SAVANNAH’S MUSIC SCENE suffered two enormous blows over the weekend.
Oisin Daly, beloved bassist/guitarist/vocalist for Xuluprophet, DJ and soundman, and a vital and influential member of the local community in ways that went well beyond music, passed away suddenly, at a much-too-young age.
Tanner Hamilton, drummer/guitarist for multiple bands and an absolute lynchpin holding together the local heavy/hardcore scene, suffered a severe injury to his hand which will no doubt have a serious effect on the many key musical projects he is involved with.
Savannah’s music scene, while close-knit, isn’t a large one. These kinds of personal events not only have ripple effects, but often seismic impacts as well.
I knew Oisin only in passing, so I don’t want to pretend I was closer to him than I was.
But the wave of online eulogies for him on my feed was as voluminous and heartfelt as I’ve ever seen. Oisin obviously had a deep and profound impact on just about everyone who interacted with him.
(Our own Frank Ricci pens his observation here.)
We should all hope to be remembered the same way by others when it’s our turn to go.
I am more familiar with Oisin’s wife Vanessa, who did a little writing for The Savannahian a while back.
According to her own public posting, she was the first to discover her husband had passed. It’s a tragedy I can’t begin to fathom going through.
Judging by the enormous body of grassroots support and love for Oisin, it seems like Vanessa will have a good support network for the rough times to come.
Tanner I know a bit better. We saw each other at a lot of the same shows, and of course I’ve seen him play drums plenty of times, with plenty of bands.
Tanner, according to his own public posting, lost an index finger and part of his thumb in an accident involving a power tool.
He will survive and carry on, no doubt, but he faces much surgery and therapy.
Anytime a musician has a hand or finger injury, it’s serious. Doesn’t matter the instrument. In Tanner’s case, as a drummer and a guitarist, the path to recovery could be doubly complicated.
But I have no doubt he will push through in his usual relentlessly positive and industrious way.
I first met Tanner not at a show, but -- also fittingly -- at Home Depot.
He was trundling through with a large cart of items for a clearly serious project, and I was getting some dumb thing or another.
As we passed each other, Tanner saw that I was wearing a T-shirt from the recent Napalm Death/Melvins show, at District Live this past April.
He stopped and said, “You were at that show? DUDE! Wasn’t it AWESOME?!”
And I was like, “DUDE! Hell yes! It was AMAZING!!”
And then he and I sort of fangirled for a couple minutes right there in the Home Depot aisle, reminiscing about how fucking incredible the whole show was. Like a couple of kids.
But that’s Tanner: Always positive, always excited about great music, always supportive of great music, and making friends everywhere he goes. Even in Home Depot.
The thing I really like about Tanner is how much he resembles the typical Athens, Ga., musician from the time I was playing in bands up there, way back in the ‘80s.
I don’t mean he physically resembles them. And certainly the actual music genres are also totally different.
But Tanner, like any great Athens musician, is also a musical cross-pollinator par excellence. Which, candidly, is something Savannah needs.
In Athens, it is (or was) entirely normal and expected for active musicians to play in multiple bands and side projects. Really, as many as they can handle.
This is one reason why the Athens GA music scene remained so vital and vibrant for so long: The massive amount of cross-pollination and mutual collaboration among bands and musicians ensured that cliques don’t form – or if they do they can't last long.
You simply cannot sustain an exclusive, self-absorbed clique of artists when everyone is collaborating with each other all the time on new stuff. Exchanging ideas, broadening horizons, both musically and socially.
And that to me is something extremely important that Tanner brings to the Savannah music scene – which, like any other type of scene or activity in this town, is notoriously prone to insularity.
Sadly, one of Tanner’s bands, Lash Meat, was just set to go on a big tour. That of course has to be canceled.
However, there is a “Help for Hamilton” benefit show for Tanner this coming Tuesday, June 23, at Coastal Empire Beer, with several local bands. Music starts at 7 p.m. with $5-$20 sliding scale admission. All proceeds go to help Tanner and his wife Kristen.