FMBGN-RESIDENT-Stephen Clark-Island Songs And A Fresh Start

A move to paradise can start with something as small as a song and something as undeniable as two dolphins surfacing beside your boat. We’re hanging out with Fort Myers Beach neighbor and singer-songwriter Stephen Clark, a retired TV journalist who trades gray Midwest winters for Gulf sunshine, canals, and a music scene rebuilt one gig at a time.

We talk about the moment Florida became real, how he narrowed his home search to three nonnegotiables, and why that kind of clarity matters when life feels heavy. Stephen also shares how growing up in an Air Force family taught him to land in a new town and quickly find his place, a skill that shows up everywhere from songwriting to building community after the hurricane.

Then we get into the craft and the comedy: why he’d rather play three chords to a hundred people, why originals are rare in tourist bars, and how he writes beach lifestyle songs that feel like they were pulled straight from your vacation brain. You’ll hear the stories behind fan favorites like “Drinking Our Kids Inheritance,” “My Damn Dog Won’t Die,” and the Buffett-inspired mindset of noticing those perfect little moments and turning them into music.

If you enjoy local Fort Myers Beach stories, island music, singer-songwriter interviews, and real talk about starting over, hit subscribe, share this with a friend who needs sunshine, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Stephen Clark
Singer/Songwriter
stephen@stephenclark.tv
stephenclark.tv
@StephenClarkOnTheRoad

Ft Myers Beach-Good Neighbor
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Transcript

Welcome And The Rockstar House

Intro/Close 0:00

Welcome to The Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor Podcast — No Shade, Just Sunshine, Drama Free, Positive Vibes Only!!! With each episode We Bring You Closer to The Neighbors, Local Legends, and Beachside Businesses that make Fort Myers Beach The Slice of Paradise We All Love. We want to send out some Island Love to State Insurance U S A, Snug Harbor, Nervous Nellies..and The Alex King Group. They are the Good Neighbors and Businesses that allow us to share the soul of our community with every listener, Pull up a Beach Chair, Grab a Drink, and Let’s Meet The People Who Make This Island Feel Like Home. Here’s Your Host Cabo Jim Schaller

"Cabo" Jim 0:32

Welcome, Fort Myers Beach, good neighbors, to another episode. Today we have singer songwriter Stephen Clark.

Stephen Clark 0:38

And we're actually physically neighbors. Turns out we live in the same neighborhood. Literally like a block away. It's amazing. I said there we go. And it's crazy. Since we're neighbors, let's be friends. Interesting story about neighbors, though.

"Cabo" Jim 0:48

You know that house over there?

Stephen Clark 0:50

That was the uh Rockstar House. Brian Howe, right? Yeah, Brian Howe. Uh because I know the guy who lives there now that uh that bought it. And uh it was a it was a vacation rental before he bought it, and so he went in there and had to do a lot of cleanup and really uh Brian Howe left his mark. Apparently, he had a lot of birds and dogs. Oh, really? Oh he had like exotic birds and dogs. So the house was uh yeah. So but but uh I guess Brian's uh widow still lives on the island here someplace nearby. Oh, really? I didn't know that. So she'll stop by and she'll become friends with them and stuff like that. So he was with what was his uh he was with Bad Company, yeah, yeah, right now.

"Cabo" Jim 1:25

So yeah, I remember I moved here in the 90s originally, so I remember Bad Company was big around the area and I was playing.

