Turnage hosts engineers by day, rockers by night
Published 6:29 pm Thursday, June 22, 2017
- ROCK ALL AGES: Still Kickin’ will perform at Arts of the Pamlico’s Turnage Theatre on Saturday night. Described as some of the best classic southern rock players out there, the band consists of (left to right) bassist Terry Brosi; guitarist Dale Brantley, vocalist Todd Bissette, guitarist Chuck Meyer and drummer Mike Davis.
They’re not your average musicians. They don’t go on tour. They “rock out,” but don’t live rockers’ lives. Instead, they have wives, children and grandchildren. They have real — and really good — jobs. And they’re Still Kickin’, after 30 years of playing together.
Still Kickin’ will take the Turnage Theatre main stage at 7 p.m. Saturday for a performance that’s also a reunion for these musicians who met working as engineers in the automotive industry, but also had hidden talents, according to Bob Daw, a Beaufort County Traditional Music Association board member and former Cooper Standard manager.
“When I hired Chuck Meyer back in 1985, word spread that I hired on the best pickers around. He was playing Greenville all the time,” Daw said.
Meyer plays guitar, along with Dale Brantley, whose day job is production supervisor at Grady White Boats. Terry Brosi plays bass and Todd Bissette takes care of vocals. Mike Davis rounds out the group on the drums, and drums aren’t his only talent, according to Daw.
“He’s the best tooling engineer — he can build a machine that can do anything you can imagine,” Daw said.
Music brought the five men together in their Cooper Standard days, but it’s been Daw, a longtime music lover, who worked to keep them playing.
“Over the years, I’d get them down here twice a year. I’d make those boys get together. As the years went by, when my friends down here found out Dale and Chuck were coming, there would 75 or 100 people here,” Daw said of gatherings he held at his Blounts Creek fishing camp. “I kept dragging them back together.”
Their genre is classic southern rock. Their priorities have been family and careers, according to Daw, but they still together three or four times a year to “make the magic happen.”
“If you like Lynyrd Skynyrd, if you like Gregg Allman and ZZ Top, they are the best,” Daw said. “These two guitar players are the best southern rock guitar players I have ever heard.”
There’s no charge for the Still Kickin’ performance, though donations will be accepted. All money collected will be donated to the Humane Society of Beaufort County and Beaufort County Traditional Music Association.
For Daw, it’s just as much a reunion to him as it is for the band, and he’s looking forward to Saturday night.
“They’re my amigos; we’re just buds. I take a lot of pride in them,” Daw said.
“All that aside, they are just doggone talented with their music and offer up and unbelievable sound.”