It turns out, the process for getting booked at Flint Local 432 hasn’t changed much from the time Andy Lenox first performed there as a teenager to now, when he’s a grownup dad just getting back into music seriously again after putting it aside for career and family reasons for several years.
Lenox’s band, The Headless, will perform at the Local along with Adams Rd and Charmin Diggs and the Dry Spells at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 30. It will be a new performance for his current music venture, but he’s been a familiar part of the Flint area music scene for many years, notably with Diver, and that all started at the Local when he was 16.
“I saw a band called Absence, they were a Saginaw band that played in Flint quite a bit,” Lenox said. “I saw the lead singer do a back flip into a crowd of people that were in a pit circling around and dancing and getting along and kind of beating the hell out of each other, but in a fun way. My mind was blown, and I was like, ‘I have to do this.’”
Lenox noticed that the band that opened for Absence was around his age, and he asked Local founder Joel Rash how to get booked to perform.
“Joel said, ‘You’re playing in four weeks,’” Lenox said. “I’m like, “Oh, okay. Well, shit.”
When he got to a point in his new venture where he started thinking about performing, he turned to Flint Local 432 again. The response and philosophy behind giving performers opportunities hadn’t changed.
“It’s a different crew kind of running it, but the same thing happened,” Lenox said. “Maiya (LeGardye), who runs it now, doesn’t know who I am, has no idea who my old band is. I reached out and said we’re looking for a show and she was just like, ‘Yep, you’re playing in a couple weeks.’ It’s like, ‘Okay!’ That open invitation to get on stage and perform that’s always available to the community (at the Local) is just incredible.”
Family Influence
Lenox credits his dad for influencing his early love for music.
“Music has always just been there,” Lenox said. “My dad was the big music lover in my family. He always had a giant stereo and giant speakers, and would listen to music very, very loudly. There was always dancing in the living room with my family.”
He said his dad’s tastes were eclectic and included the Talking Heads, Devo, the B-52s, Frank Zappa, and the Alan Parsons Project, among many others.
“He didn’t listen to the radio hits ever,” Lenox said. “He was weirdly kind of a tastemaker with music. He would pick up stuff from the record store and before anybody caught on to it, he’d say, ‘I think this is gonna be big.’ And I’d be like, ‘There’s no way. This is terrible, Dad’ And I was always wrong. So music was never not a part of my life. I was always taking piano lessons or learning guitar.”
Learning about Flint Local 432 when he was a teenager and learning that, beyond just the venue, there was a huge community that young musicians could tap into was also influential for him. He founded and began performing with Diver around 1999 and toured and recorded music with them throughout the 2000s.
“We did all the things and played with every band that came through the area and saw a lot of the success stories and played with all those guys, Chiodos and Kid Brother Collective and bands like that,” Lenox said. “There’s old bills with Chiodos opening for us and then later on, us opening for them. Watching them succeed and being involved in the community and all their accomplishments, it was great.”
Lenox said that he eventually drifted away from music as he got older and had other adult responsibilities take hold, including starting a family and building his career. That time off was instrumental in reigniting his passion, though.
Solidifying a Love for Music
As Lenox’s kids got older and interested in doing their own thing, he re-found both the time and desire to get back into music.
“I realized there’s this gap in my life where the community aspect of being in a band was really missing for me,” he said. “Going to shows and rooting for other bands and being a fan of those bands and like knowing those people and playing shows with them and kind of helping each other get shows and just being involved more in the Flint community was kind of missing. That really drew me back into starting up another thing. The thing that really solidified my love of music is when I took time off from it.”
He attended a lot of the 40th anniversary shows that Flint Local 432 put on throughout the past year, and was able to reconnect with a lot of friends and people he grew up performing alongside who were featured on those shows.
“Seeing all those familiar faces and talking to all of those guys, it really lit a fire under my ass to get going,” he said.
The Headless also includes other former members of Diver. Lenox is on vocals and guitar, Gary Behling is on lead guitar, Phil Danne plays bass, and Jay Gauthier is on drums. Saturday’s performance will be their first show together, but they’ve been working on new music. A preview of their latest single, Another Cloth, is available on their website and they also have a Facebook page and Instagram page for band information. He describes their vibe as “new grunge” style. The music is heavy and built on layered fuzzed-out guitars and big vocal hooks.
“We’re kind of in the same vein as like Superheaven or Narrow Head or some of the bands like that,” Lenox said. “Really, it’s hard rock. I’m the current singer. I don’t do a whole lot of screaming, so it’s just like normal singing and it’s over-the-top, like anthemic big rock songs. I don’t write little intimate songs. I just go as hard as possible. Every song has gotta have some kind of giant concept to it, you know? I can’t help myself.”
Re-Finding Community
The Headless members plan to continue making music in the coming months, aiming for releasing their next single in July. Lenox also has started playing guitar in a band called War on the Horizon, which performs in Fenton on Sunday.
Getting back into music has been good for him personally, but it has also been fun for him to show that part of his life to his kids as they’ve gotten older.
“My kids now, they have their deep interests and one of them is really into theater,” Lenox said. “My wife came home the other day, and my daughter was practicing her choir solo in her closet and singing really loud, and then I was in my closet playing guitar and singing the songs and practicing for my show at the same time. The closets aren’t really soundproof, so there’s two people just hollering in the house. When your kids are really little, there is a period where you have to give everything to them to make sure that they’re okay. Letting go of that is really hard on one hand because you organize your identity around being a parent. There’s this kind of guilt that comes with snagging back any little bit of time for yourself. But I’m so grateful, my family is so supportive of it and they do see that it brings me all this joy, and they know that it’s important for them to do the same thing. They’re pushing me like, ‘You need to be doing this, you need to be out there, this is part of who you are and what you find fulfilling.’ So it’s a very healthy interplay.”
He’s also been grateful to be back in the mix of Flint’s music scene, see old friends, and also learn about new bands and performers in the area, and to see the role Flint Local 432 continues to play in bringing that scene together.
“There’s so many gatekeepers everywhere else in the industry, and what made the Flint music scene really special is anybody could do it, and everyone was encouraged to, there weren’t gatekeepers,” Lenox said. “It was really easy to just put yourself out there and perform at whatever skill level you were at. I remember being put on shows with these touring bands that were just so incredible and so beyond anything I thought I could do. And I was like, ‘How did I get this show?’ That kind of openness of opportunity really I think sparked a lot of creativity throughout the whole scene.”
Lenox also points out that the connections formed in that scene are important for reasons that go beyond music.
“There was this hole in my life where music belonged,” Lenox said. “The creative output and really pouring yourself into it, but also the friends that I wasn’t spending as much time with anymore. Getting back into it has reconnected me with my friends that I was playing music with, and having obligations to them, that strengthens the bonds of friendship.”
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