Gary (00:00:01) - My mother passed away when I was 15. My dad was remarried; moved out of the house, took my sister and my brother with him and left me in the house. Took all the furniture out of the house, so I was getting up to go to high school in the morning. I had an alarm clock, a bed, and just a folding chair to keep the alarm clock on. And he said, “I knew you'd be okay.”

Julie (00:00:25) - Were you okay?

Gary (00:00:26) - No! God, no. Man (intro) (00:00:34) - Welcome to Life’s a Beach and Then You Die. From personal growth and self-discovery to challenges and victories, we discuss it all. Join us as we dive into the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, all the way to the end.

Julie Ellis (00:01:01) - Today I'm with Gary Alexander. Gary's a very popular local musician here and he has an amazing story that includes a break in music that led him into the martial arts business. We'll get to that later because that's an interesting break in a very interesting life. But we'll start with where Gary came from. Gary was born in the very small town of Joanna, South Carolina in the late 1970s. And as his story goes on, you'll see that a lot of who Gary is today has been influenced by his father.

Gary Alexander (00:01:34) - My father was a big country singer, actually, in the region. He had a top 20 Billboard hit. He had songs on the jukeboxes all over — everywhere that I could go as a child, the local drugstores, pool halls, bars, everywhere you'd go. So, when I was in fifth grade, I can remember waking up for school and I was looking out the windows and the frontyard and the backyard were covered with South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Come to find out, my father, who was a trapper and would sell hides, was working without a license. So they were there to get him for that, but they were also going to bust him for moonshine that was in the garage.

Julie (00:02:15) - Oh my.

Gary (00:02:16) - That record, that was a top 20 hit — that record, to my understanding, has been in the Smithsonian Institute, and that moonshine still is in the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division portion of the museum in Columbia, South Carolina. So he's a walking contradiction.

Julie (00:02:32) - Yeah, you're right. He was a walking contradiction. Yet, you still followed in his footsteps and pursued a music career. Was it watching him as a young boy that inspired you to do that?

Gary (00:02:42) - He had actually retired from the business, professionally, by the time that I came along. Music was just kind of innate for me, it was in my blood. So we started playing as a high school band in bars when I was 14. The first few songs that I wrote when I was 11, 12 years old with my friend Kevin were all funny songs. Then we started writing serious songs and I never wanted to be a singer. Never <laugh> I just wanted to be a rhythm guitar player, that's all I wanted to do. But we needed a singer in the band. So the four of us sat around and we each sang “Johnny Be Good,” and whoever did it best was gonna be the singer. And, so, thank you, Chuck Berry.

Julie (00:03:24) - There you go. So you became a singer. You're writing songs when you were just a kiddo.

Gary (00:03:30) - Mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Julie (00:03:31) - But was life pretty tough in Joanna? It was a pretty poor, very small community.

Gary (00:03:33) - Yeah. It’s a very small place to grow up and, unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of opportunity for work there.

Gary (00:03:42) - When I was growing up as a kid, it was a textile town. And eventually the textile mill closed down in Joanna; and after the mill closed, the poverty just seemed to skyrocket. It was a real tough town to grow up in, to be honest with you. We went without hot water, heat. I can remember getting up for school and my mom would have pots of water on the stove or on top of a kerosene heater in the living room. Just warming it up so she could put me a bath together, you know?

Julie (00:04:14) - It really seems a little surprising that your family would be in that situation after your dad had a pretty successful music career. I'm sure a struggle with alcoholism caused some of that. But did your mom work?

Gary (00:04:28) - My dad came from a very prideful, I guess, upbringing. And so my mother tried to work, but my dad wouldn't let her. That was a really tough thing because he wasn't working a lot of the time — or his alcoholism or gambling problems would take what money he did have. So she needed to work, you know, we needed that money and she knew that. But his pride in addictions, I would say, probably ruled that and changed a bit of how her opportunities were going to be laid out. And my mother passed away when I was 15. She was only 44.

Julie (00:05:11) - What was your mom like? How would you describe her?

Gary (00:05:16) - Hmm. <emotional>

Gary (00:05:21) - Probably the nicest person I've ever met. She was also the most deserving to be happy of anyone I've ever met, but she just lived a life of sadness. You know, my father was an alcoholic. My brother was a drug addict. My sister was on the road to being a drug addict. Addiction was all around her, with her father, with her brother. And there was just a lot of loss, a lot of devastation. And she knew that I was different. So that's one of the things that has always driven me, you know, trying to make sure — if it is possible for her to see me — that I keep things… making her proud. You know, it's been a big deal to me and always, I think, will be.

