In South Florida, we are obsessed with “the new”. We tear down historic hotels to build glass towers and pave over old neighborhoods for luxury outlets. But for those of us who spent our nights in the dim, humid corners of the local music scene, the real South Florida isn’t found in a shiny rendering of a new condo, it’s found in the grit of a hot and sweaty set at 1:00 AM.
I navigated through the scene as the bass player for Xotic Yeyo, an outfit that became a staple of the local alternative-funk circuit. We were the “Disco Funk Jesus” movement of the late 2010s throughout South Florida. While we were regulars on the neon-soaked stages of Wynwood and the legendary Churchill’s Pub in Miami, we were just as likely to be found hauling gear into venues across Broward and Palm Beach County. Being in a band like that gave me a front-row seat to the raw, unpolished engine of our culture. In a town famous for “playback” performers and overpriced bottle service, being part of a live, rhythm-heavy band was our way of proving that there is still a pulse beneath the neon.
That pulse took us from the underground to the professional stage in ways only this region can manifest. For a time, we were a fixture of the live entertainment for Florida Panthers games. We’d start the night out on the Pavilion, playing for the crowds streaming through the main entrance of the arena, then haul our gear up to the club level to hit the stage during intermissions and keep the energy high after the final buzzer. It was a study in contrasts: one hour you’re playing in the sweltering outdoor air, and the next you’re providing the soundtrack for thousands of fans under the bright lights of the concourse. It was the ultimate South Florida hustle, finding a way to make the funk fit everywhere from a street corner to the executive level of a sports franchise.
There is a specific physicality to playing music here that the rest of the country doesn’t understand. It’s the 95-degree load-in through a back alley in Hollywood, West Palm, or Little Haiti, where the humidity is so thick it feels like your bass strings are fighting back. I’ve spent countless nights hauling gear through the salty air, watching the condensation form on the chrome of my bass before I even hit the first note.
People often obsess over gear, asking about specific boutique amps or vintage pedals. But South Florida teaches you a harder truth: the tone is in the fingers. In a scene where the house PA might blow a fuse or the stage monitors are held together by duct tape, you learn that your “sound” isn’t something you buy; it’s something you wring out of the instrument through sheer force of will. Whether I was playing a G&L Jazz or a short-scale Mustang, the goal was the same: provide the rhythmic anchor that kept a roomful of people moving until the sun came up.
That era peaked for us when we took that live energy into the studio with Andrew Yeomanson, better known as DJ Le Spam. Recording at his City of Progress studio in North Miami was a lesson in analog truth. Le Spam is a guy who lives the music, he’s an all-analog purist who captured our sound onto magnetic tape.
He was the one behind the board for our single “Slide to the Left,” and his influence was the secret sauce. He didn’t just record us; he dialed into the frequency of the band, capturing the “one-take” tightness we’d spent years perfecting on the road. We weren’t just playing music, we were documenting a vibe that is unique to this corner of the world, a mixture of rebellious art and pure, unadulterated party energy.
But being at the foreground of a movement means you’re the first to feel the impact when the wall hits. Just as we reached that high watermark, the pandemic arrived and effectively snuffed out the flame. It wasn’t just a pause, it was a total shutdown of the ecosystem we had bled for. When the venues finally creaked their doors open months later, the landscape had shifted. The momentum was fractured, the venues were struggling, and that specific, electric energy that had defined the late 2010s seemed to have evaporated into the stagnant air. It was a long, quiet stretch where it felt like the heart of the DIY scene had stopped beating entirely, leaving those of us who lived for the stage wondering if the “live” era was officially a relic of the past.
However, South Florida grit is harder to kill than people think. Take Churchill’s Pub, for instance. For decades, it was the dirty, beating heart of Miami’s underground, a place where you’d have a hardcore punk band followed by a country blues trio, followed by our own brand of psychedelic funk. We thought we’d lost it forever during that long silence, but as of this May, the lights are back on. Seeing DJ Oski bring MiamiPalooza back to those hallowed, beer-soaked floors on May 2nd wasn’t just a win for the scene, it was a signal that the sanctuary of the “weirdo” still has a lease on life.
The credibility of the scene never came from a social media following; it came from that “hot and sweaty” mentality. We’re from a generation of musicians who pride ourselves on the “high watermark” of the live performance. If you couldn’t deliver the groove in the moment, with the sweat dripping off your nose and the crowd pressing against the monitors in a room that hadn’t seen a working AC unit since the 90s, you didn’t belong on the bill.
Today, when I look at the South Florida horizon, the venues change and the names on the marquees are often replaced by corporate sponsors. But the soul of the place hasn’t changed. It’s there in the resurrection of Churchill’s, and it’s there in the hands of the musicians who refuse to compromise.
South Florida is at its best when it’s loud, unrefined, and unapologetically real. We might lose a few historic spots along the way, but as long as there’s a bass player somewhere in a garage from Boca to Kendall refusing to play it safe, the real South Florida is still alive. The tone, after all, is in the fingers.
