American Dream Survivors, SheHeHe, Lo Fives
South Florida is a lot of things. Hot, sprawling, expensive, crowded. Cool, airy, gifted with an ocean and endless sky. Between the glimmering waterfront, the gated ‘burbs, the backcountry vibe in pockets inland and the whole amazing ethnographic montage, not to mention the prehistoric swamp reptiles that will patiently outlive everyone, the place defies efforts to apply one label that sticks.
Three of the bands coming from other cities to play Bumblefest this month have South Florida’s complicated DNA in their genes. The founding members of Philadelphia’s Lo Fives grew up in West Palm Beach before first heading to Portland, Oregon to perfect their mystery-laden psych-punk music, and then returning east. Members of the affable punk-rock power trio Shehehe, based in Athens, Georgia, likewise spent early years in and around Palm Beach County. The leader of the Gainesville, Florida folk-punk troupe American Dream Survivors has as deep a South Florida band résumé as any you’ll find.
For various reasons they resettled in other places. Coming back for Bumblefest, they have thoughts and memories about key times and places that they kindly shared with PureHoney in email missives unlocking some of their histories.
“I started my music career in Palm Beach with a bunch of small, politically-driven punk bands,” says American Dream Survivors’ singer and banjoist Sergio Witis. As a teen-ager he played in Endeavored Establishment and then got what he calls his “first taste of being in a totally functional touring band,” playing bass in the hardcore punk-crust outfit Dead Patriot.
A move to Gainesville led to his first unplugged, folk-punk foray in O’haste Annihilation, and to experiences that both uplifted him and put him at risk. “I learned so much about DIY and community thanks to places like Wayward Council, Civic Media Center and punk houses and collectives,” Witis recalls. He also battled addiction and returned to South Florida to, as he puts it, “change my life.”
In Delray Beach around 2008 he co-founded Viva Le Vox, a band casting a raucous, bluesy, punk spell with upright bass, electric guitar, drums and a singalong air. “We had an amazing time being part of the South Florida scene during a flourishing time,” Witis says.
He had two more bands after that, Everymen and Ghost Party, and he eventually circled back to Gainesville, where American Dream Survivors have established themselves with a hybrid of punk directness and vintage flair: Banjo, fiddle (Arthur Rosales), upright bass (Vinnie Dellucci), drums (Steve Lots), unadorned vocals and songs like “Blue Prints,” a twangy dirge about connecting with your inner child as you try to treat your psychic wounds and carry on.
“Inner child work is something that helped me so much during a hard time in my life, and it is something I do with our clients at the mental health facility I work at,” Witis says. The quartet recorded “Blue Prints” with fellow Floridian FayePatrick Kennedy on guest vocals, a collaboration Witis found so “magical” that adding a permanent fifth member to American Dream Survivors has entered the band’s thought process.
It will be a homecoming for Zackery Fleming and Sara Fleming, and not the first, when Lo Fives plug in at Respectable Street for Bumblefest. “We’ve played Respectables a few times as Lo Fives in the past (and I’ve played numerous times in previous bands),” says Zackery, who may be best known in South Florida for his work with indie-rock bard Josh Simkowitz, a.k.a. Chaucer. “Respectables has always been a social hub growing up in some formative years. Sara and I, now married, had some of our first meetings and experiences together there, so I’ve always held a very special place for it.”
Lo Fives came together when Zackery and Sara relocated to the Pacific Northwest and, after cycling through various bandmates, bonded with Portland guitarist Mike Stortz. Lo Fives emerged from the PDX scene blending post-punk, psychedelia and noise into a freewheeling but focused whole that’s equal parts beat-poet strangeness and mad-science sonic curiosity.
Stortz, still based out west, will be in town to join them on guitar. Stepping in for Joshua Soltroff, the drummer in Lo Fives’ Philly-based lineup, will be Jordan Pettingill, the backbeat engine for the low-end thrashers of Cop City/Chill Pillars.
He didn’t yet know how to play drums or be in a band, but Jason Fusco loved music and he could dance, so the instincts and timing were already present for this punk rocker in waiting. He just needed a spark.
Around 2006 he moved in to a drummer friend’s house near the ocean in Lake Worth. “He, a drummer starting to write songs on guitar, and me, a good dancer and lover of music, falling in love with the drums and playing music with my best bud,” Fusco recalls. “My first band, Myself Mysizzle, was born in that house in Lake Worth.”
“We would go jump in the ocean, sometimes surfing or bodysurfing, mostly just getting our daily ocean fix, and then we’d hit a dive bar, have a beer or two, make a setlist, then head back to the house for more beers and to play music to our hearts’ content.”
Like his future wife and Shehehe bandmate, bassist and vocalist Nicole Bechill, Cusco has South Florida roots, moved away, came back and started to see possibilities in making music. Their connection was essential to Shehehe’s formation, but a move to the Georgia college hometown of the B-52s, R.E.M., Drive-by Truckers, Widespread Panic and key bands of the Elephant 6 indieverse made everything click.
With Noelle Shuck rounding out the trio on guitar and vocals, Shehehe have won a place for themselves in Athens — no easy feat in a cradle of modern rock that wears its laurels proudly and guards its legacy. Shehehe’s brand of punchy, crackling punk-rock evokes the hooky goodness of Ramones, Cheap Trick, Joan Jett and The Muffs with energy and co-ed glee. They fit their present surroundings, but Fusco thinks warmly of the place where he got his start.
“It was the most wonderful place to learn an instrument and to become a musician, and was hard to leave,” he says, adding, “Learned how to play drums, surf, drive a stick shift and fell in love with my wife, Nicole, down there!”
Bumblefest is Sept. 6 and 7 in downtown West Palm Beach. bumblefest.com, sheheheband.com, americandreamsurvivors.com, lofives.bandcamp.com ~ Sean Piccoli and Tim Moffatt