From Military Kid To Florida

Stephen Clark 1:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, that's uh that's this neighborhood right here. That's and we love it, that's why we're at the beach. So originally from the Mitten, right? Well, that's where I moved from here was from uh from Michigan. I moved to Michigan in 2002 uh for for work, and then uh before that I'd lived all over the country. My dad was Air Force. Okay, so I was a military brat. I grew up in you know, going to five or six different schools, living in eight or nine different cities. Yeah. Then when I got out of uh school, actually they moved on and I stayed and finished college in Colorado. Then I started moving in my career as a journalist. So I I moved to another five or six states. So you got to see a lot. I gotta see, I've seen a lot of the world here, and I've lived in a lot of I've lived literally in every corner of the United States and the middle. I mean, dead middle. I lived in Wichita, Kansas, and you can't get any more middle than that. That's right, right in the middle. Yeah. Wow. But what brought you in Florida? Uh it's probably this the sunshine. Right? I I tell a story when I'm singing. Um, I I wrote a song called uh Long Time No C. Uh, and the No C is S-E-A. And it's just about being in Detroit, and it's cold and wet and messy, which is it was a true story. This was sometime around COVID. And gloomy, gloomy, cold, wet, miserable. And I just had this dream of coming someplace with sunshine and palm trees and the ocean and a boat, and this turned out to be that place. Yep. And so after I literally after I wrote the song, I found myself kind of in a in a semi-depression. And my my wife was busy with the business and COVID was raging, and it was hard to get anything done. And she said, Well, why don't you just go down? We had some friends in Bonita Springs. Just go down. They've been keeping an invitation. Why don't you go down there and spend uh like a couple days a week with them? Yep. Just to get your head straight. And so I did. And I came down here and I looked for a house and I found this one that we're sitting in right now. I called her up literally that day and I said, Honey, this is gonna move fast. You got to get here. Can you get on a plane tomorrow morning? Sunday morning. She got on a plane, got here. We picked her up in the airport, actually, put her on a boat in Benita, my friend's boat. We drove her, you know, in the canal on the boat, and two dolphins started doing this as we came in the canal. She looked at me and says, This isn't even fair. Sold, huh? Sold. That was it. So I'm thinking. Yeah, we sold everything in Michigan and uh and moved here. And that I uh haven't regretted it. And we had some tough times, obviously, with the hurricane, and uh we've been slogging through that like everybody else, but uh gotta tell you, still very much.

"Cabo" Jim 4:05

I mean, you're and we're a block away from the beach, so yeah.

The Three Nonnegotiables For Home

Stephen Clark 4:08

Yeah, and I used to be able to see it. You can't see this now. There's a house being built right there. There was one just finished the White House over there, and but with those houses were gone, I could have a really nice clear view of the Gulf. I say though I I travel the island quite a bit during the day, and the nice thing is, you know, the one perk of the herd was driving up and down in Sarah Boulevard and being able to see the water. You can see it all, yeah. And now people are complaining because they're gonna build stuff back. And they're well, we don't want to block the view. And I said, Well, unfortunately, it was blocked before, it's gonna be blocked again. So exactly. Got national access to the canal here as well. And that was uh when I came looking for a house, we had three things. We needed three absolute the list was only three long. And that and I told the realtor that I ended up calling, I said, three things, don't even show me a house, but then have all of these three things. One, we needed an elevator because we have a granddaughter in a wheelchair, yeah. So we needed to be able to get her into the house and and around the house. It has nothing to do with the fact I'm getting old and so yeah, I may need an elevator, but for her, we needed an elevator. Yeah, number two, my wife loves the beach, so we had to be within walking/slash bicycling routes to the beach. We didn't want to have to get in the car and try to find parking and all that kind of stuff. So uh, and number three is I had to be able to walk out my door and get on my boat. And that was that was that I said I needed that. I grew up watching Flipper. Remember Flipper? Yeah, I remember that. I was fell in love with this idea of walking out your back door and getting in a boat and having a dolphin as a pet. See? I don't have the dolphin pet yet, but I'm working on it. I think that was filmed down here in Florida, wasn't it? There's someplace, I think it was in the keys someplace in the keys or probably on the Miami side. Exactly. But yeah. So that was it. This house had all three, so here we are.

Music School Then A Journalism Career

"Cabo" Jim 5:43

There you go, the trifecta. Yep. So let's back up your story a little bit. You aren't always just a singer-songwriter, right?

