In mid-April, music producer Rick Beato, who has a loyal Youtube subscriber following of 3 million strong, included Owen Beverly’s song “For Mia” in his series This Song Should Have Been Massive. So far, the episode’s been viewed nearly 500,000 times and has driven plenty of folks back to live videos of Beverly on SceneSC’s Youtube channel.
Although “For Mia” wasn’t the massive hit that it could have been, Beverly’s newfound attention is opening the door for new fans to discover his other works and giving him a chance to reintroduce himself.
All the attention to Beverly’s past comes when he’s looking to the future, the distant future even, working towards releasing his latest project — “Here Today Gone Today,” an 18-minute film from Indianola due out this year. More than just a film, Beverly describes his new work with visual artist Curtis Wayne Millard as an “abstract and sci-fi futuristic project.” The Beato effect comes at a great time when he can grab fans from different inflection points in his 20-year music career and guide them to his latest work.
The timing is also a blessing after the release of his 2019 album “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” was largely stunted by the pandemic in 2020. The band was set to play the High Water Music Festival — an event hosted by Charleston act Shovels and Rope, who Beverly is close with — when the festival was canceled and didn’t resume until this year.
Leading up to the release of the “Here Today Gone Today” film, Beverly is releasing live performances from his past projects, including “Legs and Scars” seen here today.
We first came across “Legs and Scars” via a burned CD handed to us at Rosewood Crawfish Festival in 2009. Labeled under the project Tent Revival, the song became a song of lore in our music circle back then. That CD was burned and passed around for months before we put together our 20TEN SceneSC Sampler, where it appeared as the intro track. This site named it the South Carolina song of the year in 2009, along with Free Times calling it the finest song to come out of the state that year.
Since that release, the song has been covered by a bevy of musicians from South Carolina and beyond. In this live performance, Beverly channels his emotions from years ago as he visits his past in this song. “Legs and Scars” compared to his latest work sounds light-years apart. While his voice, sense of melody, and capturing lyrics stay the same, the four-minute journey that “Legs and Scars” takes you on is minor compared to the epic 18-minute visual and audible journey of his latest work.
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