Photos by Val Troyano, Stacy Mathis and Carrie Waite; the Cocktail Honeys, circa 2002, pictured at right.

art of me didn't want to comment on this subject. Part of me was content to just let it slip away and sit back while the rest told their side of things. One day, my grandchildren would gather at my feet and I would ramble on about how "Grandpa used to be a musician." But, recently, my friend and die-hard local music supporter, Julie Garisto, interviewed me via e-mail for a piece she's working on for the Soundcheck blog about the past 10 years in the local music scene. And answering her questions got me thinking about the past decade — how I entered the scene around 1998 and fell in love with it — and about my time as a musician, promoter and all-around local music supporter. Golly, I even won a Best of the Bay award from Creative Loafing in 2003 for "Best Local Cheerleader for the Music Scene," an award that I'm still hoping was tongue-in-cheek.

When I formed my first band in 1998, there were only a handful of artists from Tampa Bay who'd signed to a major label — The Hazies (1996, EMI), Pee Shy (1996, Mercury), Home (1995, Sony), among others.

After playing locally and touring with my own band, I formed the Southeast Music Alliance in 2002 as a way to report on the local music community and for the community itself to network and share resources. We hosted the SMAsh Radio podcast from 2004 – 2008 and gave local musicians exposure to thousands of subscribers on iTunes and all over the world. Since then, we've ceased production of the podcast and the SMA Web site has shut down due to rising hosting costs, but others have picked up the torch (or pieces of it) and continue to tell the story.

Below are Julie's questions (and some I've added). My unedited and expanded answers follow.