Joining The Beach Bar Music Scene

Stephen Clark 5:50

No, I I have I well let's see. Um, I've always been a musician. So I actually went to college as a music major, but I played uh woodwinds, I played saxophone in in jazz bands, I played clarinet in classical bands. Where'd you go to school? Uh Northern Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, which is a great music school. I could not have gotten into school with my grades from high school. I was not a great high school student. I could not have gotten into school without the fact that I was a good musician. So they got me into music school and with uh one of those provisos that I needed to keep my grades up. Somehow I went from being one of the worst high school students to a 4-0 college student. Because you were doing what you love. Well, I had relevance. I think I finally found some relevance and said, Oh, I gotta have good grades in order to keep doing this. Okay, I could do that. So I I did that for a while, and then uh I I kind of discovered journalism and radio and television kind of by accident while I was in college and shifted over to doing that and just fell in love with it. Just fell in love with that. Uh and I've always considered music and journalism very closely related because as a songwriter, uh, I actually I joke and you know, they're writing a song and writing a news story are identical except for with the song, it has to be true. Good point. There you go. So, anyway, so I've been writing, I've been writing songs for years and years and years and years, and then I I did that all through my journalism career in television. I would go to Nashville and I would hang out and I'd write songs, and then we finally bought a place in Nashville, so we have a place in Nashville. Okay, so that's still very much the center of my universe, is the Nashville songwriting scene. But I had never ever, ever played a bar, played a like a cover band gig bar scene until I moved here. Really? So I've never done one. My first one was in uh Bonita Springs at the island house. And uh, oh, there's a manatee on our uh canal right there. Okay. Um, I've been waiting for three days. I had some guests here that I was gonna show manate. So they know when they come out. So anyway, that was uh so the whole bar scene cover thing that I'm I'm doing now here on the beach, I'd never done until right before the hurricane. Really? And then right after the hurricane, um I kind of really got involved in the local uh island music scene here um by just trying to help get it going again. And so once that happened, then suddenly there was plenty of music and plenty of jobs for me and others, and uh I overdid it uh two or three years ago. I started playing, I just said, well, if I can play once, I can play eight times a week, why not? Yeah. And out there, oh no, I burned myself up. But I dialed it back last year a little, and then I even dialed it back a little bit this more year and uh this this year. But um, yeah, I'd never done a whole bar scene. And it to me, it's it's it's it's it's a wonderful experience to be able to, you know, just oh yeah, entertain a crowd. And I guess I hearken back to my days as a television news anchor where it's exactly the same except for now I can see everybody. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not one way, but yeah, exactly. They got not naked people, right? That was the old joke that says that's you know when you're public speaking, just imagine everybody in the audience are not wearing clothes. Right. And I think maybe I did that in television a few times. Interesting.

Speaker 3 8:56

But I get the pleasure of I work at the Roxy down at uh Times Square there, so I get the pleasure of hearing you at Lowell.

Stephen Clark 9:02

Well, I and I I feel sorry for people who have to listen to me all the time because if you're just here on vacation and you see me once or twice, yeah, you know, everything I do is fresh, new, and amazing. When you're here at the 18th time, I'm starting to think to for for people like you who have to listen to me over and over and over again and hear the same stories over and over again. I feel sorry for that.

"Cabo" Jim 9:22

So I think I'm getting there where I could probably tell somebody who's that's what I'm saying.

Stephen Clark 9:27

And I feel bad about that. And I and I put them on Facebook. I do a lot of my shows on Facebook, and I almost feel bad for them because I'm going, okay, you guys, I'm I know you've heard this story before, right? But the people sitting here have not. Exactly. Because they're new, they're they're tourists, they come to town, they look me up, and they come to, you know, or they just run across me at the bar or whatever. But um, but yeah, I mean, I love I love the setting at Laola we're talking about on the beach now. Yep. Uh one of the bars that went away in the hurricane, and uh Tom has done a phenomenal job rebuilding something temporary while he waits for the whole process to move in a snail glacial pace to the point where you're gonna get about don't even get me started on that. It's uh it's been so frustrating. Yeah, but he's got a great place going on. Oh, yeah. I love playing it because you're right there on the beach. There's there it is, the golf was right there to watch. And you as you hear what I do, I I play as much to the people who are not sitting in the park.

"Cabo" Jim 10:23

Trying to draw them in.

Stephen Clark 10:24

Just trying to get entertainment saying, you know, come on in, you know, come on in, have a seat. You know, we'll we'll have a good time. That's what it's all about. I worked with a band in Orlando for for uh a number of years, and uh same thing.

