Even dedicated followers of Miami’s Magic City Hippies might not know about the band’s unusual beginnings. “I used to busk on the sidewalks of Coconut Grove. I climbed up on the awning of a bank and stole their electricity,” Miami native Robby Hunter told this writer a while back. “After a year I got kicked off my spot.”
It was fun while it lasted if not especially lucrative. Hunter recently told Denver-based musician and podcaster Andy Frasco that he averaged $60 a day busking on someone else’s utility bill for college students and anyone else who happened by with tip money.
The illegal one-man band moved on to a regular gig at Grove watering hole Barracuda and along the way recruited collaborators: drummer Pat Howard and multi-instrumentalist John Coughlin, both of whom studied music at the University of Miami. From there, Magic City Hippies were born — a core trio working on a sound the band calls “indie funk dusted with a taste of hip-hop and baked in an oven of soul.”
And the local boys have made good. They’ve played Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and, closer to home, Sunfest. Their second and most recent album, 2022’s “Water Your Garden,” is low-key funky lounge music at its best and most chill. It’s also part of live sets that Magic City Hippies play for adoring crowds near and far. The band’s 2024 winter tour will take them to Vancouver, British Columbia, with a key local date on New Year’s Eve at the Miami Beach Bandshell — an event with annual hometown tradition potential since they rang in 2023 at the same venue.
And while you can take the Hippies out of the Magic City for tours, you can’t take the Magic City out of the Hippies. “There’s so much from all the different flavors of Caribbean and Latin music to the ’80s legacy or even just the fact that the Bee Gees set up shop there in their heyday,” Howard recently told Flamingo magazine, describing some of the Miami vibes they carry wherever they go.
Magic City Hippies play 8pm Sunday, December 31 at Miami Beach Bandshell. magiccityhippies.com ~ David Rolland