Julie (00:06:23) - Gary certainly worked hard to make his mother proud, and it hasn't been easy as he tried to move forward. He was faced with obstacle after obstacle. Within a year after his mom's passing, Gary's father had remarried and moved away with his other kids. At 15, Gary was essentially abandoned, left in his childhood home all by himself.

Gary (00:06:53) - I had an alarm clock, a bed, and just a folding chair to keep the alarm clock on. And —

Julie (00:06:59) - Just left you in the house?

Gary (00:07:01) - Yeah.

Julie (00:07:02) - Why did your dad leave you there?

Gary (00:07:03) - I asked him this. I asked him why. The crazy thing was that my dad moved into a single-wide trailer with his new wife. So it's my dad, his new wife, his wife's son, his wife's son's wife, my brother, my sister, and an adopted little daughter. So it was seven people living in a single-wide trailer. So, he told me he's got no room for me.

Julie (00:07:25) - And he thought, you're old enough to just live in a house by yourself.

Gary (00:07:28) - And he said, “I knew you'd be okay.” Yeah.

Julie (00:07:34) - Were you okay?

Gary (00:07:35) - No! God, no. I mean, it wasn't even a year my mom had passed away. You know?

Julie (00:07:44) - Gary was in the middle of grieving and completely left to his own devices. And being 15 and alone in a house, Gary threw a big house party, which resulted in serious consequences.

Gary (00:07:58) - My dad busted the party with <laugh> the sheriff's department. So that was…, I mean, it was a big party, too. There were tons of people. It was crazy, but <laugh> my dad didn't like that too much. And so he immediately turned off the power to the house and I had to figure something out. And I also had begun to, I guess, lay the groundwork to change and break the cycle. I knew that what I wanted outta life was not meant for me inside the limits of that town, you know?

Julie (00:08:33) - Now you told me that your plan was to move in with your best friend in Nashville, but last minute his dad said you could not come live with them. That must have been a huge disappointment. What did you do next?

Gary (00:08:45) - I went to school the next day and was telling a friend of mine about it and I said, “You know, I'm just liable to go to Myrtle Beach with the next friend of mine that goes down there and just stay.” She said, “I'll take you on Friday.” I said, “Okay.” I had a bag of clothes and that was it.

Julie (00:09:02) - A bag of clothes and a ride to Myrtle Beach.

Gary (00:09:04) - Yep. I had a little bit of money. So I remember we got down here, we stayed on the Boulevard at the Holiday Sands. They got a room that night. The next day they got up and left and that next night I needed a place to stay. So there was this little hotel, it was called the Noel Court. It wasn't a really great place to stay, but I had enough money to get two weeks of a room there. And I had already gotten a job at a beach wear store on the Boulevard. Just walked in, said, “Hey, you know, I need work.” And my hair was really long, like past my shoulders, and I just looked like a beach kid, you know? I looked like a little surfer guy. So they hired me. I think I was making like $3.25 an hour or something like that.

Julie (00:09:49) - What year was that?

Gary (00:09:51) - About ‘93.

Julie (00:09:52) - ‘93?

Gary (00:09:52) - Yeah. I worked at that place for two weeks and they told me they were gonna give me more money as I proved myself. And I was a young kid. I had no guidance. No one ever explained to me that, look, two weeks is not gonna get you a raise at a job, <laugh>. So I was like, “Look, you told me I was gonna get $4 an hour. I'm making $3.25.” I was like, “You said I just had to prove that I'm a good guy. I'm gonna show up to work. And I did every day.” So I said, “I'll go find another job. I found this one in less than a day. I'll go find another job.” So I started looking for another job and I had $50 left. And this lady that I was working with at the beach shore said, “My son can get you a hotel for $50 a week across the street at this place.” It was called Castaways, I think. And I went over there. I gave him the money. He said, “I'll get you the room, don't worry.” I never talked to him again. Never saw him again. So I started sleeping wherever I could. People's floors, you know. I didn't have any money. So, I can remember eating outta trash cans on 21st Avenue. I remember Krispy Kreme would put their nightly stock of donuts out there in the trash cans. And we would be off in the bushes and as soon as they put the bag into the dumpster and walked away, run up to it — grab. And that was what we ate, you know?

