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Since 2002, Geoff Fox has written about the offbeat and dynamic personalities that make Pasco County unique. He is now revisiting them, meeting new characters and sharing more stories. Email
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Music Is Rob Beaumont’s Language
Posted Jul 7, 2008 by Geoff Fox
Updated Dec 31, 2008 at 01:39 PM
Put a camera in front of him and Rob Beaumont is as comfortable as a cat at the end of a diving board.
Sit him behind a piano, though, and Beaumont isn’t just the life of the party, he is the party.
As he has for years, Beaumont, a former traveling musician, regularly plays at San Ann Liquors & Lounge on State Road 52, just west of Curley Road, where he leads a group called Bugtussle, named after The Beverly Hillbillies’ hometown in the Ozarks.
On an outdoor stage behind the popular eatery and watering hole, Beaumont, who works fulltime at San Antonio Building Supply, and his band – including bassist Don Cox, guitarist Leon Hayes and drummer David Simmons – entertained a faithful group of regulars with a mix of standards from almost every period and genre.
“Our motto is play one, drink one,” Beaumont said on a recent Friday evening, after completing a practiced rendition of “Georgia On My Mind.”
With that, he grabbed a Miller High Life from behind the piano and took a healthy pull.
Born into a family of musicians in Dade City, Beaumont has been a professional musician since graduating from Pasco High School in 1972. By 1980, he was traveling with a country band, mostly through Texas, Georgia and the Midwest. After several years, though, life on the road got old.
Between sets at San Ann Liquors & Lounge in 2003, Beaumont told me he was content playing good-time music in front of appreciative local crowds.
“I’m not really looking for the big time,” he said. “I just love music in general. I just like to play and do my thing.”
His outlook hasn’t changed.
As the sun went down, the crowd at San Ann grew.
“What’s our motto again? I forget,” Beaumont called out.
Two women at the bar raised their glasses and shouted, “Play one, drink one!”
Everybody joined in.
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