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SportsCountry and Funk
Friday, Sept. 19, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DICKSON MERCER
John Luskey, left, Jack Bannister, Mike Stacey and Dwayne Taylor, not pictured, work out a set list for their opening slot at the Southern Maryland Country Music Festival on Sept. 20 at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf. The lineup features Swamp Da Wamp, Shooter Jennings, Craig Morgan and Gary Allan. A ’70s Funk Fest, featuring Kool and the Gang, will be held at the stadium on Sept. 21.
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Shooter Jennings, the alt-country rocking son of Waylon Jennings, returned to the country scene in 2005 after years of leading a rock band he has described as ‘‘Lynyrd Skynyrd mutating into Guns N Roses.”
Craig Morgan’s hit singles ‘‘Red Neck Yacht Club” and ‘‘International Harvester” are considered by some to be anthems of the everyman.
John Luskey, from North Beach, has a natural, smooth country voice and a knack for Nashville-style songwriting. It is hard to say how close or how far he stands from country music stardom, from shifting his status from regional standout to a national touring musician with a record contract and perhaps a Billboard single.
Fifteen minutes after the gates open at Regency Furniture Stadium, while tailgaters may outnumber those in the seats or on the field, Luskey and his four-piece band will strike up a 50-minute set composed of original tunes off his 2007 album, ‘‘My Country,” which has received steady airplay on WKIK.
For the John Luskey Band, the Sept. 20 festival ranks as the latest high-profile gig for an outfit which has also warmed up stages in recent years at Calvert Marine Museum and Nissan Pavilion. Luskey said he is ‘‘extraordinarily psyched” for the festival. ‘‘The nerves and the excitement and the wow factor are there,” he added.
Luskey first hit the Southern Maryland music scene with Midnight Special, a Top 40 cover band. Since 2003 his focus has been country, and his current band includes drummer Dwayne Taylor, guitarist and mandolin player Mike Stacey and bassist Jack Bannister.
The cover art for his 1998 debut solo album, ‘‘Suburban Poetry” — which was informed, it seems, by a blend of ’80s and ’90s rock — is a picture of a long-haired Luskey strumming a guitar. And in the opening track, ‘‘Tired of Dreaming,” Luskey sings as candidly about his dreams of pop music success as he speaks about them a decade later, looking clean cut and sharp after a day of work as a network administrator at EMS Technologies.
Luskey’s wife of five years is a realtor and Luskey returned to a day job two years ago when the real estate market plunged.
He had been a full-time musician for six years, and although initially he was not pleased to rejoin the rat race, Luskey has not allowed it to defer his true ambitions.
‘‘I wanted to make it to a level of superstardom,” he said, reflecting on his original aspirations. ‘‘In every band that has always been my dream.”
Luskey has spent cold nights in a parking lot to get a tryout for the television show ‘‘Nashville Star.” He made it to the top 50 for the most recent competition.
And while he no longer travels as frequently, he still goes to Nashville from time to time to write songs with Encore Entertainment.
‘‘When I’m there I can feel this metamorphosis in the back of my throat,” Luskey said. ‘‘It changes. You almost adapt to your surroundings.”
The John Luskey Band practices in a cozy room above the garage of Bannister’s home in North Beach. Rather than haul in amplifiers, the group practices with a stripped-down setup that simulates rock ‘n’ roll conditions while allowing the band to truly hear the music.
Less than two weeks before the festival, Stacey plugged into a smallish amp with the volume turned low. Taylor, whom Luskey refers to as the musical director, played almost like a jazz percussionist, offering subtle suggestions on how to reduce Luskey tunes down to the essentials while the rest of the group sat in chairs arranged in a circle.
Deciding firmly on a set list of originals for the concert, the group ran through each song on ‘‘My Country,” stopping along the way to make small tweaks. Some songs take a new life onstage, Taylor explained. He wanted the band to revert to the recorded versions, to fine-tune introductions and fade-outs or eliminate extraneous parts.
Luskey sat in front of a music stand with a notepad and a Blackberry. A laptop was open at his feet. His jeans were ripped around the knees, and he played a 1958 Taylor acoustic guitar. He practiced his banter between songs and shuffled his feet to simulate the way he might run across the stage. After the bar-rocking ‘‘The Way We Roll,” the last tune on the album, he pointed his finger up in the air and shouted ‘‘Thank you!”
Everyone was pleased with the rehearsal. It dispersed quickly near 10 p.m., and Luskey drove a few blocks down the road, parking in front of Neptune’s and unloading his equipment for his weekly Thursday solo gig. (On Wednesdays he performs at Calypso Bay in Deale.)
In his solo gigs, Luskey will play anything from Eminem to Marvin Gaye, bubblegum pop to bubblegum country, Lynyrd Skynyrd to Pure Prairie League. He can be central to the scene; he can also be as arbitrary as a jukebox.
He accepts requests in strides. He even finds some space for his originals.
Luskey, no doubt, would rather be on the road. He would rather have a record contract and see his name on the country charts.
He and his wife talk about selling the house in North Beach and moving somewhere close to Nashville. Luskey could work part time at Dell, perhaps, until things finally clicked — although he would miss North Beach’s tropical island vibe and the residents who define it.
He knows there is more to achieving commercial success in modern country music than the ability to sing and write and play an instrument (just take a look at ‘‘Nashville Star”). And he knows it even took some luck to become a go-to opening band for some of the big, regional country music concerts, as Taylor’s wife works at the radio station WMZQ.
‘‘And how do you quantify that?” Luskey said. ‘‘How can you say what’s going to be the turn or whether it would even happen? That revolving entrance to that door, that Russian roulette of an entrance. It may or may not ever happen, but at least I love what I do.”
