Growing up on a dirt road in small town Palm Coast, Bea McDonald didn’t have much access to the world at large. Jacksonville is a long drive up I-95, and you have a better chance of the Lombardi Trophy going to the Jags than you would of seeing McDonald at Epcot eating and drinking around the world.
That all changed when a teenaged McDonald was introduced to something better than overpriced drinks and gift shops. The songs of Bob Dylan came into the hands of McDonald and a new world rose from the Flagler County dirt road. Dylan and the Stooges would lay the foundation for what would later become Home Is Where, an indie-folk band that McDonald fronts.
“I grew up on a dirt road,” explains McDonald on the phone from Grand Rapids. “I had a lot of time to myself. I was really into movies and books for a while. I wasn’t really into music until I listened to Bob Dylan at 13 and I was like, ‘Wow this is what I always wanted to hear.’ Around the same time I got into Bob Dylan I got into the Stooges, and I wanted to the mix the two together. The poetry of Bob Dylan and the energy of punk music.”
This music gave McDonald a roadmap for the sounds she wanted to make, and she was able to find unicorns on a similar wavelength. It also helped McDonald make sense of the world around her, and that perspective would be crucial for the songs to come. McDonald learned about labor struggles and civil rights through Bob Dylan’s music.
The one thing that McDonald couldn’t learn from Bob? How to make it as a Florida band. The roadmap to being a band in Florida is never linear, and it’s even harder when the area code you reside in isn’t 407, 305, 954, 561, 904 or 813. Home Is Where made the 386 work, and were an active part in the Flagler County music scene.
“We didn’t really have any idea of what we were doing, and we didn’t have any ambitions other than to make music that meant something to us,” says McDonald. “So we would go anywhere that would let us play. I mean we played some strange bills with folks that didn’t even remotely sound like us or what we were doing. But in Florida, there are scenes, but it’s so scattered and varied that a weird band like us took on anything. We played empty rooms to rooms packed with maybe 50 people on a good night “
Florida is buried deep in the DNA of Home Is Where, from their folksy-country style of indie-rock to the band members, who are all Flo-Grown. Home Is Where’s latest album, Hunting Season, is dedicated to people from the Sunshine State who are in love with a state that sometimes doesn’t love them back.
Hunting Season, however, was written in New York. Even though many Floridians move up to New York by choice, it was a decision that McDonald made out of necessity. The culture war pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis attacking members of LGBTQ+ community, and in particular trans people, was the deciding factor. Being homesick for a place that you can’t come back to weighed heavily on McDonald’s mind.
“I wrote the album when I was living in New York, and I was pretty miserable,” says McDonald. ‘I didn’t want to leave Florida, but a few of the band members ended up leaving because of the anti-trans legislation. Politicians around 2020/2021 started using trans people as a scapegoat and a few of us got a little paranoid about it, so we decided for safety reasons to leave and get out of the state for a while.”
“I escaped into writing these songs that were homesick songs about Florida, and the South in general, but definitely Florida,” she adds. “We wanted to make a record for people who felt like they had to leave their homes for that kind of reason. Florida’s always been a big influence on all of our music. We really wanted to make that the centerpoint. I haven’t heard or seen anything really like that about Florida except maybe The Florida Project.”
Home Is Where joins bands and artists over the years such as Chappell Roan and Jason Isbell who are reminding people that there’s more to country music than just guys on private jets talking about going to god’s country. There’s more to country, and Home Is Where proves that on Hunting Season. While the last record, The Whaler, was more emo, the band wanted to have more of a country and folksier sound on this record.
“The country stuff is something we always wanted to do, but we all had this notion to jump, scream and crash onstage for the past couple of years,” said McDonald. “I think we have gotten that out of our system. We wanted to see if we could make a record that implies that, and isn’t directly telling you to mosh or dance. It’s more of a record you could grill to and put on at a barbecue.”
One of the songs that fits the country and folk sound on the record is “Everyone Won the Lotto,” which is about McDonald’s experiences working at a gas station and being a merchant for a warped version of the American Dream.
“I worked at a lot of gas stations, and I see so many people wasting money on this lotto crap that they’re never going to win,” explains McDonald. “It’s a song about how weird hope can be and how money won’t fix everything. It’s about the American Dream and how weird it is, and how unobtainable it is, but they advertise it.”
McDonald still has faith that one day she will be able to return to Florida and live freely, but in the meantime their Saturday show at the Abbey will be a homecoming of sorts for the band.
“Yeah I like Orlando, and I like Central Florida a lot,” says McDonald. “It’s my kind of trash and I understand it. Even the dilapidated parts fall apart in an interesting way compared to everywhere else in the country. I like Orlando. I hate Disney and Mickey Mouse and all that crap. We’ve played some good shows down there too. I’ve had a lot of good times in Orlando. The very last show we played on the first half of The Whaler tour, and we had all of our friends and family come out to support us, and it was really nice.”
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