In the general run of things, August is a noisy time to be on Hilton Head Island. Nearly every bar, restaurant, or patio you come across has someone standing in the corner, playing tunes for an appreciative audience. This symphony stretches the breadth of the island in the summer, a lasting tribute to a man who made much of it possible.
It’s fitting, then, that this symphony all but stopped on August 16, the day the island turned out in droves for A Lowcountry Tribute to Mike Kavanaugh. For that one day, nearly everyone who has picked up a guitar or a microphone with a mind to entertain us confined their songs to a single stage and a single purpose. Everywhere else on the island was silent, but the floating stage at Fish was filled with music and memories of Mike, who died July 7 after a courageous battle with cancer.
“He was a musician’s musician, and he kind of set the tone for how successful relationships between musicians and their venues could be and should be,” said Carol Kavanaugh-Arrington, Mike’s sister and perhaps his biggest fan. “That really made him understand the value in what he did for his venues.”
As if to reiterate this, one of the first speakers to take the microphone was the Fish co-owner Lee Lucier.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we met, but immediately he came across as a kind, intelligent, and very sure person. Over the years, as we spoke more and more, I enjoyed and looked forward to our interactions, almost with a yearning to pick Mike’s brain,” Lucier said. “Few people on this island understood the island as much as Mike did. He explained to me that the musicians are what pays for the guests, our tourists, our island’s lifeline. The musicians drive the economy, so make sure you have the right musicians.”
Beyond the obvious musical gifts Kavanaugh possessed, it was his gift for finding the right players and putting them in the right spots that made him such a crucial part of the island’s music scene. Few know that better than nationally touring musician Zach Deputy.
Island musicians and longtime locals came out en masse to celebrate the life and legacy of Mike Kavanaugh at FISH on Sunday, August 16.
“He got me my first ‘real’ gig at Tiki Hut. Before that I was playing for a bar tab. He believed in me. I’m pretty sure I was terrible at music back then, but he saw something in me. He gave me that slot and then some other slots and I was like, ‘OK, I think I can do this. I can make this happen.’ So, he was a big part of helping me get started,” Deputy said. “I feel like he’s part of the glue that made the scene here. I can’t really imagine how it would have evolved, and how a lot of the musicians evolved, without him being a part of it. He set people on their trajectory for their careers. You know, in retrospect, it’s just kind of crazy.”
“He gave a lot of guys a lot of work,” said Chris Russell, who has sat behind the drum kit with a host of local musicians. “He’d find something if you could play and had some songs in your pocket. And it was always a great time with him.”
Reid Richmond, who used to share a stage with Kavanaugh at the old Hinchey’s Bar & Grill when it was in Coligny, shares a similar take on his capacity for bringing musicians together.
“I moved here from Nashville where I was a songwriter out there, then I came here because a friend called me. They put Mike on the phone because they needed to fill in a weekend, so my wife-to-be and I moved here. And Mike was a big part of that, hooking me up with people,” Richmond said. “I like to think you can’t be just anybody, but if he thinks you’re good, he’ll find you a spot. That’s him in a nutshell.”
Kavanaugh was always one to give a deserving musician a spot, but ask any musician who worked with him and they’ll tell you that he made sure you earned it.
“Once they decided they were going to give me a shot, Mike gave me a list of 450 songs to learn in a month,” said Chip Larkby of his induction into JoJo Squirrel and the Home Pickles, the band Kavanaugh fronted and ran like a well-oiled machine. “All I did was sit in my apartment and just shred. I’m still trying to learn the songs, but now it’s all these years later, now I probably could play 5,000 songs … because of him and Jevon and what they taught me. Kavanaugh could be pretty brutal when things were not right. But he had exceptional patience.”
Larkby’s fellow Home Pickle Jevon Daly saw that same drive to perfect each performance, but he also experienced the wisdom that Kavanaugh shared so freely with his fellow musicians.
“He made me play in the rain a lot. Sometimes he was a little blunt, and sometimes it wasn’t the right time to be trying to teach me something. But he taught me a lot. How to take care of your voice, how to think about a joke before I tell it, and how local musicians deserve respect even if we don’t like what they do,” Daly said. “And he taught me how to make a living as a musician. He called himself the godfather of entertaining dentists from Wisconsin. He knew people want to hear ‘Country Roads’ and ‘Carolina in my Mind.’ He knew the demographic of Hilton Head better than most people.”
To the musicians of Hilton Head Island, Kavanaugh was someone who was always willing to share in opportunity, but always ready to provide a stern hand if it meant helping them improve. Part mentor, part father figure. They also knew him as a fierce friend.
“He was my best friend down here. It was nice because we could go fishing or go do something and not talk about music. Even though he wanted me to be better, or wanted to talk about band stuff, we pretty much made that a time out. I got to know him as the man, not just the musician that I was honored to play with,” said Jon Bruner, who preceded Larkby as JoJo Pickle’s drummer. “And then over the years I got to meet people like Chip. I got to play with such great people, everybody from John O’Gorman to Jevon to Breed to John Wilkins, who would sub every so often. We have such a cool gathering of musicians here on Hilton Head, and we all want each other to succeed.”
The various players who call the Lowcountry home were like a family to Kavanaugh, but perhaps the most moving moment of that day of tribute came from his actual family. His daughter, Katie Woods, took the stage to play one of his favorite songs, “Drive South” by Suzy Bogguss, and revel in the spirit of all the lives he touched.
“He impacted a lot of musicians and made them better musicians,” Woods said. “It’s really nice to hear all these people play and talk a little bit about that. There’s a famous quote that he always said, ‘Nothing in life is free.’ And these musicians know that, because they have worked really hard to get to where they are. And it wasn’t free.”