Natty’s Common Roots: A Music Collective Making Waves

Zach Taylor

Sep 9, 2026

A conversation about East Tennessee and more.

I don’t know what is more fun: going to see a band you already love or stumbling across a band you had never heard of and realizing, almost immediately, that you really like them.

That’s exactly what happened when I experienced Natty’s Common Roots at Dirty Birds in historic Cocoa, Florida. With a band you love, there’s the anticipation. The buildup. The excitement of finally hearing those songs live. But there’s something different about the surprise of liking a band as soon as you hear them.

Natty's Common Roots for Mixed Alternative Magazine by Zach Taylor — Credit: Zach Taylor

I was down at Cape Canaveral for a week supporting engine installation work for the Artemis III mission. For those who don’t know, I work for NASA. I flew into Melbourne and, after a storm chased me off the beach, found myself sitting in my hotel wondering what I was going to do with the rest of the afternoon.

Naturally, I looked for live music. Scrolling through social media, I found that Natty’s Common Roots was performing nearby. I looked them up, listened for a few minutes, and the vibe seemed perfect for the afternoon. Reggae. Rock. Beach vibes. More importantly, they had original music. I decided to make the short drive.

Natty’s Common Roots was scheduled to play a four-hour set. Yes. Four hours. That alone sold me on them. Any band that can play for four hours has to have a catalog. They have to be able to play. And there was a pretty good chance they were going to play something I knew.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2HNCH0hwNQ

Be Heard - Natty's Common Roots

As luck would have it, they closed part of their set with Sublime’s “Badfish,” a song very close to my heart. Not only is “Badfish” one of my go-to karaoke songs, but it also represents an important connection between me and some of my favorite artists, particularly Bradley Nowell. That connection, and the complicated relationship between creativity, addiction, and self-destruction surrounding artists like him, became part of the impetus for my series of books.

I decided I wasn’t going to walk straight up to the stage and introduce myself. That would have been weird. Instead, during a break, Natty walked to the bar to order a drink and, unfortunately for him, found himself standing next to me. Much more natural.

I introduced myself, told him what I was doing with Mixed Alternative, and we started talking. A few minutes later, Natty happily agreed to sit down with me during the band’s next break for an interview.

And that’s how an afternoon spent hiding from a Florida storm turned into a conversation about East Tennessee, reggae, addiction, Tom Petty, four-hour sets, the changing Space Coast, and, somehow, coconut shrimp. Read on to learn more.

Photo provided by artist - Natty's Common Roots for Mixed Alternative Magazine — Photo provided by artist

*Conversation has been edited lightly for clarity

MaM: There’s an East Tennessee history here, but now this music feels completely at home on the Space Coast. Walk me through that journey. How did you get from East Tennessee to Cocoa Beach, and what did each place teach you about your sound?

NATTY: We like to describe Natty’s Common Roots as beach vibes with its roots in the mountains. I’ve been all over the country, but I came here from East Tennessee.

We had a band out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and a couple of the members were active military, so they couldn’t be touring. Out of respect for them, I took the songs I had written and took a different band on the road. After a full year of playing in Florida and realizing how conducive the beach vibes are to reggae music, I decided to make the move over here full-time and expand.

MaM: Are there things about Appalachia, the storytelling, acoustic music, the way people play together, that stayed with you even as you picked up reggae and these other influences?

NATTY: Absolutely. You can hear it, especially in some of the stuff we’re releasing on this upcoming album. It has bluegrass roots throughout it. I’ve got bluegrass side projects, too, so that’s still strong in me. I feel like it’s a good mashup of all the different styles that make my music.

MaM: We talked about this earlier, and I told you I heard 311. I also hear some Dirty Heads and Slightly Stoopid.

NATTY: Absolutely. Dirty Heads, Slightly Stoopid, and Pepper are huge influences. Sublime, of course. Bob Marley. But one of my biggest influences is David Lindley. He played with reggae bands and across different genres worldwide. He was heavily into international genres and brought all those different styles together.

MaM: Let’s talk about “Badfish.” From the outside, it sounds like this great beach song. People hear it and want to sing along. But when you actually listen to it, it’s about addiction. What does that song mean to you?

NATTY: Playing where we do, everybody is going to be screaming it at you all night. But I wanted to make sure it had more resonance than just another tune. Personally, I’ve had friends who have died from addiction, and it’s something that affects everybody. If somebody isn’t personally affected, they know somebody who is, whether it’s a family member or a friend. Everybody is suffering in this world. There are more and more people suffering every day. So being able to express something like that through an art form and reach people who might feel the same way, or know somebody who does, means something.

MaM: There’s also this complicated relationship between addiction and artists. Bradley Nowell is obviously part of that story. There’s artistic expression, but there’s also addiction and self-destruction. How do you look at that relationship?

