The Nouveaux Honkies with Tom Prestopnik
In the studio today with Rebecca Dawkins and Tim O’Connell, better known as The Nouveaux Honkies.
Tom Prestopnik (TP): How many years has it been since you (Tim) were in my high school art class?
TNH: I graduated in 1992, so it was probably a few years before that.
TP: So, we’ve known each other for about 36 years. We’ll talk to Rebecca first. Where and when did you and Tim meet?
TNH: I met him the first week. I moved to Florida after the double hurricanes in 2004. I was at a blues jam in Port St. Lucie trying to meet some musicians. He was building guitars and had a business with his dad called Resurrection custom guitars, he had quit playing music, but a friend of his had gotten bit by a brown recluse spider after the hurricanes and they were putting together benefit to raise money for his medical bills. So, Tim showed up that night. There’s a song that Tim wrote all about that night, it’s The title track off of our “Loud in Here” album. Tommy ended up passing away from complications from that spider bite.
TP: You never know where songs are going to come from when you have creative people around. You play a shredding violin or fiddle. Tell us about your musical history. Where did you grow up?
TNH: I grew up in South Carolina. I heard someone play in Church when I was three years old, and begged my parents to have violin lessons. I took lessons from that same lady, then I moved to another town Florence, South Carolina and I had the most amazing teacher from when I was five years old until I graduated high school. I was classically trained, under the Suzuki method. I got a scholarship to the University of South Carolina as a performance, major, but that only lasted a couple of semesters. I decided I didn’t wanna do classical all my life, teaching is not my thing, and music performance of classical was not my thing either. I played professionally in bands in the Myrtle Beach area for eight years before I moved to Florida.
TP: I understand that you’ve recently branched out besides your music career.
TNH: I did start a new business over a year ago called house of color Stuart Fl. I do color and style analysis. I have a brick and mortar off East Ocean Blvd. It’s a franchise so there are also other girls out there that do this in Vero Beach, in Palm Beach and all over the United States (and the UK!). So, I have two jobs now that make people smile, I feel very fortunate to do what I do in life, and very fortunate and blessed to be able to play with my best friend and my husband. We’ve had the best adventures, and I look forward to many, many more
TP: What about Tim’s background and musical history?
TNH: After high school I was in a band called Three, and one of the band members got a wrestling scholarship to the University of Virginia, so the band moved there and we continued while he was in school. That band broke up and I went on the road with a bunch of punk rock bands. I came back to Martin County and took classes at IRCC (Now IRSC) and continued banging around with other bands.
TP: Tell us about your father.
TNH: My dad is still working as a luthier, that’s a person who makes and repairs stringed instruments like guitars. My dad and I set up a shop where we worked together with guitars. He still does a lot of restoration work on old instruments.
TP: If I had to classify your music I would call it Americana. How do you categorize your music?
TNH: Yeah, I would say Americana. In the 90s I played in a lot of Blues bands, like Big Daddy and the Rain and the Dahli Llamas. The Honkies first CD titled “Where Do I Go” came out in 2006 and over the years we probably sold about 15,000 to 17,000 copies.
TP: The COVID 19 changed a lot of our lives. On a regular yearly schedule, you spend summers in the Carolinas and winters in Florida. Is that still in your plans?
TNH: We toured with a full band until 2013. In 2014 we considered moving to Austin, Texas, but decided that if went there, we’d be a Texas band and because of the distance it would be difficult to tour on the east coast or mid-west, so we moved into an RV and lived there for 4 years as we toured to Colorado, Arizona, all the way to Detroit and up to New England. Then we sold the RV and bought a house in Knoxville and used that as our hub during the summers. We haven’t toured since COVID. When the US shut down in March of 2020, we lost all of our gigs so we decided to just stay in south Florida.
TP: How did you survive?
TNH: I ended up doing construction. On the road we both got run down and tired. Rebeca got Lyme disease which drastically slowed her down. When 2021 arrived we got a lot of offers to go back on the road, but we decided that we had had enough of that and wanted to settle down a bit.
TP: For your local fans, you’ve written some of your own music in the past, what do you have planned for the future? Are you writing or recording a new CD or vinyl record?
TNH: I have a new CD out, it’s out last Tuesday. It’s under my name; Patrick T. O’Donnell and the title is “Shiver Hot Walkin’”. It’s available on every streaming platform. No CDs yet, but I’ll probably do a limited run of CDs. We sold thousands of our first CD and the last one “Loud in Here”, we printed up about 2,000 and I still have 1,500 and can’t give them away. I try and people tell me, “I don’t have a CD player”. We’ve sold WAY more vinyl copies of “Loud in Here” than we did of the CDs. I’ll probably do a very limited CD run of “Silver Hot Walkin’”, maybe 300 copies.
TP: How do they pay you for streaming?
TNH: When we were selling CDs and were on the streaming networks we would get about $1000 a month and now, we get about $30 quarterly. That’s a big difference.
TP: What are some of the local venues where you have played and will be playing in the near future?
TNH: We were at The Catch on Sewall’s Point every Wednesday for about two years and before that at Terra Fermata for about ten years. The Catch is now closed down. Our new regular gig is in Port Salerno at Angelos on US #1 and Cove Road. Regular gigs are at Conchy Joe’s, and Philly Down South at the Elliott Museum, BBQ Beer in Jensen Beach, Guanabana’s in Jupiter. Always available for private parties.
TP: On tour have you opened for any big-name musical acts?
TNH: Not lately, but in the past; Charlie Daniels Band, John Anderson, Parliament/Funkadelic, Matt ’Guitar’ Murphy, Billy Currington, Pinetop Perkins, James Cotton, and a lot of smaller acts.
TP: I really enjoyed your video “Playing Cards with Myself”. It’s top quality. I suggest to my readers to pay a visit to You Tube and give it a listen. Do you have any other videos planned?
TNH: Not really. Rebecca and I are working on releasing a bunch of singles. All digital, some original songs and some classics. And we might release a live version of some of our blues songs. “Google Blues” should be released as a video.
TP: Do you have any last comments or shout outs?
TNH: I’ve been playing pedal steel lately. Come and see us in concert and contact us at TNHBand.com.
