Bo Reynolds’ music draws from the neighborhoods (like Briny Breezes) near his home in the county pocket.
Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
In 1999, when Bo Reynolds lived in Austin, Texas, he wrote and recorded an album called Out Of Texas.
In 2009, while living near the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains in Bend, Ore., he wrote and recorded an album called Cascade DeVille.
And then, a year and half ago, Reynolds and his wife, Deb Yager, moved to the county pocket.
He put down his guitar, picked up a ukulele and recorded Ukulele Beach, 14 songs that capture his love of the laid-back life he’s found here.
“I tend to write about where I am and how I’m living,” says Reynolds, 55. “I tend to absorb the places I’m living.”
Naturally, there’s a tune called Briny Breezes, and another dubbed Gumbo Limbo.
The Path Down To The Beach emerged in memory of the late Bill Dunn, a much loved, much missed pocket resident whose apartment the Reynolds now inhabit.
“I never met him,” Reynolds says, “but the path he took to the beach has been named in his honor, and that inspired me.”
— Ron Hayes
Q. Where did you grow up and go to school? How do you think that has influenced you?
A. I grew up in Yuma, in southwest Arizona, and went to school in an agricultural area very close to the border with Mexico. I grew up listening to the border radio stations, so a lot of Mexican influences are in my music.
Q. How/when did you become a musician?
A. I picked up the guitar at about 10 and learned a few chords and then tore it apart to see how it was built. Then in 1979 I went to an apprentice school in Nashville to learn how to build guitars, but that didn’t work out. But I still have that guitar.
I was really lucky. I grew up in the ’70s, when James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne were all over the radio. It was accessible music.
Q. What other careers have you had, and what were the highlights?
A. I almost always had a day job, customer service mostly. I’ve sold RVs and boats for years. I did commercial printing for 10 years in Austin and sold food for Schwan’s, frozen food in Oregon.
Q. Why did you choose the ukulele as your principle instrument on this CD?
A. I’d been a guitar player for a long time. My wife and I were in Hawaii on a business trip in 2008, and I went with her and heard ukulele playing in a mall, and when I got to this clearing in the center there was a young man sitting on a stool with his uke, teaching six or seven people. Every hour on the hour he was giving lessons, so I thought, ‘What the heck, this looks like fun.’ I sat down and went through one little lesson and he said his dad had a shop — that was a mistake. There were these gorgeous koa wood ukes, and I just fell in love with it. I had it for a long time before I thought of it as a songwriting tool, and then when we got to Florida it just made sense to write songs for the ukulele.
Q. How did you choose to make your home in the county pocket?
A. We sold everything from Bend and got a 38-foot motor home and hit the road and started playing music. We came across from Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and all across Texas, down from Mobile to Cedar Key and Tampa. My wife grew up here from the age of 10. She went to Boca Raton High School and used to ride her bike down A1A and passed the pocket a lot. She’d stop at the Seaside Deli, went by Briny Breezes almost every day. She said, 'I want you to see this place because it’s going to go away. This is old Florida.' So we drove through the pocket and there was a For Rent sign, and she said, ‘Maybe we should just stay here a month.’ After a month, we said maybe six months. We’ve been here a year and a half now, and we love it. It’s an inspirational time and place for me.
Q. What is your favorite part about living in “the pocket”?
A.The people. There’s a lot of surfers who’ve been here a long, long time. There’s something young about it. Everybody knows each other and keeps an eye on each other’s stuff. It’s kind of like being on a vacation.
Q. What book are you reading now?
A. Right now I’m reading a Carl Hiaasen book, Star Island, and I love it. Whenever I get a chance I take my Carl Hiaasen book down to the beach. The song Stiltsville on my CD was inspired by one of his books. And I just finished Skinny Dip.
Q. What music do you listen to when you need inspiration? When you want to relax?
A. Lately I’ve been listening to Jake Shimabukuro. He’s brought a lot of people to the ukelele. In his hands it’s not a toy; it’s some serious stuff. I’ll never be able to play like that, but I never get tired of listening to him.
Q. Do you have a favorite quote that inspires your decisions?
A. I was in sales so long I had to use those motivational quotes. I used to think they were the greatest things in the world. The one I remember is, “If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing you’ll keep getting what you’ve always been getting.”
Q. If your life story were made into a movie, who would you want to play you?
A. Jeff Bridges.
Bo Reynolds’ CDs are available at boreynolds.com, amazon.com or cdbaby.com.
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