The answer to this age old question is that I started out as an amateur musician at age 9 or 10 playing the drums and piano in grammar school and never actually got any better with time! As a teenager growing up in Atlanta Ga., I moved to St.Petersburg Fl. at the ripe young age of 15 and took up the 6 string guitar in that time frame. I played the drums in the high school band and the guitar after school until my mother would scream! I only had a Sears acoustic Silvertone guitar and got my first electric guitar just before going to college at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where I played for part of one year in the "GATOR MARCHING BAND", until I discovered the finer aspects of college life, women and beer and frat parties!

My first really good guitar was purchased around 1971 and it was an Italian EKO, which is not made anymore. I struggled with it for 10 years until I bought and Ovation wide body "Balladeer" 12 string in 1981. Musically, I started picking up speed about that time. I don't really remember exactly when I performed in public the first time, but it was probably around a camp fire at Lake Tiger near Lake Wales Florida with 10-20 drunk redneck mothers sprawled out under the live oak trees after a long day fishing for bass and specks. Those were the days and that is how music should be played in my opinion, with friends!

As the eighties progressed, I touched bases with some great neighbors on Tierra Verde, and one old fraternity brother from college, Bob Carter, and we tried to get together and play once a year for the "BEACH BUM's ANNUAL LABOR DAY PARTY", at my house. The saying, "the more you drink, the better we sound", was truly coined by these events. As it goes, Bob Carter and Pat Best and Rob Hough and Wayne Goodwin, could never get our timing together, and the "AVERAGE BEACH BAND" died a miserable death in HELL.

Well these were the good old days, and I remember them with fond memories. I started playing solo beach parties somewhere around 1990 from St.Pete to Key West, depending on where the winds blew us, and started getting a little more serious and intent on becoming a better musician of sorts. I always new I would always be an amateur, and was not good enough for the big leagues, but I still carry the thought "some day I will".(Thanks Jimmy Buffett!)

In the mid nineties, you would find me playing with Jack Rigsby and Lonesome Dave Dubouis at the Wharf on Pass-A-Grille Beach, on certain Friday and Saturday nights, when I was not out diving on the "CABO WABO", my boat. These were impromptu events but the crowds sometimes approached Mike Anderson's structural dock limits on rare occasions.

I remember doing a wedding on my boat, "CABO WABO", in Key West in the pouring rain, for my good friends Cindy and John Pike, on New Year's eve, 1995?? How could a marriage survive such a strange start?? God bless you both! "Love Will Keep Us Alive", was the only thing I could come up with that seemed appropriate.

My sister Carol and her husband Jon started getting back into music in the nineties also and started a band called the "DOUBLE COUPLE BAND", with Mike and his wife. They still play in St.Pete with my dad. Jim Ponder, who is also an accomplished musician from the fourties.

Other beach type venues I performed ranged from Frenchmen's Reef and Lattitude 18 in St. Thomas USVI, Negrill Jamaica, Grand Caymen, Loretto Mexico (Baja), and most recently, San Diego CA., which is now home! In 1999, I founded a website for amateur musicians named "BARMUSIC.COM". This is my current passion in life, beyond scuba diving and flying and electronic engineering for a living.

For the last 7 years I have been producing radio shows for BARMUSIC.COM and Jimmy Buffett's Radio Margaritaville on lucky occassion. Steve Huntington, the station manager/director, has been kind enough to air the shows on Radio Margaritaville from time to time. I have done shows with greats such as: GARY SEILER, JERRY GONTANG, TAYLOR HARVEY, JOE RATHBURN, DAVE ZOBL, HUGO DUARTE, MEXICO MARK MULLIGAN, STEVE WHITE, RICK STEFFEN, KELLY McGUIRE and T.SCOTT WALKER. I have also done live shows in Key West from 2002-2004 at the Key West Hyatt during MOTM with countless impressive musicians, too numerous to mention.

In the summer of 2006, I was lucky enough to join up with Jason Webb and Stan Parnes of the CARIBBEAN CHILLERS, and play with them at several major shows from Homestead Florida on the 4th of July to Tampa and Minneola in the fall of 2006!

I have learned 2 valuable lessons in music; don't take requests and don't put out a tip jar!! My most common request was "TAKE A BREAK" and my best tip was "KEEP YOUR DAY JOB" !!!

"HURRICANE" GORDON PRICE