"Cabo" Jim 10:35

I would go in and hear the same thing over and over again. If I have to hear that song in the radio one more time, I'm done with it kind of scenario. But then you gotta remember the crowd, the crowd is new, you know, they want to hear those songs, they don't hear it every day.

How Constant Moving Shapes You

Stephen Clark 10:48

I used to I used to play one gig in the in Michigan, it's all originals because that's all I used to do is I'd play originals. I had a little band and we got together and I'd do a lot of benefits. Uh, but this one was actually it's a benefit uh uh you know, half marathon or something like that. Yep. And I and the one of the guys in the band was connected with and so I said, Yeah, we'll do that. So weirdest gig ever because it's a marathon, you know, and they're running by you. So they'd set us up at this one spot and there'd be nobody there, like zero people. And we just kind of sit around just waiting, waiting, waiting, wait, and all of a sudden you see the first runner come over the hill, start coming down the hill. So you guys ready? Yeah, okay, okay. We'll start playing. Then we'll start playing, and the runner comes by and it's like run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, and then they're all gone. We're done. Our game, that's it. All right, but we could sit there and play the same song 10 times if we wanted to, because nobody part of the line heard it. Right? So, you know, you sit there, so we're just do one song today, we're just gonna do it over and over again. I love it. I love it.

"Cabo" Jim 11:46

So we've all had well, we had a big storm here, but we've all been through challenges through our lifetime, right? Um, is there something that you can look back at and that maybe's helped define who you are today, or you can look back and you know what?

Stephen Clark 11:59

I made it through that. I don't um I don't know if it was like one issue that was like negative so much as just growing up in an Air Force family. Yeah, because in those days, especially, they moved Air Force families a lot more frequently than they do now. So back in those days, every two years you packed up your life and put it in a cardboard box, threw it in the back of a trailer, and you moved to a whole new town, whole new group of people, you know, a whole new set of whatever issues, and then you did it again two years later. Yeah, you know, and so for me, I I I didn't my sisters never really liked it. They they saw it as a negative, I saw it as a positive. To me, it was like, wow, I get to go to a new place, yeah, see new things, meet new people. For me, that was an exciting thing. But I think it probably as much as anything else in my life shaped me. Oh, yeah, the fact that I just I I I feel like no matter where I go, I can figure out how to fit in.

"Cabo" Jim 12:55

And that's the important part. Because I mean there's so many people that grow up, live, and stay in this little circle, and they don't know anything outside of it.

Stephen Clark 13:03

And I found out, I mean, one thing I love Michigan. We we spent um 20 years in Michigan. We raised our kids in Michigan. It's a great state, great, phenomenally nice, beautiful people. But the thing I learned about it is people in Michigan, by and large, never leave Michigan except to come to here. Yeah, they will come here, but then the thing they will do is they will come here every year, same week, stay at the same place, hang with the same group of people, and then they go back to Michigan, hang with the same group of people in the same place. So they have a very uh kind of insular, and I I think there's a beauty to that, there's a comfort to that. My sisters would have loved that. Uh, I know because I have a daughter that's kind of like that. She feels very comfortable in that setting. Yeah, I have another daughter who lives in Denmark who clearly does not. She was much more likely to want to travel the world and see things. And that's great too, right? Which is great, yeah. So um, but for me, it would it shaped me, I think, in that respect that it allowed me to go to a new place, quickly find how to fit in, yeah, find what it is that that I liked about that place, you know, grab onto that and and make it home.

"Cabo" Jim 14:10

And it's that easy.

Stephen Clark 14:11

My d I grew up, my dad was in radio, so we bounced around a lot.

"Cabo" Jim 14:14

We went to different stations in different cities all the time. Yeah, yeah. And you know, I live that life too. I was lucky enough to have a twin brother. Oh, yeah. So I had a best friend kind of going there, but every every place we went to, every place we moved, I'm like, oh, those are the twins, those are the friends. It's like, you know. So, but again, making new friends, learning new areas, you know, uh, it's it's not easy, but it I think it's shaped, like you said, it shaped me for the future.