Julie (00:11:14) - Oh my gosh. Well, who's “we”?

Gary (00:11:16) - Just outcasts, guys that were not into doing drugs and drinking, ‘cause I didn't do any of that stuff. So that's probably why I leaned into hanging with them. Because they seem to have this ability of finding places for us to sleep, you know?

Julie (00:11:31) - So you just became attracted to other kids that were out there kind of living on the street.

Gary (00:11:36) - Ah, yeah. They would be down in front of Ripley's Believe It or Not. Back then, we would just stand there and there would be cars, you know, just hitting the boulevard, up and down the boulevard. That's what we did back then, as far as, like, you know, kids did. If you had a car, that's what you did. And if you didn't have a car (like me), you would just stand out there and watch all the girls in the cars go by. Like, that's just kind of what we all did.

Julie (00:12:01) - Wow.

Gary (00:12:02) - Yeah, I saw some crazy stuff on the Boulevard, you know. I mean, living down there at that time, it was always safe, but nothing — you've heard the term, you know, like ‘nothing good happens past midnight’?

Julie (00:12:12) - Mm-hmm. <affirmative>

Gary (00:12:13) - You know, I think there's a lot of reasons why people say that.

Julie (00:12:17) - ‘Cause it’s true.

Gary (00:12:15) - So, I saw some crazy things. But Myrtle Beach has always been somewhere that I connected with and I just knew that I wasn't going anywhere. Someway or another, I was gonna make this work. So, I knew one person in town, it was this guy named Buddy Hewitt at Ocean Lakes. So I hitched a ride down there to Surfside, to Ocean Lakes. I just walked right in, walked down to his house, sat on his front porch till he got off work. When he got off work, he came in and he said, “Gary, what are you doing here?” I'd only met Buddy maybe two times, three times. And I told him, and he said, “Well, you can stay at my house for a few nights and let's figure this thing out.”

Julie (00:13:00) - Buddy helped Gary find a job doing odds and ends around a mini golf course and then helped him find a more permanent place to live.

Gary (00:13:10) - I went out of Buddy's house after a couple of days, stayed in my friend's dad's house for a week, and then Buddy said, “Look, I don't know where I'm gonna put you, man. I don't know where you're gonna go.” He said, “I got one thing left.” And there's a retreat, a Christian retreat down in Garden City by the pier. And there was a preacher down there. And he said, “I'm gonna have you meet with this guy and maybe he can help you. I don't know.” I went down and I met with him. He said, “Look, I'm gonna let you stay in one of the counselor cabins for three weeks. Save your money and then you can find a place to stay after that. So I would ride a bike from — Buddy's bike — I would ride his beach cruiser from the pier in Garden City all the way up to Ocean Lakes, work my butt off in this hot sun doing landscaping. And then ride the bike all the way back to the pier. About two weeks into it, someone stole the bicycle.

Julie (00:14:12) - Oh, no.

Gary (00:14:14) - <laughs> So, luckily my friend was the foreman; he would come get me every morning. He would take me to work with him. And so I worked, did landscaping there and busted my butt, but it was so much fun. I met so many people. I met people randomly that were on vacation — kids that were my age — that I still keep in touch with today.

Julie (00:14:29) - Really?

Gary (00:14:30) - Yeah.

Julie (00:14:31) - That's interesting. It's funny how your tale involves some horrible people that steal your last 50 bucks or your friend's bike, but also a lot of people that reached out and helped you.

Gary (00:14:43) - Yeah. And what was the best for my heart coming here was that back in Joanna, people had a lot of judgment about who my dad was, who my mom's family were, who my brother was, who my sister was, et cetera. But for me, when I came here, no one knew anything about that. No one knew anything. All they knew was, ‘this guy's nice,’ ‘this is a cool guy,’ you know, ‘this is somebody that I liked talking to’ or whatever. So, it was kind of like a fresh start. Mm-hmm. Even though it wasn't easy to do, suddenly I transformed myself into this place where I love being. I love Myrtle Beach. It had a lot of meaning to me. And the people around me genuinely liked me for who I was, not who I was related to or who my family members were.

Julie (00:15:32) - Well, that's a true fresh start and the first time, probably, that you reinvented yourself, ‘cause I think you have a few times since then.

