To most of Miami’s live music scene, Eric Garcia is known as Uncle Scotchy, the frontman of Juke, the raw, loud, four-letter blues act tearing up local stages. But spend more than five minutes talking to him and you hit something much deeper: a kind of disheveled grandeur. The live sets are just surface noise. Underneath sits someone who studied literature in college, a former Miami New Times freelancer, an 18-year caregiver, and a writer who had to invent a demon just to survive the reality of losing his family.

Honestly? Listening to him outline his world, you get hit with how real—and how surprisingly rare—that level of openness is. And that matters, because it shows everywhere in his work. Now, after turning his grief into a legendary 71-show theatrical run with his Blues Opera, he is preparing to release the book derived from that very performance: Uncle Scotchy and the Time Thief, published through Miami’s own Jitney Books. But to make this a reality, he needs the community’s help with the project funding via GiveButter.

12 Rounds Against “The Time Thief”

When the pandemic hit, Eric’s 18-year stretch caring for his mother (who lived with Alzheimer’s) and his father came to a painful close. Sitting alone in the quiet aftermath, he brought his raw accounts to weekly storytelling nights at Bar Nancy.

“When you’re a caregiver for a long time, the hardest thing in the world is when you actually don’t have anyone to care for anymore,” Eric says. “You live for 18 years and you’re not the most important thing. All of a sudden, you have nobody. You forget how to care for yourself.”

Those nights caught the attention of Juggerknot Theater, sparking the Blues Opera: an immersive, room-to-room performance for just 15 people a night. Over 71 sold-out shows, Eric walked small audiences through his family history, framing his mother’s fight with Alzheimer’s as a 12-round boxing match against “The Time Thief”—a fictitious blues demon assigned by the devil to tear his family apart and steal their memories.

From the Stage to Jitney Books: The GoFundMe

Because those 71 nights were an ephemeral, unrecorded experience, Eric needed legacy on paper. Derived directly from the narrative of the Blues Opera, the result is Uncle Scotchy and the Time Thief.

“It wasn’t that easy… I was drunk every day, I was hammered,” Eric admits candidly. “There was a process that happened. I had to really go through it before I was like, ‘Oh, I’m alone now, let me start doing good things for people.’ You have to go through it in order to help others.”

“What is the demon’s currency? Darkness and lies,” he continues. “If you tell the truth, that’s light. You bring light into the dark, and you have nothing to hide.”

To get this story out into the world, Eric has partnered with Jitney Books—Miami’s premier independent micro-publisher dedicated to authentic, hyper-local stories. But independent writing requires real community backing. A GiveButter campaign is currently active to fund marketing, PR and operational costs for this project.

Supporting the campaign doesn’t just help with the publishing of a book; it backs The Egg Project, a non-profit initiative Eric is launching alongside the release to support long-term caregivers through the forgotten aftermath—the identity loss and depression that set in after the caregiving ends.

It’s hard not to step away from a story like this profoundly moved. Where others might have lost themselves after nearly two decades of heavy lifting, Eric went through the fire and channeled the quiet right back into helping people.

To help bring this piece of Miami literature to life, chip in to the GiveButter and let the light do the rest.

For more information, music, and updates on the project, visit: unclescotchy.com