Stephen Clark 14:39

I think that you can go one of two ways. You can either you can either grab onto it and adopt it and and enroll with it, or you can fight it and resent it, and um, and it may shape you in a whole nother way. It may shape you in a way that you know, it's like both of my sisters. As soon as they left the family to go out on their own, they went to one place and they've never left. Either one of them. Wow. So 50 years, 60 years from the day that they stopped moving with the family, yeah. They stopped moving. You're with me, I just kept right on moving. Right, exactly. I done the same, I did the same thing. I see, I got out of college and I was like, you know what? Wisconsin, Illinois is not for me anymore. Let's go someplace, let's say someplace like here. Yes, palm trees, right? We've got dolphins. I got I got manatees in my my canal.

Speaker 3 15:23

You get to see that every day. It's a wonderful place.

Stephen Clark 15:26

I tell people I said, you know, in Michigan, I had raccoons and squirrels in my backyard, and I got dolphins and manatees.

Writing Originals For Beach Life

"Cabo" Jim 15:31

A little different, right? And sunshine here, it's not gray and gloomy. Exactly. We love that. So, what is your vision for the future for yourself? I mean, you're doing some singing, you've got some great original music. I get to hear a lot of.

Stephen Clark 15:45

Okay, well, well, so so here's the deal. Here's here's the deal. Um, I mean, at my age, I don't have to work. I'm retired from television. I I you know I've got a bank account, and it's I'm comfortable. As I say, I'm I'm comfortable, I'm fine. I don't have to play games. I do because I love it. I love playing and I love creating music. And and when you create music, it's just by nature you need to share it with somebody. So playing the bars gives me a really good opportunity to do that. Now, having said that, I am not a huge fan of playing cover songs because I think, why should I go up and screw up a really good song? Right, which is what I do every day. I go out and I screw up really good songs. But what I do do, I think probably more, and maybe you can tell me, because I I you probably heard a lot more artists than I do. There's probably nobody on this island who plays more originals than I do. No, I I agree. I'm rare you'll find any originals on the island. And there's a reason for that. A lot of a lot of very talented songwriters write original songs, but they're not really tailored to people on vacation from Wisconsin. Yep. Uh, my songs, every one of them, it's all about the lifestyle of what we're living down here. 100%. I love it. Um I'm getting used to those songs now. I'm like, why don't we hear that on radio? Exactly. I wish there that would be that would be my beautiful future, is if I could somehow get some of those songs on radio. Trust me, there's uh there's the the music industry is not looking for a guy my age to be their next big thing.

Speaker 3 17:07

They're good songs. I mean, they're when you're down here on the beach uh having a good time, they're perfect for the atmosphere.

Stephen Clark 17:13

It's exactly, I mean, I do a song called uh Drinking Our Kids Inheritance, it's one of my most popular songs. It's exactly what it sounds like. Here we are drinking our kids inherited, exactly. Uh I mean, in larger picture, spending it, but living life on our terms and and what we've earned, we are experiencing and enjoying. And our kids, yeah, we love our kids. We want to make sure their kids are taken care of, but we also want to make sure we're taken care of. My dad passed, and and he was so big on all we've got to save money for the family. I said, Dad, just go out and enjoy it. You work really hard, right? Go enjoy it. So that's kind of what that song's about. Uh, I do another song, which is my most controversially loved song. It's called My Damn Dog Won't Die. And the song is, I mean, people think it's a horrible thing. You have to explain it all the time, right? Well, you know what it is, it's you know, no, you're not hoping your dog dies, but you're saying you have a dog that's been with you for 18 or 19 years, you never expected him to live that long. Yep, and now you can't travel because you have the dog, and an older dog needs more attention. Yep. You know, so you can't, you know, and I run across so many people who say, Oh, yeah, my husband could come out on this trip here because our dog. And I said, Oh, the damn dog won't die. It's a horrible thing. But everybody has had that thought, and so in a guilty kind of way, you see people going, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 18:27

Exactly.