Gary (00:15:40) - Yeah, true.

Julie (00:15:50) - One of the catalysts for Gary's reinvention was his entry into the world of the entertainment industry. While still a teenager, Gary met the Gatlin Brothers in a very unique way. If that name sounds familiar, it's because the Gatlin Brothers were a Grammy award-winning country music trio who were popular in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s with seven #1 singles and 32 Top 40 records. Everyone knew the Gatlin brothers. And in 1994, they brought their act to Myrtle Beach and built a theater. Gary, at the time was still playing music any chance he could get, but he didn't have a music career in his sights, really. Through his mini golf course job, he received three tickets for the grand opening week at the new Gatlin Brothers Theater. Gary was watching the Gatlin Brothers Show when he got an idea that completely changed his trajectory.

Gary (00:16:43) - The band was great and I was like, “Maybe I can get a job tearing tickets,” because the ushers would stand in the back and watch the show. So I got the job, like, right away. They gave me the job, and then I just found out that they needed their grass cut and I was cutting grass at Ocean Lakes, so, okay, no big deal. I'll take care of it. So I started cutting their grass on the weekends. So I would work Ocean Lakes, then work at the Gatlin Brothers Theater, and then on the weekends, I would cut the grass.

Julie (00:17:15) - For Larry Gatlin.

Gary (00:17:16) - For Larry Gatlin, Steve, and Rudy. Yeah. And watching Larry perform every night was probably 75 to 80% of what I learned about working a crowd in entertainment. I learned so much from watching hundreds of shows. I learned so much about the craft from Larry. And luckily, I still keep in touch with him to this day. He was very, very integral in getting me my future job with Opryland. Larry was a blessing to me. Definitely a godsend.

Julie (00:17:52) - So in 1996, Larry Gatland introduced you to Opryland Productions and you got a job in San Antonio, Texas. What were you doing out there?

Gary (00:18:01) - I worked in San Antonio for Opryland for a year, doing shows. I'd never done any production shows, so I'd never sang harmony. I'd never done any choreography, never been a dancer or an actor, and suddenly I had to do it all. So it was a massive bootcamp for me. It laid the foundation for my future.

Julie (00:18:18) - Following his year, working for Opryland in San Antonio, Gary moved to Nashville and recorded some of his first records at the Gatlin Brothers’ studio. He then returned to Myrtle Beach, which was becoming a hub for entertainment. It's important to note that around this time, the Gatlin Brothers Theater became the Crook and Chase Theater.

Gary (00:18:40) - Myrtle Beach was really gonna be ‘Nash Vegas’ — is what they were calling it. All these country music singers were coming in and it was like a really hip, younger Branson.

Julie (00:18:49) - That's pretty amazing.

Gary (00:18:50) - Yeah, it was cool and it was cool to be part of it, too.

Julie (00:18:52) - Would you say you felt successful during that time?

Gary (00:18:55) - When I went to work at the Crook and Chase Theater, I was in a show with Steve Gatlin, the guy that I used to cut his grass. I used to watch Steve perform every night and all of a sudden I was on stage with him — as part of the show. And that was a huge deal for me, you know, going from living on the Boulevard to having my face on billboards around town, on McDonald's place mats on posters at the airport. Like, that was definitely a sign of major success for me because success doesn't always translate into dollar signs or possessions, you know? So I felt very successful.

Julie (00:19:43) - That success continued on. As Gary did comedy at Dolly Parton's Theater, became a warmup host at the Crook and Chase Theater, and was even given the lead role in a Broadway-style musical called the Summer of ‘66. Despite his many connections and jobs in Myrtle Beach, Gary took a job as a performer on a cruise ship and he was off — to Italy.

Julie (00:20:10) - So what made you decide to leave Myrtle Beach and take a job on a cruise ship?

Gary (00:20:14) - I mean, I'm a kid from Nowhere, South Carolina. Like, you gonna tell me that I'm going to get paid to get on a ship and I get to go to Egypt. I get to go to Rome. I mean, you know, kids where I'm from, we don't get to do things like that. So yeah, that was “You gonna pay me to do it? Okay.”

Julie (00:20:33) - What did you do on the ship?

