He’s Florida, Need We Say More?
By Peter B. Gallagher
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Songwriter Bobby Hicks stares the crowd right in the face. The crowd blinks. Bobby fires: “I’m from Tampa. It never got so bad in my town that I had to leave.” The promoter of the show gets uneasy. The locals let out whoops and hollers. The rest know where they stand in Bobby’s world. The out-of-staters, snowbirds, developers, condo commandos, phosphators, tree-cutters, chemical contaminators, big sugars, all manner of Mother Nature abusers and old folks considering murder-suicide prepare for their righteous punishment. His 1979 Harley Shovelhead parked out back, shirt hangin’ heavy and curly hair slicked back from the rain he just rode through, Hicks squints out to the crowd and the brain synapses begin crackling like wildfire on a Florida flatwoods summer night. He might rail on about tourists in Winnebagos driving slow in the left lane, their blinker on since Detroit; yahoos who live in condominiums built on barrier islands demanding we pay for their beach replenishment; phosphate companies that turn Florida rivers into sewer ditches; imprinted manatees swimming into boat motors looking for lettuce . . . |
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So much to be angry about. So little
time. He sucks it all in, rares his head back, grins like a buck in stud and
takes to strumming his guitar. The first few hard notes bring applause from the
Hicks fans who know what’s coming.
One
of his signature songs: “Condo/Hurricane”
Well they cut down the trees
and the mangrove keys
And they killed off the
coral and the old manatees
And they put parking lots where the beach used to be
And its damn sure killin' me
It’s killin’ you and me
Wild applause. Some of it nervous. A
baptism in holy Florida water by the palmetto preacher man.
I’ve witnessed that scene a dozen
times in the 20 years or so I’ve known Florida folksinging legend Bobby Hicks.
At the Florida Folk Festival (where he has been a regular since 1983), country
fairs and festivals, outdoor barbecues, corporate functions, battlefield re-enactments,
quilting bees, and every manner of tavern from yuppie hangouts to beach bars,
his show is consistently caustic – washed in controversy, bathed in resolve.
Sometimes
he’ll flip that guitar behind his back and stomp the stage, attacking the greed
and disrespect that have ruined the fishin’ holes and diving reefs of his
boyhood. Other times he’ll play those fine-tuned, crafted, haunting Florida
folk songs that set him apart from just about anyone who has ever practiced the
genre.
When WMNF (88.5 FM) Radio asked me
to host a show centered on real Florida Folk Music, I immediately thought of
Bobby Hicks as a co-host. A fifth generation Floridian born in Tampa General
Hospital, Hicks was educated at H.B. Plant High, matured in the U.S. Army (1970-74),
and worked 20 years in the electronic alarm industry before settling down to
full time Florida folk music. Married with a son, Hicks is the natural
descendent of Florida’s first folksinging forest – the departed and much loved
Will McLean, Don Grooms, Gamble Rogers and Jim Ballew.
He agreed to come down to WMNF for a show or two.
One condition: “We ain’t playin’ any music that’s not real Florida. I won’t
stand for it. You start writin’ ‘bout Okeechobee, you better damn sure been
swimmin’ in the lake!”
Florida music hit Bobby Hicks from the moment he
grabbed a guitar as a child. He learned his sister’s Tom Paxton songs, but
wrote exclusively about Florida. “It’s all I knew. We didn’t have much money
and didn’t go many places. It came to me natural.” His time away from the
guitar was spent in the woods or on the water. One day, the Alafia River turned
sickening white.
Hicks’ childhood mentor, Hillsborough vocational
educator D. G. “Dave” Erwin, took the young boy to the nearby phosphate plant
and taught him about contamination of natural resources.
“That’s when angry Florida environmental music was
born,” says Hicks..
What have we left for our sons and our daughters
You can take lots of
pictures but don’t drink the water
Big business calls it
progress, but Crackers call it slaughter
Of the Suwannee that flows
deep in our hearts.
Hicks anger belies the beauty of his ballads.
Portraits of Cedar Key shrimpers and Miller’s Crossroads moonshiners, old
Florida forts and moonlit nights that will “chill your soul.” But it’s there;
even the sweet love song “The Suwannee Flows Deep In My Heart” has a stab at
Occidental Phosphate in its treasured descriptions of the river. Hicks' humor
is another hard act for some to take. He unveiled a plan called “exploding
geriatrics.” The idea was for old folks to “do some good for Florida. If you’re
planning murder-suicide, strap on a bomb and walk into a condo.”
Tourist organizations don’t know if he’s good or bad
for their business. “Oh, I’m in good with them all right now. They wanted me to
clean up my act, but I pointed out the dirtiest word I ever said on stage was
‘condominium.’” he says. “Now, they all want to reactivate me.
Hicks is still behind a WMNF microphone every
Thursday morning (9:06 – 10 a.m.), arguing with me and giving his lofty cracker
views of this world, as seen through the eyes of an alligator snapping turtle
facing down a John Deere bush hog at the edge of the last waterin’ hole in the
final Florida swamp. We occasionally play selections from his only recording, a
classic aptly titled “I’m Florida Need I Say More.”
September 4th promises to be a special
day for Hicks. His good buddy, the reclusive Whitey Markle, will be our guest
in the studio. After that, the pair will depart to Treasure Island’s Sunset
Beach to smoke turkeys and play music for an all-day “Bobby Hicks Birthday
Bash” beneath the big chickee at the Ka’Tiki (8801 W. Gulf Blvd.,
727-360-2272). Owners Fred and Kathy Stern present a Florida Folk Night each
Thursday evening and word has it just about every “real” Florida folk musician
in the state will be stopping by all day and night to perform.
If you haven’t been cussed out or served Florida
communion by Bobby Hicks, this is the chance. Just don’t walk up to him like
the wide-eyed do-gooder who approached him the other day. Looking around Sunset
Beach, where new condo construction recently forced the demise of two beach
bars, the dandy had an idea: “Hey Bobby, you need to write a song about
condominiums, man.”
Bobby Hicks stared at the fellow, thought of 10
different animals he would make great bait for, then, in his gruff, fatherly
way, put the woodshed on him: “Son, you need to get your head out of your ass.”
By the time the full bore realization had hit both
Bobby and the interloper, one was on the causeway heading home and the other
was pacing this earth like a caged jackal. “That’s what I mean. It keeps comin’
and comin.' You can’t stop and rest a minute. They’re gonna tear this whole
state down.”
Take a look around me, I’m
sure you will see
Florida’s the best of the
land of the free
All of the good life right
here at our door
I’m Florida, need I say
more?
I’m Spanish, I’m Frenchman,
I’m British, I’m Indian
I’m forest and I’m
swampland, opportunities for all men
Proud as can be when I roar
I’m Florida, need I say
more?