Stephen Clark 18:28

So, anyway, those are the kinds of songs I I do, and then also just songs about uh, you know, how buffet is that. Yeah, I do a song called How Buffet Is That, just those cool things you do in a place, especially like this. I drive to work in my boat. How buffet is that? I love it. So that's kind of I invite people to say, think of those moments in your life, you do something that can only be described as how buffet is that. I mean, here's the guy that wrote a song about a freaking margarita, and he's a billionaire. He created the lifestyle, he created on the lifestyle one song about a margarita. And that's what my purpose in songwriting is to say, how do I how do I tap into that, yep, that mindset, that that uh, you know, what where where where we all here are, how do I tap into that and find that little nugget that everybody goes, oh yeah, that's that's it.

"Cabo" Jim 19:15

See, I think I think I've embraced some of that too, because my my three favorite artists, Sammy Hagar, Jimmy Buffett, and Kenny Chesney. There you are.

Speaker 3 19:23

What are they all talking about? Exactly.

Stephen Clark 19:27

That's why these are the guys I play when I do cover songs also. I try, I don't do you know, Bryan Adams. I I do I do Kenny Chesney, I do Zach Brown, I do Eagles. I mean the Eagles were were were the closest thing to Buffett back in those days. Any yacht rock? Uh Yacht rock. I I was talking to I had a I had a friend in town from Nashville uh who just left. Uh phenomenally great piano player. He's a producer, owns uh one of the last original recording studios in Nashville. And he was here with me, and and he says, Yeah, you need to do more yacht rock. And I and I I just laughed. I said, The problem with yacht rock, and people don't understand this, it's actually closer to jazz music than it is to rock or island. Yeah, it's very complicated chords. It's and I and I'm not that good of a guitar player, you know. So I'm sitting there going, No, I'd rather just I'd rather I'd rather play three chords to a hundred people than a hundred chords for three people. Yeah, there you go. Yep. Why make it more difficult? Listen, I'm trying to take it easy out here.

Boat Days And Meeting Strangers

"Cabo" Jim 20:27

I love it. So, how often you get out on the boat now?

Stephen Clark 20:30

Uh, I try to get out a lot. So we had a great boat day yesterday. And um, let's see, I have these friends from Nashville in town. So we got on the boat about 11 in the morning, went over to New Pass, and people who know the area, that's what they call Dog Beach is on the one side. New pass is beautiful area. Oh, the sand and the and the water beautiful. So we just went and just kind of hung out. Always meet people. So I met a whole boatload of ladies, and I asked them where their husbands were buried, and they said, sand traps on the golf course. Uh, I met a guy who was walking down the beach with a with a tiger's hat just like mine on, and we ended up talking about Michigan. It turns out he owns an AC business in Michigan that I knew. Uh, and it's just the meeting the people that is so awesome. So we did that, and then we got on the boat, and it was beautiful down the Gulf. So we took the Gulf up and around the tip and came in and uh and docked at uh Snug Harbor. Yeah, nice place. Uh wonderful lunch. And Rizzo is the head chef. I don't know. Well I know he does a phenomenal job with the fish. Man, there's a he's a genius with seafood. And I happened to run into him as I was going to the bathroom and I said, Hey Rizzo. And he goes, What? I said, What do you recommend today? And he says, I just got red snapper off a boat this morning. And I went and had the best ever fish sandwich of any description ever. It was a black and red fish, uh, fresh off the boat. It was the best fish sandwich that I've ever had. And that's the thing they do down there.

"Cabo" Jim 21:50

They got that fresh fish in, and he does a phenomenal job and picks up. I always say, Go in and ask for what just came up the boat. You say what's off the boat.

Stephen Clark 21:57

That was Rich Snapper yesterday. It was a great choice. Groupers another great thing down here, obviously, is when you do the grouper stuff.

"Cabo" Jim 22:02

So it's a barracuda not so long.

