Band Interview: Lighthouse Music

By Shannon McAleenan

Talk about old schoool — R.B. Hunt Elementary veterans and friends, some old, some new, have created one of St. Augustine’s most unique groups, Lighthouse Music. Weekend jams banging on pots, pans and other odd instruments showed enough promise for Davis Hart to push the creative movement toward organization, allowing the Oldest City to get a dose of this weird, promising and dark band. Drift rapped with Davis on the eve of its Café 11 show in September.

Drift: Can you give us a little background on Lighthouse Music? Are you all Oldest City locals?
Davis Hart: The band consists of six people including Cody Wicker, Amy Douglas, Max Caty, Mark Garrison, our newest member Ian Jones, and myself. All of us except Ian were born and raised in St. Augustine, and Ian has been here since he was about 8 years old. All of us attended R.B. Hunt together, and we have all known each other since elementary days. This spawned our on-stage dress of red and white (just like R.B. Hunt Chorus). Cody Wicker and I grew up in Lighthouse Park and still live there today. Cody, Mark and I have been friends for over a decade now and local Max Caty, whose family owns Flower Works, has been hanging out for three or four years now. Amy Douglas is also a local, growing up on the island and attending R.B. Hunt Elementary with us.

D: How did you first come together as a band?
DH: The band started out just as pure fun. We would get together on weekends and hang out together and bang on pots and pans and little toy instruments. We were doing something pretty out there and the only rule was to be creative. … Anything was OK, even if it wasn’t considered music. My favorite Max Caty quote back then was “It’s not a band; it’s a philosophy.” It stayed that way until after countless jam sessions, I decided there were some really good ideas being generated and with the right equipment and a little organization this could really be something. So we had a group discussion and decided we were going to work towards a show date, and the rest unfolded naturally. Right around that time period Amy Douglas started hanging around and jamming, and we all knew after one jam session with her that we wanted her in the band. We slowly bought more instruments and better equipment and soon enough we were really something. After that we played around town and slowly built an audience. Then about three months ago a 14-year-old kid named Ian Jones started showing up at practices, being a friend of a friend, and soon enough this annoyingly talented kid had no choice but to join the group.

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