History

Eightpenny is a five-piece original rock band from Ocala, Florida. We spent most of the 2000s playing shows throughout Central and North Florida, including Orlando, Tampa, and Jacksonville. Like a lot of things in life, plans change, priorities shift, and sometimes the dreams we chase end up taking a back seat. But the music and memories stuck around. We put this site together to share some of those memories, revisit the people and places that were part of it, and finally give our recordings the sound we always wanted.

It started when I came home. I had moved back to Ocala after playing in a band in South Florida, chasing a sound I could never get to with that group.

I went to the music store at the mall to put up a flyer for a female vocalist, and found one already on the board from a female vocalist looking for a band. I took the number and walked down to the far end of the mall, where a singer was up on a makeshift stage, singing over backing tracks. She was the one whose number I was holding. That was Olivia.

We had a short first practice. Olivia was already making music with her brother Nate, and Brian followed not long after. Early on we rehearsed at Olivia and her husband Tony's house, until we rented a place of our own for rehearsals and gear. We dubbed it the Band House.

We had a different drummer at first, but it just wasn't working out, and it was good to know the rest of the band agreed when we decided to replace him. Then Jeremy came in, and that made five: Olivia Ortiz on vocals, Nate Mercado and I on guitar, Brian Harris on bass, and Jeremy Carpenter on drums.

The name came out of a contest. We each threw in ten names, voted, and the best one won. If I remember right, Chocolate 'Possum came in a close second. The winner came from an old mic stand: when its rivet wore out, we held it together with a bent eightpenny nail.

Ocala was home, and O'Malley's Alley was our main stage. We played there again and again, including a 2004 show for Rock 104's Locals Only series for Gainesville and Ocala bands. Around town we also played The Capitol and the K&K.

Everywhere else, we built a following one show at a time, playing nothing but our own songs. If there was a stage in Central or North Florida, we played it: The Social in Orlando, The Masquerade in Tampa's Ybor City, EDC's in Gainesville, and plenty more.

In 2004 we put our songs on a CD and called it Nailed. We copyrighted it that May, with all five of our names on it.

We recorded it with Rust Productions and paid everything we could, but the producer wasn't the right fit for a band like us, and I was never happy with the results. A lot of the tracks on the album are scratch tracks, the rough takes we laid down just to play along to.

After the album, we went looking for a way to make something better, and that led us to Bruce Swedien, the engineer behind Michael Jackson's Thriller, and we started working with him.

While we were working with Bruce, we picked up a manager who turned out to be a shark, looking to make a quick buck off a group of talented kids. I was older than the rest of the band and had dealt with people like him before. When I raised my concerns, they didn't land well. He knew the game, and in the end he convinced the rest of the band to push me out. I never got to see where those sessions with Bruce went.

After they pushed me out, the band brought in another guitarist for a few months. Not long after that, I heard from everyone. I wasn't there for it, but from what they told me, Olivia wouldn't sign something, or go along with something, and that was that. Eightpenny was nailed shut.

For about ten years after that, Olivia and I didn't talk. Eventually we both realized how much we missed playing together, put our differences behind us, and started Left On Broadway, playing a completely different style of music. We still play together today.

The others kept making music too. Nate later went out on his own as a local solo artist, and Jeremy went on to play with other groups and became one of the major DJs at CityWalk Orlando as PopRoXxX.

They say only a tiny fraction of bands ever make it. We weren't one of them, at least not the way we pictured it back then.

The struggle was real. We put every dollar we had into that record, and we played every stage that would have us. Even so, I can honestly say those were some of the best days of my life.

Twenty years later, I put on some of our songs and think, damn, these are good. But back then the industry ran on who you knew and a lot of luck, and ours had run out. The internet was only getting started, and nobody carried it around in their pocket the way we all do now. Sometimes I wish we'd had the kind of self-promotion every band has today.

The band didn't last. The songs did.

The album we recorded back then never sounded quite like we did live. Some of our songs never made it onto a record at all; they only survive on rehearsal tapes.

We're older now. Life took most of us somewhere different, and there won't be one last show with all five of us.

So I rebuilt the songs. Using AI tools, guided by our original recordings, rehearsal tapes, lyrics and arrangements, I've worked them toward what we always heard in our heads. They're our songs and our words, finally sounding the way we meant them to. This is how Eightpenny gets to live on.

The original album is still here, rough edges and all.

— Mike