By Martie Thompson
editor@floridanewsline.com
Local musician Kurt Lanham grew up in Lake Worth to parents who weren’t musically inclined — but who had a copy of the album “Meet the Beatles,” which Lanham said first piqued his musical interest. When he was 13, his grandmother found a guitar in a pawn shop near where she lived in Kentucky and mailed it to him in Lake Worth. By the time he was a freshman in high school, he had a friend named Todd who had played the guitar for a number of years and Kurt learned a great deal from him. One piece of advice Todd gave him was to take lessons, mostly so that he could learn to read music, which Kurt did. After high school, he attended the Art Institute of Atlanta for its Music Business program. “Basically we learned everything about the music business — finances, copyrights, contracts — things you need to know to be a producer,” Kurt said. He went on to play in multiple bands in Atlanta and Birmingham, Alabama before settling in Jacksonville; he now performs acoustic guitar sets in numerous venues. He and his wife Nola, a nursing administrator, live with their eight-year-old daughter and schnoodle dog named Snoodle in Mandarin.
Q: What was it about “Meet the Beatles” that inspired you?
A: This album really resonated with me. I was about 10 years old and we really didn’t have a lot of music in our house. But there was something about the harmonies and the vocal performance … to this day, the Beatles are still my favorite band.
Q: How did you meet your wife, Nola?
A: I was playing solo acoustic gigs in Tallahassee at the time and had friends who came out to see me play. One of them wanted to join me onstage for a duo, which we did. Then I went to this friend’s house for card night. I met Nola at a poker table during card night. We were married about two years later.
Q: How did you come to live in Mandarin?
A: We were living in Dothan, Alabama and decided we wanted to move, but weren’t sure where. We had a friend in California and a friend in the military at Mayport. We ended up choosing Jacksonville because the friend from Mayport offered us his apartment, rent free, while he was on a six-month deployment. We fell in love with Jacksonville. Then Nola got a nursing job here and when our friend returned we moved near the Town Center. A year or so after that, we started looking for a house, and it was the right place, right time that we found our perfect home in Mandarin.
Q: How did you come to enter the NASA Songwriting Contest?
A: I had written a bunch of jingles previously, so my mother-in-law sent the information on this contest to me. It was in 2011 for the final space shuttle mission and I wrote a song called “Just Another Day in Space” and sent it in. I finished in fourth place among a few thousand submissions. The winning song was played to wake up the astronauts one morning on their mission.
Q: What type of places do you play and what’s your most popular song?
A: I play most Thursday through Sunday evenings. The great thing about Jacksonville is that with our weather, you can play outdoors nearly year round. I play pretty much anywhere there is a patio or deck and room for an acoustic guitar player, such as Mellow Mushroom, Vs Pizza and Top Dog. I play a mix of mostly covers and some original songs. As for most popular song, you can’t go wrong with “Brown Eyed Girl,” “Margaritaville,” or “Here Comes the Sun.” The Jacksonville audiences are very kind and courteous and receptive to live music. They are so appreciative and willing to listen … and I know from experience that not every place is like that.
Photo courtesy Kurt Lanham
Kurt Lanham and family.
