AASU student ‘engaged with the city’

In a midtown home piled high with memories, Charles Hodge restrung and cleaned a decades-old Gibson Marauder guitar on loan from his father. A short time later, he packed his upright bass into the bed of a pickup truck, drove away from the house that once belonged to his grandmother, and headed to a bar in Pooler to play outlaw country music.

For Hodge, this was a routine Friday night.

"I don't have a job. I just play with my bands and it's enough to pay my expenses," Hodge said. "I gig three times a week."

That's not to say he's not a busy guy. Now in his fourth semester at AASU, Hodge spends his weeks balancing his academic regiment with his commitments to three bands.

"Pretty much every night of the week I have band practice or a show," he said.

A Savannah native, most of Hodge's life has revolved around music. After being taught how to play bass guitar by his dad, he received classical training in bass and trombone at the Savannah Arts Academy, where he played with the Skylight Jazz Band. In his senior year of high school, he started working at Benedetto Guitars, where he got hands-on experience making jazz guitars.

While at Benedetto, Hodge met musicians Damon Mailand and Matt Eady, with whom he plays in Damon and the Shitkickers, an outlaw-country cover band.

"I never thought I'd be in a country band, but I am and it's great," Hodge said.

With Damon and the Shitkickers, Hodge has become accustomed to playing lengthy sets at local bars.

"We probably play between 90 and 100 songs in four hours because country songs are very long, especially the old ones," he said. "We have a large repertoire, but you have to if you play bars."

Hodge, along with fellow AASU student Jason Ussery, is also a member of the Mike Lowry Band. On stage with Lowry, Hodge ditches the upright bass and dons his dad's old 1978 Fender jazz bass, churning out thunderous roots rock.

The music doesn't stop with country and power rock. Last summer, critically lauded indie-rocker Dare Dukes approached Hodge at a show and asked him to join his backup band, the Blackstock Collection. When his academic schedule permitted, Hodge joined Duke on tour dates in support of the album "Prettiest Transmitter of All," playing in musical hotbeds Athens, Ga., and Chapel Hill, N.C.

Those are just Hodge's primary musical endeavors, however. He has also performed with AASU student Brandon Nelson McCoy, playing upright bass during some of the singer-songwriter's live sets.

"Playing with Charles is a pleasure," McCoy said. "He's a great bass player with a supreme understanding of his instrument."

Hodge and McCoy met by happenstance one day when McCoy was walking to work.

"Charles came up to me and started talking about the stickers on my truck," McCoy said. "In the course of our conversation we decided to get together and play. Since then, we've played a few shows together and have had a great time doing it."

After a two-year stint playing Saturday nights at the Jinx with the Shitkickers, as well as his performances with Dare Dukes and Mike Lowry, Hodge has become a familiar face on the local music radar.

"He's engaged with the city," said Bill Dawers, a Savannah Morning News columnist who frequents the music scene. "I've heard Charles play in four bands, all with different sounds. It's a notable diversity of style that he's very adept at."

Back home, Hodge has turned his grandmother's old house into a haven for musical creativity. One room serves as a music studio, its wooden walls lined with instruments, including the electric bass that Hodge spent the past six months building with the help of band mate Mailand. Recently, along with roommate Daniel Butler and Lane Gardner, both fellow Savannah Arts Academy graduates, Hodge has begun to explore another music genre: Hip-hop.

"We've been running cables through the house to find good spots for miking everything and we're about to start experimenting with a bunch of unique sounds," Hodge said. So far, the musicians have been concocting tracks by meshing programmed drum beats with live instrumentals.

"We might start looking for a rapper or lyricist to be available for recording or performing live, if we get that far," Hodge said. "Right now, it's just a productive way to spend our evenings."

On Saturday, Jan. 30, Damon and the Shitkickers will open for cult-country icon Unknown Hinson at the Jinx on 127 W. Congress St. in downtown Savannah.

Hodge will also play bass in the Jason Robert Brown musical "Songs for a New World," running Feb. 12 through Feb. 14 at the Savannah College of Art and Design's Mondanaro Theater in Crites Hall on 217 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Music mentioned in the article can be heard online:

Damon and the Shitkickers

http://www.myspace.com/damonandtheshitkickers

Mike Lowry Band

http://www.myspace.com/mikelowryband

Dare Dukes and the Blackstock Collection

http://www.daredukes.com/

Brandon Nelson McCoy

http://www.myspace.com/brandonnelsonmccoy