"On weekend nights at the Old Florida Fish House, the house band sings perfect renditions of all of your favorite songs. Sometimes they sing for five hours without stopping. The restaurant's reputation for great food is rivaled only by its growing popularity along 30-A as the destination for music lovers looking for a quality and class of live entertainment typically not found outside 'Big' cities."

~Nellie DeBruyn (Coastal Homes & Lifestyle Magazine)

"My total heart is into song writing," says Tim Jackson. The son of a military family whose frequent moves included Panama City Beach to Destin, Tim Jackson plays a large role in the history of music on the Emerald Coast. After touring from 1973-83, he resettled in Destin, lured by the offer of creating a house band at the Hog's Breath Saloon. From his days on the road, he had a roster of talented musicians to call on. "I'm the connector" he explained, "I bring talent to the area - some stay, some go back home." Tim and his posse of musicians played opening acts at Nightown for a couple of years, and then started the band Passage, which had a 10-year run at Harry T's.

In 1993, he opened up a recording studio for his personal use. "The cool thing is that being a songwriter forever, I opened up the studio for my own personal studio, a place to sit and write and demo the songs I was writing. But the very first night it was ready, I got a call from Greg Barnhill, saying he had a writer in town from Nashville.

All of a sudden, everybody knew if they had a writing session on 30a, they could come to Tim's studio and record it before they went on their way. Suddenly I had stepped into a business.

"The cool thing about that was that I would get to know them, hanging with them, and they would ask if I was writing, and they would ask to hear my stuff. Then they started asking me to write with them. so I started working my way up through the ranks of songwriters." Then advent of new computer applications and laptops rendered the demand for tim's studio obsolete, but the relationships remained.

His recent connection with Geoff McBride has heralded in a particularly fertile period; in just a few months they have produced enough material for four CDs. Working at Tim's new house in Carson Oaks, they speak of an uncanny spiritual quality about the place and the ease with which their writing has progressed. "I haven't been in the studio in the last year. Every writer who comes to town says, can we come over?...There have been a lot of records written here."

Their respect for each other's talent dictates their writing process. "I try to be conscious when we're writing to leave giant holes so you can hear his voice," says Tim of the interplay. "I want the set-up to be so he can tell the story of the song, because he's an amazing interpreter of the song.

"It's hard for people to understand," continues Tim, "that it's real obvious when you've written a bad [song]. Geoff and I, we just haven't written a bad one."

"I started singing when I was about 3 years old in the church - a gospel church. I didn't want to be in the kid's choir. I wanted to be in the adult choir. All I wanted to do was sing." Geoffreu, who recently rotated out of the Fish House Band, remembers standing in front of the mirror as a child and learning to control his voice with his body. Sitting on the sofa, in Tim Jackson's house, he demonstrates the way his voice changes with his posture. He sits up, straightens his back and belts out a single note, filling his lungs and then the large room.

Geoff has covered a lot of ground in his lifetime of music. At age 14, he was singing top 40s for a band in Lexington, NC called Whisper Wind. At 16, he sent a demo of "Loving You" to Arista records, which offered him a deal, but he remembers his mom saying, "I don't think that's a wise choice." Geoff claims he dreamed of being a pediatrician. But after being invited to open for Al Jarreau, he realized that ultimately "music was my life."

In the late '80s, he assembled an audition tape for "Star Search" and was offered deals at several major labels, but eventually succumbed to the seduction of Arista. "When I walked into Arista, I was a kid in cowboy boots, and I became a polished crooner." In 1990-91, Arista released several of his CDs and his video, "Now Sweeter Love" climbed to No. 10 on the charts. But Geoff was not happy with the way things were going. "I wanted to be a soul singer, and they wanted something else. I'm not a pop artist."

He describes the decades of his 30s as a whirlwind and eventual burnout. In 1994-95, he toured with Aretha Franklin. Living in Atlanta, he picked up work doing "jingles and commercials." When he needed to "keep his chops up," he frequented a place called Cafe' 90. Feeling that music was "taking control of" his life, he moved to Alpharetta, GA. "I got a big lesson in life. I wanted to surround myself with the right people."

His association with Tim Jackson has ushered in a new era. Their writing process is providing Geoff with a chance to let his voice dictate the creation of a song. Tim jokes, "Geoff could sing the phonebook and it would sound good." Tim leaves lots of "holes" in his melodies for Geoff to improvise through his voice. "That word itself, soul," says Geoff, "you want people to hear your soul. Those holes we were talking about... that's where you get to bury your soul." Geoff sums it up further, "I really just came into my own when I met Tim."