Gary (00:20:34) - I was a singer. Singer, dancer, and an audience warmup host as well. <laugh> And it was so difficult. This is where I had to alter my accent. So I probably sound very Southern to some people that are listening to this right now, but I had a little bit thicker of an accent probably then. Because when I got on the ship, I had to all of a sudden get rid of that accent and I had to speak very proper and enunciate everything that I could because these people were from different parts of the world and had no idea what I was saying <laugh>

Julie (00:21:06) - Right.

Gary (00:21:07) - So I had to lose my accent, you know?

Julie (00:21:09) - And somewhere in there you met your now-ex-wife. Tell me about how you met.

Gary (00:21:14) - She was a dancer at the Carolina Opry and we just decided to, “You know what? Let's just travel together and let's do some shows together. Let's get on a ship.” We did that, and came back here together and quickly realized that, you know, “Let's pack everything up and head somewhere that we want to continue our career and growth.” And we went to Vegas and she began working in magic shows there. And I began working at a wedding chapel there.

Julie (00:21:50) - Now, it wasn't just a wedding chapel. You weren't a preacher, but you were a performer there.

Gary (00:21:56) - Correct.

Julie (00:21:57) - Tell me about how that went down.

Gary (00:21:58) - That was one of the most interesting things about my life, I think, is that I fell into this wedding business. <laugh> At the time, whenever, Vegas was the hottest spot to get married in the world. And there were two very, very popular chapels. One was called Little White Wedding Chapel, which has the drive-through wedding chapel, which is where Michael Jordan got married. And then two little buildings down, there's another place called Viva Las Vegas Weddings. And that's who hired me. I went in as an actor. We were doing fantasy weddings. So whatever you wanted — you wanted a pirate wedding, you wanted a Dracula, or Elvis — whatever wanted, I was gonna be that. I did over 5,000 weddings in four and a half years. <laugh>

Julie (00:22:47) - Were you something different every time, or…?

Gary (00:22:50) - Mostly Elvis.

Julie (00:22:51) - Now that brings us into a little foray into the fight business, mixed martial arts. So, you had told me that you were standing a lot, performing a lot, and that you wanted to stay in shape. That led you to a gym where you met a lot of MMA fighters. Which led you to a whole ‘nother career, in a hiatus from music, basically. Right?

Gary (00:23:10) - Yes. In Vegas, it's not unheard of for performers like myself to ‘retire’ from the industry and go into another chapter of your career or life, either inside the business or outside. So it just so happened that I began being part of new media and podcasting early on, around 2005. And I started hosting YouTube videos and interviews with guys and companies started offering me jobs. And I wasn't a journalist, I was just a fan who happened to have access to all of these mixed martial arts stars.

Julie (00:23:45) - That you met in a gym. Where you were just trying to work out and stay in shape.

Gary (00:23:48) - Yeah! Yeah. Yeah. I loved it.

Julie (00:23:49) - You just kind of fell into it.

Gary (00:23:51) - I did fall into it.

Julie (00:23:51) - Well, you sound like one of these inherently curious sort of people that kind of see something and kind of chase after a little bit to learn about it. How long were you in Vegas? Gary (00:24:01) - 10 years.

Julie (00:24:03) - And what brought you back to The Beach?

Gary (00:24:06) - So, I was newly divorced and my ex-wife and I were going to make co-parenting a priority — functional co-parenting, I should say. And so she said, “Do you want to be divorced and co-parent in Vegas or do you want to do it in South Carolina?” And I was like, “You know what? I miss… I miss the ocean. I miss…I miss the grass, I miss the trees, I miss the greenery. I miss — I miss that.”

Julie (00:24:34) - What do you think it offered?

Gary (00:24:36) - As we've already stated, it offered, you know, what it’s offering all of us — a beautiful ocean, a beautiful beach, great foods. Just a really small town atmosphere with more culture than I could have found in a small town in the upstate, as far as I was concerned. The combination of all those things in Myrtle Beach is just part of its allure to me. And that's what brought us back here. So, raising my daughter here.

Julie (00:25:04) - Well it is a great place to raise kids, it seems.

Gary (00:25:08) - Yeah, I believe so.

Julie (00:25:09) - Speaking of raising your daughter, how do you think your upbringing has influenced how you raise her?

