At 10:30 a.m. on Word of South Festival Saturday April 5, I got the call. Musician Charlie Mars, who I was to share the stage with at 1:15 p.m. was calling from Destin to ask if Tallahassee was in the Eastern Time Zone.
Once upon a time in 1998, I was Charlie’s Tour manager. Charlie is a successful musician and back in the ’90s his team was having trouble keeping track of the hotels, cash, merch, sound checks and time zones (that apparently is still an issue). I was hired to manage that process.
Blake Dowling and Charlie Mars on the stage at Word of South 2025.
For over a year the trail of Natural Light, fast food, and Hampton Inns lead us around the nation as we brought the music to the people in every club, bar and theater you can imagine from DC to Dallas. It was a magical time.
That Saturday looked low on magic as time appeared to not be on our side. We were getting ready for our dual performance at the Word of South Festival. I would be discussing my pandemic book, “Professionally Distanced” with Charlie playing alongside me, as well as doing his own set of tunes.
My wife, Jeanne, and I went ahead and headed to the green room for lunch at noon. We dined with the fabulous members of George Clinton’s band, and I asked Jeanne to take the role of Tour Manager and meet Charlie in the hotel lobby. We told the valet and front desk he was coming in hot and asked them to take everything car/luggage so we could get him straight to the stage.
I met the sound engineer, my old friend, James Chech, for sound check (pun alert) at 12:45 and Charlie wheeled in to the hotel un-promptly at 12:55. He changed clothes in the valet line, and then he and Jeanne briskly strolled over at 1:05 for our 1:15 set. We plugged in, and with about 22 seconds to spare we rocked the sold-out Flamingo Stage.
It was just like 1998 all over again for a moment as I worked with Charlie. Music and literature can certainly capture time as well as be a time machine. I write columns for that reason, to capture time, celebrate commonality and praise awesome people.
The Aegis Family came out to support Blake Dowling and Charlie Mars at Word of South in April 2025.
When I started working in the music business after UF, I was amazed at the community around the biz in Atlanta.
Bands like Hootie, MatchBox 20, Edwin McCain, Drivin and Cryin, Train, Blue Dogs, Charlie Mars, Sister Hazel, Col Bruce, Albert Hill, a million others were at its core. Not just the bands, but the agents, the managers, the club owners (Smiths ole Bar), the record labels (Capricorn), the radio stations (99X). Any night you wanted to find some live music and good people, you could, and I lived across the street from Smiths and would usually be found there.
Sundays were my favorite day at Smiths as Col Bruce would be holding court, and for most of 1999 he and I would bet on football. By the end of that era, we switched from individual games to him taking all the faves and me all the underdogs, surprisingly it was usually a pretty even split.
I like to mention that era in my columns often as those years along with my time at UF were certainly my formative years.
I am sure my non-paid and unofficial writing coach, Mr. Yordon, will say I buried, strangled and drowned the lead in this column. I thought it was appropriate to be all over the place today as that sets the tone nicely. My sincere thanks to Gary for taking time to critique and coach me on my columns, appreciate it, and great to see you and Berneice at WOS.
Blake Dowling
Blake Dowling is CEO of Aegis Biz Tech and the host of the Biz & Tech Podcast.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Magic returns for a moment with Charlie Mars at Word of South