Three Song Stories

Episode 290 - (3SS LIVE!) Terry Tincher

Terry Tincher has been involved in almost every aspect of the arts here in Southwest Florida: music & theater, and he’s been a gallery & bar owner. He's owned Space 39 and The Tincture Gallery in downtown Fort Myers. He now works as a consultant to the Alliance for the Arts and represents several national and regional artists.

Episode 289 - Jeremey Hunsicker

Jeremey Hunsicker was the frontman for one of the most popular Journey cover bands in the USA, called Frontiers, and in 2007 he was even offered the role of lead singer with the actual band Journey. His songwriting contributions earned him a Platinum RIAA sales award for the band’s 2008 release, Revelations.

Jeremey’s life and career has spanned everything from sales and operations in the trucking industry, to professional musician and songwriter, to his current career as a copywriter and direct response marketing strategist. He’s founder of the email marketing firm, The Isotope Agency.

Episode 288 - Sheena Brook

Sheena Brook is a singer and songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who was selected for Season 12 of NBC’s The Voice and since that appearance she’s moved on to partner with several Multi-Platinum Songwriters and Artists.

She’s also the founder of The F.E.M. Collective, a nonprofit that hosts events in support of women and equality in the industry.

Sheena will also be one of the featured performers at the Island Hoppers Songwriting Fest which runs from Sep 22 - Oct 1.

 

Episode 287 - Thomas Lockyear

Thomas Lockyear is manager of the Museum of the Everglades in Everglades City, Florida. He made his living as a musician from the late 80s until the early 2000s, first as a keyboardist for the band My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, and then as the frontman and songwriter for the Electric Hellfire club. They toured extensively in the U.S. and recorded five full-length albums.

He then put music aside and moved to Key West to start over in 2005 and has now been a museum professional for 17 years. Thomas has served as curator at the Key West Shipwreck Treasures Museum, and at Historic Pigeon Key. He was then Executive Director of the History of Diving Museum in Islamorada before taking on his current role at Museum of the Everglades. 

 

Episode 286 - Megan Borowski

Megan Borowski is a Senior Meteorologist for the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network, headquartered at the UF. Megan completed her B.S. in Meteorology from Rutgers University and graduated at the top of her class. She was formerly a freelance meteorologist for ABC News in New York where she produced content for Good Morning America’s Ginger Zee and Rob Marciano. Megan’s prior work also interned as a meteorologist for WNBC in New York and interned at the National Weather Service.

Episode 285 - Michael Owen

Michael Owen is an award-winning photographer who has shot weddings, apparel, food, and fashion for individuals and commercial clients like the Boston Red Sox and Marissa Collections.

After getting his Masters, Michael became teaching Photo II at FGCU, and also shot for the Naples Scout Guide for two years.

Episode 284 - Greg Hennessey

Greg Hennessey is host of In the Flamingo Lounge with Rockabilly Greg - a podcast that focuses on musicians and music industry professionals from Buffalo and Western New York. He’s also a vocalist with a folk duo called "Old Friends", and has performed as a guest vocalist with the Andrews Sisters tribute act “Buffalo Dolls” and in local musical theater productions.

Greg has also served on the Board of Trustees of the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame and currently serves on the Board of the Sportsmen’s Americana Music Foundation. 

Episode 283 - Jonathan Lawrence

Jonathan Lawrence is a classically trained jazz violinist and fiddle player who began studying violin when he was 9. He utilizes his skills as an electric violinist, guitarist, vocalist, pianist, and loop station artist to perform both original songs and new takes on Americana covers. His album is called The Lonely Warrior which is available on most streaming platforms. 

He also teaches general music, violin, orchestra, and chorus at the elementary level, performs with the Gulf Coast Symphony, and sometimes subs with the Southwest Florida Symphony. 

Episode 282 - Mia Borders

Mia Borders is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who's become a perennial figure in the uptown New Orleans music scene. She's performed at House of Blues New Orleans, Essence Festival, Brazil’s Bourbon Street Music Festival, Santa Cruz Blues Fest, Chattanooga’s NightFall, Voice of the Wetlands, Memphis’s Levitt Shell, Long’s Park Amphitheater, and The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts.

Her catalog includes live albums, six LPs, five singles, and three EPs – including 2019’s “Good Side of Bad” produced under her own label, Blaxican Records.

Episode 281 - Phil Roy

Phil Roy has written songs for some of the greats, including Ray Charles, Aaron Neville, and Joe Cocker, and Mavis Staples, and songs for two Academy Award-winning films: Leaving Las Vegas and As Good As It Gets. He co-wrote one of his songs, Melt, with his long-time friend, Nicolas Cage.

Phil was born and raised in Philadelphia, and attended Berklee College of Music as a guitar major. It was around then he first took an interest in songwriting. He moved to LA in 1981 and almost immediately got signed to Warner Brothers records with his band Carrera. In 1987 he became a staff songwriter.