Gary (00:25:15) - Um, <laugh>, my daughter has it made compared to <laugh> to what I had. But, I wanna take 'em out of that nasty environment, you know, that I lived in and where she doesn't have to see that. But the thing is, is that she knows my story and she has a completely different life than I did, but I catch her being pulled to these kids that have a similar lifestyle that I did. I was so, so frustrated for so long, ‘cause I didn't understand why she was gravitating towards kids that seem to have a different life than her. You know, I was like, “She keeps going towards the life that I left. She doesn't live like that, I don't understand.” And then one day it clicked. She's not wanting to live like that. She's wanting to save these kids from that. It's pretty awesome.

Julie (00:26:07) - Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I was gonna say that is pretty sweet.

Gary (00:26:08) - On one hand it's pretty awesome and as long as she makes the most honest decisions based on what's good for her in life, then I think she'll be good.

Julie (00:26:21) - Did you ever heal your relationship with your dad?

Gary (00:26:25) - My dad and I had healed our relationship and he was very proud of me — and it got, it got even better. But at that point, he was, you know — he saw pictures of me with Roy Clark and Mel Tillis and all of our Hee Haw stars that I just loved. It was so awesome. He really was proud of me. He actually told me he was proud of me for the first time and that was… I mean, it's something I'll never forget, but it was definitely cool.

Julie (00:26:51) - That's amazing.

Gary (00:26:52) - Yeah it is.

Julie (00:26:54) - And you lost your dad how long ago?

Gary (00:26:56) - Um, 13 years ago.

Julie (00:26:59) - So you feel like after his passing you felt like you had healed that up and you're probably pretty grateful for that, I'd imagine?

Gary (00:27:07) - Yeah. He had gone through a lot of changes and he didn't really have a great example of a father, he didn't really know how to be a great father. What he knew how to be was a great friend — the best friend you could ever want. And he was a great entertainer, you know? He was a good songwriter, great singer. And he taught me more about how not to be a father than how to be a father. And it's so strange to say how much I appreciate that, <laugh> but I do strangely enough.

Julie (00:27:38) - Well, I get it. And I just wish that, you know, we had that insight when we're young and our parents aren't living up to our expectations or meeting our needs or whatever. And that hurts so many people for so long till they finally mature and realized that their parents were really just doing the best they could do with what they had learned. They've got their own pain and their own agony and life's hard for them. And they show up the only way they can. And you know, it's hard to learn that and unfortunately a lot of people only learn it when it's too late after damage has been done, but, I mean, it's wonderful that you are able to see that. And that he saw it and that you were able to heal that up. That's pretty amazing. Because not everybody gets to do that.

Julie (00:28:27) - It's incredible how Gary's been able to heal from his childhood trauma and find gratitude for even his hardest situations, especially when it comes to his dad who gave him a very valuable piece of career advice.

Gary (00:28:44) - My dad told me the best advice I've ever heard. He said, “You could be the best songwriter, you can be the best player, you can be the best singer, but you're nothing until you're an entertainer.” And I had to take that and unpack that many times, because the entertainment business, first of all, is very difficult. But you have to make a decision. Where do you want to be? A professional performer? A professional musician? Do you wanna do that for a living? If you wanna make this a real career, it's the hustle. You gotta grind it out. You gotta make it happen. Nobody has a successful business on accident. They went out there and they started their own business because they had a vision and they were able to go out and execute what it takes to make it successful. It didn't just ‘happen.’

Julie (00:29:31) - Well, now you play all over the Grand Strand. You're always out there and the Grand Strand has become a real mecca for live music. It's estimated there's 25,000 different performances annually; whether that be a guy or a gal with an acoustic guitar just playing some background music, or bands, or big theater productions that bring in stars like at the Alabama Theater or Carolina Opry. Lots of opportunity for live music, which is one of the reasons why I love it here so much, because I'm all about the live music and the dancing. So tell me how you got into that as part of being a ‘regular’ — and one of the most popular on the circuit out here.

Gary (00:30:14) - Well, thanks for saying that, first of all. I think that hard work and the need to pay the rent — and for me, I gotta get out there and work. This is what I've done my whole life, you know, minus a couple of odd and end jobs, here and there, this is what I do. As much as I would love to do something else that brings me more money, I can't imagine not singing and performing. I just can't imagine doing something that doesn't involve some sort of my talents to connect with people. And I really feel like I'm lucky to be part of that. You know? I make my living doing this. It's not about ego for me. I know that I can add to people's nights of enjoyment when they're out with their family. I know that if they're out with their buddies, I know I can help them have a good time and forget what's going on in the world and what's going on in their world. I think that's my job as an entertainer.

