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Welcome
to the Space Medicine Community: The Unstoppable Rhythm Machine
Bass player Justin Powell—at 28, the old-timer of the band—elaborates. “If you bring together a bunch of different musicians from different backgrounds, a guitar player who is into the Grateful Dead, a bass player who’s into hip-hop, Jaco (Pastorius), and reggae, and another guitarist who’s into the blues, along with two drummers, it’s like tapping into some unknown energy source. If it’s there, you can go with what the crowd wants. The ability of Space Medicine is we can look at each other and know whether to go for something more structured. Jamming has everything to do with what the audience wants. If you’re in a bar and people want to hear songs, we’ll shorten up according to the feel in the room. The jams go where they want to go.” Powell played with a Tallahassee touring band when he met Sullivan. “One night he sat in with us,” Powell says. “I remembered how good he was then. The rhythm section—bass and drums—is the key to a lot of successful bands. When I moved back to Destin, it was natural to seek him out.” Guitarist Neil Sebree—“he can make his guitar sound like anything,” Powell boasts accurately—played with Powell and Sullivan at Snapperhead’s running through the usual covers along with funk songs and reggae. Sebree dropped by on an open jam session and impressed Powell so much he asked the guitarist to join his new band. Stevie Ray Moseley’s experiences on the “chitlin circuit” taught the 17-year-old guitarist precious lessons about the life of a working musician. Drummer #2 John Reinlie came to Powell’s attention after Moseley sang his praises. Turns out Powell had been playing with him in the Okaloosa-Walton College Jazz Band for two years. “I’d been telling Stevie the same things about this drummer, and we were talking about the same guy!” Reinlie initially played additional percussion, but a second drum set soon became part of Space Medicine’s stage set-up. The guys sat down last summer and discussed the kind of band they wanted to be. “Do we want to be some average bar band or do something serious with it?” Powell remembers asking his bandmates. “That’s when we decided to spend a lot of time writing and doing all originals.” Instead of playing every night, Space Medicine opted for one or two shows a week, heavily promoted homegrown music “events” that started with a little word of mouth and evolved into something out of control. “We got kids at every show now passing out flyers.” On March 31,
Space Medicine and the Mane Squeeze host the second Mossy Headz
Music Festival, a three-day shebang starring an impressive line-up
of Panhandle musicians. Dread Clampitt—the band Powell credits
with getting the “original music thing” going in this
area—headlines, no surprise to anyone who recognized Bryan
Hand’s distinguished artwork on the flyers. But there are
also artists like Lyndsey Battle from Pensacola and a New Orleans
band called Sweet Peas Revenge. Recognizable talents like Donnie
Sundal, Reed Waddle, and John Pittman are also slated to appear,
along with Trailer and the highly entertaining twang band Schedule
3. “This is one of the major shows we’re doing in
March,” Powell says. “We’re also doing lots
of shows in Tallhassee and Pensacola—trying to bridge the
gap.” “A lot of clubs here won’t give some of them a chance,” he says. “I understand. About 90 percent of the people want to come to a club and listen to Dock of the Bay, and there are guys I respect who make a living doing that. The new and original guys won’t get the gigs because the tourists won’t come to see them.” At least, that used to be the way of thinking around here. “We told Chuck at the Funky Blues Shack, Harbor Docks, Helenback…if they book us, we can fill the room. Now we’re in a position to bring in more of these up-and-coming artists. This is cool, people getting into Trailer and Reed Waddle. Working with them is more of a sharing and giving thing than a competing thing. I look at it as building an audience and giving that audience all the options they want. We take our show elsewhere and let some other artists in there. Now Destin and Fort Walton Beach have a very original thing going on, and we’ve shown the clubs people want to hear this.”
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Some
people hear the expression “jam band,” and their thoughts
turn to endless instrumental snoozefests. Space Medicine defiantly
spits in the face of such naysayers with an energy that drummer
Sean Sullivan says, simply, “comes from the music.”Copyright © The Beachcomber, Inc. 2003 - 2008. All rights reserved.