You can listen to all of the Top Ten Songs if you scroll down past the Top Three winners.
Winner- Jim Bickerstaff, “Sister Mary”
All of the Top Three finalists will be performing their winning song at the Will McLean Music Festival scheduled for March 8th – 10th, 2024 at the Florida Sand Music Ranch near Brooksville.
Jim Bickerstaff says winning the Will McLean song contest is more than an honor, “It is recognition by my peers in a community of fine writers, performers, and humans … a validation of my creative efforts.” He says the late Margaret Longhill, who was instrumental in starting not only the Will McLean Festival, but also the Will McLean Foundation, is the main reason he ever wrote any songs about Florida, “She wore her vision on her sleeve, and she is the person that made room for a Georgia boy in the Florida Folk community. ”
“I first met Margaret Longhill in the early days of WillFest, before we called it that I think,” says Bickerstaff. The first two he attended were at two different venues near Dunnellon, and the following year, Longhill moved it to what was then called the Sertoma Youth Ranch and now called Florida Sand Ranch. He says, “Jim Billie invited me to play with him at the festival, and like everyone who ever came within range of Margaret’s magnetic field, I assumed an orbit and became a thread in the tapestry she was continuously weaving. Margaret had a sizable influence on everyone she met as well as on people who have no idea who she was. She was a purposeful woman and a good soul. I will never forget Sister Mary,” says Bickerstaff.
He says the primary message of his winning song, “Sister Mary,” is that we still have work to do preserving Florida and the rest of the planet for that matter. With Margaret gone, we are left to carry on her vision with art, music, and fighting for balance between development and conservation.” Bridge – What used to be is gone forever, time don’t go back to where it’s been. But as we step into tomorrow, are we going to let this happen once again? The secondary message says Bickerstaff, “A testimony to the fact that Margaret was here and did this thing.” Second Verse Sister Mary beckons all the flowers in the field to gather for the Native son Then they blow like dandelions, scattered to the wind, singing songs of old Florida. He adds, “I think it is important to understand that the planet will shrug us off like a rash once we destroy our ability to survive here. A few hundred thousand years after we become extinct, there will be little sign that we ever existed. Yet, our longevity is largely in our hands if we learn to coexist within the delicate balance that makes this planet inhabitable by humans.” 3rd Verse Floods and raging hurricanes have come and they have gone But nothing any man can do can keep away the dawn.
Bickerstaff credits the musicians for “Sister Mary” as: Terry Feller – Drums, Bob Wray – Bass, Clayton Ivey – Wurlitzer Piano, Pat Severs – Acoustic Guitar, Johnny B – Dobro, Donny Carpenter – Fiddle, Jim Bickerstaff – Vocals & Acoustic Guitar.
As a four-year house engineer for legendary producer, Johnny Sandlin, Bickerstaff has worked at the top of the music business as an audio engineer for groups such as Widespread Panic, Col. Bruce Hampton & the Aquarium Rescue Unit & The Dixie Dregs on releases by Capricorn Records and Warner Brothers Music. Additional projects and artists include Scott Boyer, Tommy Talton, Chuck Leavell, Butch Trucks, Eddie Hinton, Loretta Lynn, Roger Hawkins, Randall Bramblett, T Lavitz, David Hood, John Hiatt, Ry Cooder, Gladys Knight, Kelvin Holly, Spanky Alford, and others.
As an independent producer and engineer, Bickerstaff has worked with Jupiter Coyote, Chief Jim Billie, Sarah McCulloch, Jeannie Fitchen, Mindy Simmons, Raiford Starke, Joey Errigo, Clyde Walker, Sam Pacetti, Vassar Clements, John McEuen, Bela Fleck, Upsala, and other Indie artists.
As a writer and performer, Bickerstaff has released three albums of his music. He retired from Duke Energy in June, 2023 and has leaned into performing and production full-time again. In 2020 Bickerstaff placed third in the song contest with “Jim Billie, Chief of the Seminole.”
2nd Place Finisher, Amy Carol Webb- “Carry It On”
Amy Carol Webb says as a child she always knew that she wanted to be a musician and a minister when she grew up. Her father was a music teacher and a gospel preacher like his father before him. Her mother was a singer, Bible-school teacher and Mom to the kids of the neighborhood wherever they lived – and they lived a lot of places throughout Oklahoma, and Texas.
“Our house was like growing up in a practice hall as all us kids learned and experimented, what with the four of us singing and playing guitars, drums, trombone, tuba, piano, sax….it was a lovely kind of chaos. Music was breathing to me. Still is,” said Webb.
Upon graduating college with a BSE in Performing Arts, Webb says she set out for a career in marketing, music performance, production and education, in Los Angeles. As a performer and songwriter, she toured the US, Canada, Mexico and Japan, and played from the Kennedy Center to the stages of some of the most hallowed music festivals, universities and conferences.
As an educator Webb has taught music, creative writing, songwriting and life-skills development from the halls of the University of Miami to the cells of maximum security women’s prisons in Florida.
In the realm of Justice Music, Webb is a Charter Fellow of Noel Paul Stookey’s “Music2Life Foundation,” working for justice through music. In 2010 she graduated Summa Cum Laude from seminary at Andover Newton Theological School and was ordained the following year by the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Boca Raton, where she served for three years as a student and intern. Presently, she works as a Board Certified hospice Chaplain and bereavement group facilitator and is Consulting Minister to the River of Grass Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Davie, Florida.
She continues to provide concerts and workshops, and compose and record new music. In 2013 she released her 10th CD, Moments: Music – Mantra – Mystery, a celebration of devotional music from the world’s spiritual traditions as well as new Unitarian Universalist hymns and chants. Her justice anthem, STAND!, debuted at the 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly with a 150 voice choir and has been taken up by UU congregations and justice champions around the world – along with the call to action Tell Somebody! released at the UUA General Assembly 2012, and the invitation to reverence, On Holy Ground.