Julie (00:31:12) - Right. And I think music has a really beautiful way of helping us forget about the worries of life for a while, to work through tough things. And I would assume that's been an outlet for you throughout your tumultuous childhood and really your whole life. But what else do you do? Where do you find peace and balance through everything?

Gary (00:31:29) - I spend a lot of time in the ocean, to be honest with you. One thing I did have at that retreat down there in Garden City was a surfboard. The guys at work gave me an old board that was just kind of a trash board. But they were like, “Just take this paddle out.” So down by the pier in Garden City, I would just paddle out every day. Waves or not, I'd just paddle, just get out in the water and think. I was internalizing this conversation with God over and over and over. And the abandonment issues that I had had were all coming into play within this internal conversation. And I was 15 years old, 16 years old. I didn't really understand at a psychological level what was happening, but it saved me for sure. I do still find the need to get close to the ocean and just listen.

Gary (00:32:19) - You know it really is a healing place, I think. When I was on a cruise ship, it was the most interesting thing to me to see the different colors of water around the world. And to be out on the transatlantic when I saw nothing — there was no port, there's no — I mean, it's just water, there's nothing anywhere near you — it's a pretty amazing thing. We don't really understand, I think, as a people, that this world is the majority of it's not land that you can drive on. It's water. It's a healing source, in my opinion.

Julie (00:33:00) - Yes. And humbling. It definitely gives perspective. It causes us to zoom out a little and see the bigger picture, you know? And with that in mind, tell me about how you feel about death. I didn't really process death and dying until my dad died very suddenly when I was in my early thirties. And then I started reading everything about life after death and thinking about everything and having lucid dreams about my dad and ghosts and stuff like that. When you lose someone who's really close to you, that puts you in that mode. Did you go through that when you lost your mom?

Gary (00:33:32) - Oh yeah. I remember — gosh, it was weird — one of the weirdest things ever happened to me. And it is still unexplainable. Gosh, I don't know how old I was, but I was young. I was a kid, and I remember being asleep and hearing a voice say, “Gary, rise.” And I woke up, somehow, sitting up in my bed knowing that — gosh, it sounds so weird to say — that this was something that was not a dream. It was an occurrence that I cannot explain. So, I always had this inkling that I was going to die young. And with my mother dying young, my grandmother dying young, my uncle dying young, I just felt like it was just in my cards, you know? So, I've contemplated death the majority of my life. I've struggled with suicidal thoughts multiple times in my life.

Gary (00:34:33) - A lot of us hide those things, but more of us are fighting it than you know. So, you're not alone. Death is a very serious conversation. But what I think about now more is, where would I be buried? You know, would it be that little town in South Carolina? Would it be Myrtle Beach? Would it be Nevada? What would I do? So, interestingly enough, the concept of death, I think I've kind of come to terms with. It's, what would the people that are left do with what they're left with from me — in good ways and bad. I was never proud of my dad's music until I got to be older and he was passed away. He left a unique legacy because, you know, like I said, he was a walking contradiction. But — am I that?

Gary (00:35:26) - I don't know. I don't know. Will my family see me that way? I don't know. Will my friends see me that way? I don't know how they see me. I just have tried to walk through my life with keeping the character in the right spot, staying resilient; and as hard as it gets — and it gets so hard sometimes — to keep doing this music thing. As long as I can live, I'm just gonna keep trying to follow that code. And I hope that whenever I'm gone, that my daughter and my friends will see that code has shown through in my life's work.

Julie (00:36:04) - I don't know Gary well, but after hearing a story, I'm confident that anyone who knows him can attest that he has upheld that moral code. His resilience and ability to forgive are an inspiration. In pursuit of his dreams, he's created a beautiful legacy of being a passionate performer, loyal friend, and a caring father. He has taken the hand dealt to him and made something extraordinary out of his life.

Julie (00:36:39) - For more inspiring stories from Myrtle Beach, keep listening to episodes of Life's a Beach, and Then You Die. I'm Julie Ellis. Thanks for listening.

Woman (Myrtle Beach) (00:36:54) - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is The Beach. Here, you're free to be your best self because Myrtle Beach is 60 miles made for you. You belong at The Beach. Woman (Beach Easy) (00:37:08) - Beach. Easy.