Gainesville Live! Enjoy live music from local musicians while you dine. by Dante Lima • Footstone Photography
For decades, Gainesville has been known both regionally and nationally as a favorable town for the common musician, the weekend warrior. But there’s still a small slice of population who play for a living, gigging night in and night out and chances are you’ve heard them over a meal. Take away a select few that became household names in the music industry, and Gainesville’s musical culture is largely made up of amateur musicians who gig in night clubs on the weekends, play in garage bands and go to local jam nights. The professionals play in an entirely different scene: the restaurants. Many local restaurants employ musicians like Richy Stano, The Killer Bs, Michael J. Petrantoni, and Mary Lacori and friends to provide entertainment to their diners and hopefully create the ultimate symbiotic relationship: We give you an outlet to play, and you fill the seats with listeners. For the diner, it’s just one more way you can see what Gainesville has to offer musically without staying up all night to catch bands at 1 a.m. in the nightclubs downtown. Richy Stano is a music teacher at Santa Fe College, a private guitar teacher, studio engineer and a gigging musician. It’s safe to say he’s made a career out of music. His most regular gig is at Sisters, a cute, family-owned restaurant in the heart of the Haile Village Center. On Friday night’s, Stano will play for patrons with other local musicians like Shane Moore and singer/ songwriter Chris McCarty, whose band has opened for the Dave Matthews Band. Stano said the Sister’s gig is great because of the people. Richy Stano playing at Sisters Restaurant
“The regular customers and friends come to the patio on Friday nights and the atmosphere is great. It feels like I’m at home in my living room playing for friends,” he said. “I have a great relationship with everyone at Sisters.” Stano tries to keep things as fresh and as loose a possible. He takes requests, he plays to the crowd’s interests and he improvises. Knowing your audience, he said, is the key being a professional musician in this kind of setting. Not everyone is there for the same reason. Some people are there to see the music and some are there just to eat. But if you are an attentive performer and keep the mood of your listeners and the evening in mind, people who were just eating may stay and have an extra drink or two and listen to the music, he said. It’s that exact tone that restaurant owners are looking for in the performers they hire. They could use an iPod or muzak, but they’re looking for live performers to help create an atmosphere, a place where people want to come and hang out. Jenny Nanson, co-owner of Haile Village Bistro and the Queen’s Arms British Pub in Haile Plantation, believes she’s found that spark with her Saturday night house band, The Killer Bs. “You should have seen this place last Saturday night,” she said while tending to some late afternoon diners. “Everyone in the room was singing-a-long. There wasn’t a seat left to sit on.”
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