Webb says, “I am privileged to travel widely within the acoustic music community and the Unitarian Universalist movement preaching, singing, speaking, facilitating a variety of workshops focused to deepen, strengthen, amplify and edify – including fifteen years of service to SUUSI (Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute) with four years on the Board. In service to the larger faith community, I regularly speak, sing and teach at interfaith events, welcoming denominations, and also have served on the Board of the Ecumenical Institute at St. Thomas University in Miami.”
Webb is no stranger to the Will McLean Best New Florida Song Contest. In 2002 she placed first with her song Turtle Tears. That same year she also placed third for her song Rivers Roll On. Webb has been a consistent headliner at the Will McLean Music Festival and other music festivals across the state including the Florida Folk Festival, the Gamble Rogers Music Festival and the South Florida Folk and Acoustic Music Festival.
Tie: 3rd Place Finisher, Lis Williamson- “Land of Flowers”
Elisabeth Williamson is a singer-songwriter residing in the Sandhills of her native Florida. She has been performing in Florida for many decades with her husband, Lon, in various groups over the years, The Driftwoods, The Gatorbone Band, Valla Turner Williamson and so many more. She and her husband Lon have recorded and produced more than 75 records of all original Florida folk music for the Florida folk singer-songwriter community which she describes as a deeply fulfilling endeavor. Her song, The Land of Flowers, was inspired by her lifetime of observance of the changing state of the state of Florida as well as a commentary that, “we must remain vigilant to preserve what’s left of her natural beauty.”
Lis Williamson is no stranger to the Will McLean Best New Florida Song Contest as she has taken home the first place prize on two occasions. In 2013 she won for her song F-L-O-R-I-D-A and in 2007 she won first place for her song Florida Cracker Girl. Several of Lis and Lon Williamson’s music recordings can be heard in the nationally distributed public television documentary, From Novel to Movie: The Yearling in Florida.
Williamson, who has been a player and lead singer in bluegrass bands, country bands, folk trios, madrigals and jazz ensembles has performed in thousands of venues, from festivals to honkytonks, wine bars, churches and barns as well as weddings, christenings, funerals, gourmet restaurants and rodeos around the country. She is active with the Gamble Rogers Music Festival Board. You can catch her performing most often at a variety of venues in the St. Augustine area.
Tie- 3rd Place finisher, Kurt Fortmeyer- “Pelicans“
Kurt Fortmeyer describes himself as a neo-traditional hobo, bluesman, honkytonking folksinger and songwriter. He says he was born in a barn, and raised in a stable environment, or so he might tell an unwitting listener in one of his sillier moments. He lived in North Carolina, California, Hawaii, and Maryland, before starting the first grade in Texas. A long-time lover of music, Fortmeyer joined his first band at the age of thirteen, and started writing songs almost right away. By the age of 19, he was turning into more of a solo singer/songwriter, with the occasional stints in blues, country, and rock bands.
In the 1970s, he hitchhiked coast-to-coast with a guitar and a burlap sack full of clothes. In the 1980s, he met his wife, and mostly came in off the road. With the help of friends, he built the house where his kids grew up in eastern North Carolina. In the 1990s, he and his wife opened a coffeehouse that became a haven for songwriters, and in the early part of this century, they moved to the Nashville area, where they now live in a holler in the hills northwest of town.
Fortmeyer has performed at the world-famous Bluebird Cafe in Nashville for almost 20 years. He has been a featured performer at the North Carolina Museum of History, and The Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky. His recordings have been played on radio stations around the world, and are available on most streaming platforms.
He describes his inspiration for writing his song Pelicans, “I was writing a “Coastal Country” kind of song with a producer friend of mine and his artist, when I came up with a line about a pelican. My friend went off on me. “Nobody’s going to sing a song with the word ‘pelican’ in it. It’s a clunky word, and an ugly bird. A seagull is the iconic ocean bird. It has to be a seagull.” I told him “You can find seagulls at the landfill, but if you see pelicans, you know you’re at the coast.” He insisted on a seagull, and since it was for his artist, and they bought my lunch, I relented. On the way home, I started thinking about about it, and his comment stuck in my craw. When I got home, I started working on Pelicans.
4th Through 10th Place Finishers:
4th place- Chad Spikes- “Days Long Gone“
5th place- Chad Spikes- “Ghost of the Suwannee”
Tie 6th place- Cindy Bear and Susan Grandy- “Suwannee River in White Springs”
Tie 6th place- Chad Spikes- “Apalachee Sky”
7th place- David Beede- “The Melrose Song”
8th place- Dale & Lisa Dollar- “Ochlockonee”
9th place- Scott Campbell- “Bloody Buckets Bridge”
10th place- Bob Patterson- “Santa Fe”
In 1997 fiddler Vassar Clements and a variety of musicians and singers gathered in a mobile studio at the Florida Folk Festival in White Springs to record Florida’s state song, “Old Folks At Home” by Stephen Foster. The recording engineer in the mobile studio was Jim Bickerstaff. Florida Artists Hall of Fame winner, Frank Thomas, suggested the recording idea. Thomas is known for closing out the River Gazebo Stage each year at the Florida Folk Festival by singing all verses of the Florida state song. In this recording he leads the chorus. Other musicians include Clyde Walker, Sonny Edwards and Ron Litschauer. Various singers added their voices including Mary Ann Dinella, Donna Green-Townsend, Grant Livingston and Priscilla Bingham Hall. (If you were a participant in this unique endeavor contact Donna at dgtmultimedia@gmail.com to be included in the credits.)