Working construction and other odd jobs in the beach community of Oak Island about 15 years ago, Bryan Mayer was told he had a good voice and should try giving music a shot.
Today, he’s making trips to Nashville, Tenn., has shared the stage with some of country’s and southern rock’s top acts and has a video out for his song “Leaving Town.”
Mayer is scheduled to perform beginning at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Kegs on West Main Street in Havelock.
Mayer said he was encouraged to play bass in his middle school band because of his height.
“I fell in love with it,” he said. “I ended up getting a guitar and started a garage band in the eighth grade.”
Mayer, the son of a former Harrier pilot who spent many years at Cherry Point, went to East Carolina University after graduating from New Bern High School in 1995.
“Maybe I was spending more time playing guitar than I was going to class,” he joked of his time at ECU. “College didn’t work out so well for me.”
He ended up in Oak Island and was playing guitar on a pier when a bartender encouraged him to play inside for tips.
“I played for maybe an hour or an hour and a half and made 40 or 50 bucks in tips,” Mayer said. “She asked me what I was doing the next weekend, and I said ‘nothing,’ and she told me she just canceled the band and I was going to play Friday and Saturday night.
“Once I got that taste of someone actually paying me to do something that I really enjoy and love, I was bit there. After some odd jobs of working in a fish market, delivering pizza and bartending and waiting tables, I became a full-time singer and song writer in 2005.”
Mayer, who some may know by the nickname “Stretch,” has performed across the Southeast. He’s opened for performers such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Trace Adkins, Edward McCain, Craig Morgan, Colbie Caillat and the Marshall Tucker Band. He opened the WRNS Guitar Pull for Jana Kramer and Thompson Square Wednesday at Cherry Point.
Mayer’s CD, “Long Story Short,” has been out since late 2011 on QAM Records and is available through iTunes and Amazon, among others.
Ken Buday is the editor of the Havelock News.