St. Augustine trio draws on hometown’s culture and history while creating a sound all its own

When people discuss the music of Florida, there’s Miami’s Cuban-spiked dance and electronic music, Jimmy Buffet, the Gainesville punk scene, and the death metal and goth scenes that begat Deicide and Marilyn Manson. People don’t generally think of the spooky old beach town of St. Augustine when it comes to a specific sound.

Although notable musicians like Ray Charles, Artimus Pyle and Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! have called the city home, there isn’t one musical style that represents the oldest continually occupied European settlement in the U.S.

That leaves a band like the Young Step – which plays the Milestone Friday – with a clean slate when it comes to sonic expectations. The trio isn’t tied to a signature sound. In fact, Micah Gilliam (guitar, keys) fittingly describes the songs that will make up the follow-up to its debut “El Clasico” as all over the map.

“Some of our songs sound like sad moments in an ’80s John Hughes’ film. Some sound like a drunken disco party. And we have our Zeppelin-esque rock songs, and we’re flirting with grunge-punk stuff and still have the stoner rock songs from our first album,” he explains. “We never have a song that sounds like another song, but it all sounds like us.”

It might have something to do with the band members’ varied origins. Gilliam is a professional musician originally from Oregon; he met his wife/bassist Lauren Gilliam in her native Chicago, while vocalist/guitarist Ben Whitson grew up north of Detroit. Each of those regions offer different flavors of popular music.

Whitson and Lauren Gilliam also made original music for fun, not for hire, while Micah Gilliam came from a working-musician background, where he was adept at quickly picking up on whatever he’d been hired to play by other artists.

“I put my best foot forward at original music, but playing with other people came really easy. I didn’t have to do a lot of (prep) work if someone needed me for a gig,” he says. “And it was better than working at an ice cream shop or something.”

He may be the anchor in the Young Step, but the members’ varied approaches are a good thing.

“I don’t try to make them sound too formulaic or mainstream, and they kind of bring me back into a less categorized way of thinking about music,” he says.

And then on top of all that, the band’s music is informed by the natural mysteriousness of its current hometown of St. Augustine, which has a rich history dating back to before the Spanish occupation, myriad ghost stories and legends, and a hippie-fied culture.

“Secular spirituality is very prominent here,” says Gilliam, noting the oddness of the phrase. “All the spiritual practices that aren’t necessarily affiliated with a religion. There are Christians and Buddhists and most people here are aware of some deep spiritual practices. We don’t really go crazy-far down the rabbit hole, but in some ways we’re inspired by it – by (author) Eckhart Toley and (late ethnobotanist/mystic/author) Terrence McKenna, and their reiterating of ancient spiritual texts.

“We don’t sound like we’re from anywhere, but from that perspective, our lyricism and the content of our songs have been inspired by the people we’ve met here,” he adds. “We’ve found people who’ve become more conscious and aware, and we’re sort of championing that cause. The world is crazy – and we’d like it to be less crazy.”

This story was originally published November 16, 2017 at 4:10 PM with the headline "St. Augustine trio draws on hometown’s culture and history while creating a sound all its own."