The Goddess of Groove
By Mad Royal
Born in the middle of the last century, Nathan Clay grew up in a small shack in a pecan grove near Cullman, Alabama, which is about forty miles from both Mussel Shoals, Alabama, and Tupelo, Mississippi. He grew up with his parents and his sister, singing in church.
“I started singing when I was two. I thought everybody sang,” he says now. He picked cotton, corn, and potatoes to earn money for school clothes, and hunted deer and rabbit from the age of nine, to help feed his family on the farm his great-grandfather homesteaded after 
the Civil War. When Nathan was 11, in the early fifties, the family started moving back and forth between Alabama and Detroit, a move that was not finalized until Nathan was in his early teens.
When Nathan turned 13, he took guitar lessons, a series of ten lessons that didn’t move fast enough for the young boy, so he started teaching himself. He started playing in clubs in Detroit when he was just 15. He joined his first band, called Continue reading Nathan Clay: Breaking the Mold
The Goddess of Groove
up. When she starts to sing, well, that’s something really special.
ent less chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease, more than any other single factor. Music permeates our lives. We listen to it in our cars, at home, and, in some cases, at work. It is as big a part of entertaining as good food. A party can do without one or the other, but not both. Music brings us together, and it helps us to share our emotions. It makes us cry, and it helps to heal us. It is a big part of worship. There is a saying, “He who sings, prays twice.” 
People get into music for different reasons. For some, it’s just a good way to meet members of the opposite sex (or the same sex, for that matter), or to make friends, to find a sense of belonging. For many, music is a healing experience. For others, it’s an all-consuming passion, something the person was born to do. For a few, it’s a way of making money. For some, a combination of some or all of those things. 
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Those of us who live here on the Central Coast are fortunate for many reasons. We have great weather, gorgeous surroundings, and friendly people. We are also blessed with many great musicians who could hold their own on the world stage (some of them have). If you like to dance, there are almost daily opportunities to dance to a live band. To have a good dance band, you need at least a guitar, bass, and drums, but sometimes other instruments are added to make the band more memorable and add dimension to the music. And, after all, what is sexier than a saxophone?