He steps up to the microphone – eyes shut, sweat streaming down his face and guitar — as the raspy sound of his voice cuts through the twangy, bluegrass sound of his band.
His thick, brownish-red beard almost touches the microphone as he sings and bangs out chords on his worn acoustic guitar, the pickguard long gone.
He may not look like it, but even now, as he entertains screams of “Chuck yeah!” from the audience between sets while casting a serene look on the crowd — the kind you give your family after you’ve just finished Thanksgiving dinner – Chuck Ragan is fighting for balance. That’s because he’s headed out on the road again, a road that offered him thousands of screaming fans when he started as the frontman for punk band Hot Water Music. It was also a road that he hated coming back from – back to the reality of eviction notices tacked to the doors of empty houses that he used to call home.
Back to hauling his belongings from trash cans in the front yards of those houses. Back to donating blood to make rent payments.
That was the life Ragan had called normal until 2006, when the band went on an indefinite hiatus to deal with the exhaustion, relationships and personal lives of its members after a run of touring between 1997 and 2005.
“You can only run a machine for so long before it needs maintenance,” he said.
Since then, aside from some touring and writing music independently, Ragan said he has been focusing on life in Gainesville.
He said he’s been spending time with his wife, fishing with friends on Orange Lake and around Shell Mound near Cedar Key and bringing back the fish to throw on the grill and sit in his lawn chair.
“You have to find a balance between doing what you love, making a living and running yourself into the dirt,” he said. Since the band reunited and revamped itself in 2008, Ragan said he’s gotten better about that balance between music and the rest of his life. He said he realized that last week when he was sitting on his porch in Gainesville, writing songs with the rest of the band, just like before his rigorous and costly tour schedule.
But, he said, some things still haven’t changed.
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“I’ve been sitting in a van for 16 years,” he said from the driver’s seat of the band’s Ford Econoline, “and it still looks the same.” He looked around and laughed. “The venues still smell the same, too.”
On Saturday, his second consecutive night performing at the Atlantic before his 5,000-mile round trip tour to California, he said it felt good to be surrounded by friends and family – his hometown fans.
One of his band mates, Jon Gaunt, who plays fiddle, said he too was fighting for the same balance as Ragan. But, he said, life between tours was worth the time he spent on stage.
“It’s real easy when you’re lucky enough to do what you love,” he said. “I don’t care if I have to wash dishes to be on stage with [Ragan].”