In 2000 he self-released his album Grouchyfriendly - it won “Independent Album of the Year” from Musician’s Atlas Magazine. He has since released three more solo albums: Issues + Options in 2003, The Great Longing in 2005, and In The Weird Small Hours in 2009, which won a “Concept Album of the Year” by the Independent Music Awards.

Episode 280 - Scott Carter

Scott Carter is Co-creator and Executive Producer Love & Respect with Killer Mike on PBS, and was a writer for Politically Incorrect hosted by Bill Maher on Comedy Central, and then writer and producer for Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO for its first 16 seasons.

Scott’s podcast Ye Gods! with Scott Carter launched in February of 2023. On it, he discusses personal faith and ethics with a diverse group of interfaith and non-faith celebrity guests to uncover what we believe and what we don’t. 

 

Episode 279 - Dr. Jonathan Harrison

Dr. Jonathan Harrison obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University of Leicester in the UK in 2006 and then migrated to Florida that same year. He has taught as an adjunct instructor since 2012 at FGCU, Florida Southwestern State University, and Hodges University. Jonathan has written extensively about segregation in Fort Myers and contributed to the WGCU documentary With a Made Up Mind, which explores the history of voter suppression in Southwest Florida.

Episode 278 - James Priestner

James Priestner is the frontman of the Canadian band Rare Americans. They’ve released four albums and an EP and their songs, each paired with narrative-driven animated video, have garnered them a Billboard 100 album, a JUNO award for their most listened to track to date, “Brittle Bones Nicky,” more than 500 million streams, and more than 875K YouTube subscribers. 

The band just released the first installment of their most ambitious project to date, “Searching For Strawberries: The Story Of Jongo Bongo.” It’s one-part 33-minute-long fully animated musical feature and one-part good old fashioned album that together create an immersive listening and viewing experience.

Episode 277 - David Oquendo

David Oquendo worked in business and retail management more than a decade, and decided decided to turn his passion for film and television in his actual job. Since then, has worked on productions for CMT, PBS, Oxygen, the Travel Channel, and the El Rey Networks, and is now at the helm of WGCU’s video productions for TV and web.

Episode 276 - Bob Kealing

Bob Kealing is a journalist who spent most of his three decade long career at WESH-TV in Orlando. He’s won four Emmys and an Edward R. Murrow award, and has appeared on Dateline NBC, the Today Show, CBS This Morning, and has appeared as a guest on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, NBC and C-SPAN.

The author of four non-fiction books, Bob’s research led to the establishment of the Jack Kerouac House in Orlando, a literary landmark in the National Register of Historic Places, and Gram ‘cosmic cowboy’ Parsons Derry Down, a Florida Heritage site honoring the pioneering country rock musician in his birthplace, Winter Haven.

His latest book is Good Day Sunshine: How the Beatles Rocked Florida

Episode 275 - John Donvan

John Donvan has been host and moderator of Open to Debate (recently changed from Intelligence Squared US) since 2008. John is also an author and four-time Emmy Award winning journalist who during his career reported for ABC, CNN, and PBS, including multi-year postings in Moscow, London, Jerusalem, and Amman, and he spent one term as chief White House correspondent for ABC News. His 2016 book, "In a Different Key: The Story of Autism" was a New York Times bestseller and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist - there is also a PBS documentary of the same name based on it.

Episode 274 - Tim Morrison

Tim Morrison is a lifelong musician and singer, but he says he still took the safe path and made sure to go to college. A Journalism degree later and a move to New York City led him to a unique career and life that wound up in anti-counterfeiting in the fashion world. 

Deaths in the family lead to a move to Naples in 2005 and a return to music. His self-written/performed/engineered/produced/promoted/laptop album ended up with his song “Weight” featured on All Songs Considered - Second Stage and an interview on Gulf Coast Live - Arts Edition, back before it was Gulf Coast Life. 

Tim ended up working at the Naples Zoo, the Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center, and right here in public media at WGCU.

Episode 273 - Dr. Eric Otto

Dr. Eric Otto plays guitar for the Immokalee Road Band with his FGCU colleagues Miles Mancini and Mike Kennedy, and since 2019 he has also been the guitarist for the Gulf Coast Big Band, which raises scholarship money to support jazz education in Southwest Florida. For his day job, Eric is Professor of Environmental Humanities, Director of General Education, and Interim Chair of the Department of Integrated Studies at FGCU. 

 

Episode 272 - Konstantinos Vranishti

Konstantinos Vranishti is a 35-year old student at Florida Gulf Coast University who was born in Albania but spent most of his life in Greece before moving to the United States in 2019.

His family first landed in Maryland, but then moved to Fort Myers during the early days of the pandemic. He started off as a journalism student at FGCU because he worked as a journalist in Greece, but recently changed his major to Communication.

Episode 271 - Dayna Harpster

Dayna Harpster is a journalist, writer, and Communications Specialist at WGCU. She started teaching journalism classes at Florida Gulf Coast University last year.