Six decades of guitar. The people who shaped it. And how a small town on the southern-facing coast of North Carolina became the island in the sea.
This book is dedicated to the people who walked the road with me — the ones who handed me a guitar, the ones who came to the gigs, and the ones who are still listening.
Long before I had songs of my own, I had theirs. These are the writers whose work I came back to over and over — the ones who proved a guitar and a story were enough.
It started in 1968. I had just left college and didn't know what I was doing with my life. My mother bought me my first guitar — a four-string nylon string. She didn't know I'd still be playing it, or some version of it, almost sixty years later.
My father wrote me a letter around the same time. Inside it was the poem "Don't Quit." I kept that poem.
Every guitar I own came from someone who mattered. They aren't just instruments — they're people, in a way. Each one carries the name of the person who gave it to me, or the day they handed it over.
“I adopted the name Seeker4Life years ago. It still fits.”
Before I picked up the guitar in earnest, the soundtrack was The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, CCR, The Eagles. Then a friend named Pasquale put a John Prine record in my hands and the road forked.
From there it was Harry Chapin, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Cash, Guy Clark, Steve Earle — the storytellers. The guys who could put a whole life into three verses.
Just before Memorial Day 2024, I walked into the front office at Beach Fun Rental in Holden Beach. I asked Deana, the woman at the front desk, if I could play guitar outside. She said she'd check with the owners, Justin and Amy. They said yes.
I've played there four days a week, eight to noon, ever since.
That's how the album that became Island in the Sea got its start. Not in a studio, not in a plan — in a folding chair on a sidewalk on the only southern-facing beach in the Carolinas, playing for whoever walked by with a coffee.
I started leaving spiral-bound notebooks on the picnic tables. I asked people to write down what they loved about the beach — what brought them here, what kept them coming back. Their words, not mine.
Here's some of what they wrote.
“I love the clear skies and being mesmerized by all the twinkling stars at night.” — Debbie, South Miami Beach
“The only southern-facing beach in the Carolinas. There's nowhere else like it.” — Page and Billy, Oldsmar, FL
“The eternal peace of the wave sounds. That's what I come here for.” — Diego, Charlotte
“Fishing in the Sound.” — Michael and Ryan, Durham
The lyric in the title track says it best:
“No high-rise life for me — entertainment here is free.”
Some of the best stories came from the people who'd been coming to Holden Beach for decades — the old-timers who remembered The Turn Bridge, The Ferry, and The Draw Bridge. The houses that used to stand on lots that are empty now. The ones that washed away. The ones that got rebuilt.
One afternoon someone told me about Grey's Diner — the place where the Walgreens stands today. He could still describe the menu.
Someone else mentioned the old gated campground at the east end — how you used to be able to drive right through. Now you can't.
Holden Beach is a turtle sanctuary. The volunteers from the Turtle Watch Patrol walk the sand at sunrise looking for nests, marking them, protecting them, and — when the time comes — helping the hatchlings find their way to the water.
I see them out there every morning when I'm walking to the rental. They're some of the unsung heroes of this place.
No music gets made alone. These are some of the people who made the music possible — the bandmates, the songwriters, the beach community, and everyone in between.
“If you ever wrote in one of my notebooks, you're in this book too.”
Island in the Sea is a memoir-in-progress — new chapters get written between morning sets at The Scoop and quiet evenings on the back porch. Come back every now and then. There will be more.
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