OHP’s Suga Live! features a whole world of R&B on Thanksgiving eve

The OHP crew Credit: courtesy image

What better way to jumpstart the holiday season than with a backyard-style R&B party in the heart of Mills 50? Or at least, so says Dennis Mero, local DJ and founder of the Orlando House Party collective, who will be celebrating Thanksgiving eve with Suga Live!, a night of live performance, tropical beats and good vibes.

Why Thanksgiving eve? Mero says that from the moment their event series was created a few years ago, he saw this particular night as a natural gathering point — a time when out-of-towners visit and the City Beautiful fills with people home for the holidays.

“Honestly, we’re just super excited to have everybody come together right before the holidays,” Mero says. “I think it’s always nice to get into the holiday season with seeing friends and family and just smiling and just trying to get excited for the next day and for the rest of the year.”

Unlike your typical R&B party, Mero says that Suga was specifically created with uplifting the Orlando community as a central tenet. So instead of slower, sensual energy (all the better for romancing, as Barry White would doubtless attest), a more energetic, multi-genre fusion was the end goal.

An Orlando native since 1993, Mero says Suga started from a feeling that the local R&B party scene wasn’t evolving. After traveling the world and spending a good chunk of his life living in Miami, Mero wanted to turn Orlando heads on to international takes and twists on R&B sounds.

And so, Suga Live was born as a recurring night featuring R&B tracks paired with the remixes, edits and flips that were being uploaded to SoundCloud from all over at the time. Mero says this fusion is what makes the party so unique, as it brings together younger and older generations of music fans.

Mero says their events also create opportunities to gather and showcase Orlando’s many talented musicians across cultures.

To that end, OHP and Suga have a very special guest lined up for Wednesday: Orlando-based R&B artist Brandon Vee and his backing ensemble are taking the stage for a live set at the party.

“His energy is incredible, and the people feel it,” Mero says of Vee, who doesn’t play out much locally. “And I feel a lot of, not only myself, but the crowd seems like they always feel empowered after his sets or his music. And more now than ever, I believe that that’s so important to have in our community to feel, with as much as things are going on in the world. I feel that his breath, his words, his music, is very necessary in the community, because it does heal. It helps heal.”

Mero, who will be closing out the night with a DJ set, says his own journey spinning records started while organizing events in Orlando, something he’s been doing since 2001. At one of his earlier events, Urban Jazz Funk, which also featured live bands, Mero says they would always make sure to include a vinyl-only DJ set, spinning dance and hip-hop classics from the 1990s.

Although he wasn’t DJing at the time, Mero says being around other DJs inspired him to start learning to play and mix vinyl. A few years later, he wound up DJing for one of his smaller events, which he says pushed him to move beyond hosting and curating and dive deeper into spinning records on his own.

“I love music and I love all genres of music,” says Mero. “So I think that was one of the things that inspired my DJ[ing], to be able to like, in my sets, to be able to cater to so many different people, especially because I’ve lived here for so long, and I’ve had a great music experience here in Orlando. I know who lives here, like the real Orlando, and nothing makes me happier than to be able to play music that they can feel nostalgic and the same time have a good time and dance and sing.”

Mero says Suga Live nights showcase what he feels is “the true Orlando.” To him, even the venue, Grape & The Grain — home to an eclectic slate of events — shows Orlando’s melting pot of creative diversity.

And with an entire live band giving their all in the backyard of Grape & The Grain, Mero says it’s definitely going to feel very homey.

“I’m excited about going and stepping into the holidays and getting people in a great mood right before Thanksgiving,” Mero says. “So my goal is to keep people dancing and singing right before the holiday season.”

(OHP Presents: Suga Live! 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 26, Grape & the Grain, 1110 Virginia Drive, tickets, $16-$19)