes, Mark Weritz and writers who are like ‘college radio’ but getting into the mainstream. And, of course Maroon 5, we do a lot of their stuff. I think they’re incredible.”

Pendleton has been a familiar musical force in Destin and Pensacola “pretty much all my life. I’ve known Tim for a long time. He called me and then (Barnhill) saw us playing. We started up here about a week after the hurricane (Dennis).” Pendleton’s influences include the Beatles, Bobby Caldwell, and Al Jarreau.

New Orleans native Barnhill divides his time between the Gulf Coast and Nashville, where he has found great success as a songwriter for Trisha Yearwood (Walkaway Joe) among others.

Barnhill and Jackson are also putting together a follow-up to their 1998 independent album Beachfront Project: A Musical Postcard. “A friend from San Diego called and said they were still playing it out there. We’ve written two songs already. It’s not going to be the Steely Dan vibe, it’ll be the Fish House band—a cool acoustic groove thing with some other instruments.” Jackson hopes to have the disc completed in a couple of months. Meanwhile, the Fish House band is quickly gaining a following of new fans and old.

“I’ve been playing in this area for so many years, and there’s a lot of people who drift away,” Jackson says. “Playing out here, I’ve seen old friends I haven’t seen in five or six years.”

SIDEBAR:
WHO? Fish House: Greg Barnhill (acoustic guitars, vocals); Tim Jackson (acoustic guitars, vocals); Greg Pendleton (keyboards, drums, vocals). Really, everyone in the trio plays a little bit of everything.
APPEARING: Wednesday through Saturday, 9 p.m. until closing at the Old Florida Fish House in Seagrove Beach.
SOUNDS LIKE…? With over 800 songs in their repertoire, you might hear anything from classic soul to current favorites, as well as original songs and standards made famous by Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett. “We work every day adding songs,” Jackson says. “You can come out five nights a week and hear the main course songs people want to hear, but it’s a different show every night.”

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