NATTY: I feel like it’s one of the finest lines on Earth. Before addiction even plays a part, most artists are fighting an internal battle. In order to bring the art out, or sometimes just to bring their true selves out, they find themselves embracing certain substances because it makes it easier for them to reach inside. They don’t have to, but some find themselves doing that. They feel like they almost have to have it to break that wall down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE2U6oGl52c

Coot from TN by Natty's Common Roots

MaM: You’re playing a four-hour set on a Sunday afternoon. That’s completely different from playing a 45-minute set. How do you build four hours of music and keep yourself engaged, but more importantly, keep the crowd engaged? People are literally coming in off the beach.

NATTY: It’s a balance. We do this for a living, and it’s not all about playing original shows. As you said, it’s not always a 45-minute, full-original set. Sometimes you’ve got a four-hour show. I like to tell the crowd right off the bat, “We’re here to play original reggae rock and some of our favorite cover tunes.” Those are songs we like and that we want to put our own spin on. They’re songs people will recognize, and hopefully they’ll hear what we do with them and then go home and search us out. But in order to go four hours, you’ve got to bring a little bit more to the table.

MaM: This next one is a little more personal. I’m not a great guitar player. I’ve written about rock and roll a lot more than I’ve actually played it. But last night my wife asked me to play Tom Petty for her, so I picked up the guitar and figured one out. Then I hear you guys play “Breakdown” tonight, except you’ve turned it into reggae. What made you hear that song and think; there’s reggae in there?

NATTY: It’s funny you mentioned that one. As I said, one of my biggest influences is David Lindley. The song we mash “Breakdown” into is a David Lindley song, and they’re in the same key. It just worked perfectly. I had been listening to that song for years. When we were looking for something to cover, I thought, this one has a great feel. There’s a pocket right here. Obviously, you heard it. It was nowhere near the way Tom Petty wrote it, but it didn’t lose any of the feeling. That was important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDDnyyd6PTQ

Gypsy Cargo - Natty's Common Roots

MaM: You also played “Be Heard.” Talk to me about that song.

NATTY: That one was written right before we basically, officially morphed into Natty’s Common Roots. I wrote it with the little person in mind. The person whose point of view doesn't get heard. The person who isn’t necessarily loud enough. The person who spends too much time focusing instead of speaking up. It’s about making yourself heard. If you’ve got something to say, if you’ve got the knowledge, if you have the voice, use it rather than letting yourself be shouted over, put down, or covered with dust. It’s about rising back up and finding your voice.

MaM: I’ve been coming to Cocoa Beach for about twenty years, and I’m sitting here looking at a town that feels completely different from the one I remember. It used to be quiet. Now I’m watching families come off the beach. Young people are coming off the beach and coming into these places. There’s an energy here that did not exist twenty years ago. What happened to Cocoa Beach?

NATTY: The secret got out. Small towns and small surf towns in Florida are becoming fewer and fewer. Cocoa Beach was such a low-key secret that it couldn’t be contained for very long. People come out here, maybe because they have a contract or something that brings them here, and then they realize how great this place is. Next thing you know, they’ve either moved here, or they have a second home here.

MaM: Do you think that growth has changed the culture?

NATTY: I think so. If you go out to the small dive bars in the area, you can still find plenty of that local, small-town feeling. But the culture is changing. It’s great for businesses. At the same time, I miss that sleepy town.

MaM: All right. To close this up, the most important question of the interview. Coconut shrimp. It’s a thing down here. Who has the best?

NATTY: See, I am forced to answer only one way. My wife and I had our first date at Ryan’s Pizza and Pub in Cocoa Village, and we shared an appetizer of coconut shrimp.

I can’t even remember tasting coconut shrimp anywhere else, because that would get me in trouble with my wife. So, on the record, that’s where it’s at.

MaM: Finally, tell me what the future looks like for Natty’s Common Roots. And what does success look like to you?

NATTY: Success? I met my wife right across the street from here when I was still living in Tennessee and playing shows down here on the weekends. I built a life here. I bought our house and our car from playing music around Florida and the Southeast. So, in terms of success, I feel like I succeeded. I love where I’m at.

In terms of the future of the band, we’re about to finally release an album that has been in the works for almost a decade. Life got away from us for a little bit, but we’re just a couple of months away from releasing it. I want to follow that with another national tour next year, because it’s been almost a decade since our last national tour, and then do a couple more regional tours through the summer. Then I want to start the next album. I’ve already got songs stacked up and ready to start working on.

And that's a great way to end this. I went to Dirty Birds because a storm chased me off the beach and I wanted to hear some live music. I expected reggae, a cold drink, and maybe a familiar song or two during a four-hour set. Instead, I found myself talking with an artist about East Tennessee and Cocoa Beach. About Sublime and David Lindley. About addiction, creativity, Tom Petty, finding your voice, and what it actually means to be successful as a musician. And maybe that answers the question I started with.

There is something special about seeing a band you already love. You know the songs. You know what you are waiting for. The anticipation is part of the experience. But discovering a new band is different. You just walk through the door and give the music a chance. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you walk back out a fan. Natty’s Common Roots made that pretty easy. Go check out their music today.