Stephen Clark 22:04

Oh yeah. That's good. Yeah, and that's and that's the thing. If you ask the chef what's new, and they'll they'll tell you, and it'll be awesome. But uh so we did that, and then we uh we kind of came back the the back wing, came in kind of slow and stopped and watched some uh dolphins cavort, you know. And uh that's what they do. They do, they just cavort. And we're just watching cavorting dolphins for a while, and then we pulled in here and uh they had to uh make it to the airport, and I I'm I'm right here, I got my pool and I'm ready to you know finish my day. Enjoy the Saturday, right? Yeah, so well, it is your day off, so I don't want to take up too much of your time. I have no problem with that's because it's my day off. I don't have to work. This is good. There you go, right?

Where To Find Stephen Online

"Cabo" Jim 22:39

Talk nice and relaxing. I love it, I appreciate it. But how would the listeners go about finding you if they wanted to come and see you live or maybe pick up one of your CDs?

Stephen Clark 22:49

I do have CDs, although I gotta tell you that uh I and now when I sell my CDs, I don't sell them for the music, I sell them for the coasters. Oh, these CDs make great coasters because people don't have CD players anymore.

Speaker 3 23:00

Well, don't they make like a little uh you're hanging from the mirror in your car, too? Yeah, exactly.

Stephen Clark 23:04

It's a little reflective. I said it makes a great Christmas ornaments, too. They're very shiny. But uh you can't sell CDs anymore. I and I know I've I've produced two CDs in my life. The first one I sold out within six months. Second one, about five years later, I still have half of them. You can't sell them, yeah. Because people say, Oh, I'd like to buy one, but I don't have one of those machines anymore. It'll make CD player, everything's on a little stick side. And the problem with my demographic, which is uh not uh teenage girls, yeah. My demographic is uh is uh uh of women, specifically females my age, they are not really well versed in the uh the intricacies of downloading music from the internet and putting it on their phones and Bluetoothing it to their speakers. This is not a strength of of people my age, much less the the women. No offense, no offense. It's just I mean, it's just the way it is. We grew up in a different world where we took a physical thing, and you hit on and you heard it. Nowadays, it involves all this stuff you know you gotta do. Um, so if you you I can sell you a CD if you want, I got some CDs left, I can sell it to you. Uh it's just easier to find me on all those, you know, Apple, um, you know, Amazon, streaming, uh, Spotify, all those places. Yep. Uh Stephen Clark with a PH. Stephen Clark got a YouTube channel. I do have a YouTube channel, and don't ask me what the address is Stephen Clark. Uh, and there are a number of us out there that are probably enough musicians. Really? But I'm the one that looks like this. And then uh Facebook is where I mainly live. Because that again is where the demographic that I am and that follows me, I've got a very, very large demographic of followers on Facebook. And that's Stephen Clark again with the pH. Stephen Clark, singer slash songwriter. Yep. There are many imitators out there, and they will original. There'll be people all the time trying to I I get people trying to copy me and they put my pictures on the page. And the key is when you look at how many followers they have, if they've got two followers, it's not me. Yeah, exactly. If it's got 80,000 followers and the blue check mark, that's probably you. But I will post on that page everywhere. Like I just posted today where I am this week. I've got a busy week this week, and uh it'll always post where I'm gonna be. And then if I have uh new songs, I'll usually put snippets on, you know, just to try them out and stuff like that. So uh that's kind of where I live. It was on Facebook.

"Cabo" Jim 25:23

Other than living right here, other than here. That's that's where we love to live, and that's why we're here. Hey, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. You also thank you for being really a good neighbor because you are a neighbor. I can see I think I can see your house from over here.

Stephen Clark 25:35

But it's funny because I've seen you forever over in Times Square there next to Laola, and uh I didn't know much about you. Oh, yeah, right. You didn't know much about me, so now we know we're we're neighbors, we're friends, and so let's hang out. Absolutely. I got a boat. There we go. Here we go. We're going on the boat. Have a good day. Hey, you too.

Intro/Close 25:50

Thanks for tuning in to the Fort Myers Beach Good Neighbor podcast. No shade, just sunshine, drama-free, positive vibes only. If you love what you've heard, share it with a friend and keep the good vibes going. Until next time, remember to Cabo until ya Wabo and keep being a good neighbor. Also, submit your favorite neighbors, Legends Hero Sports. Go FMBGood Neighbor.com. That's FMBGood Neighbor.com. Or nine four seven four one zero