Location: Pompano Beach
Challenge: Arm Amputee
Website: facebook.com/gina.zampaglione
Kevin Millard is a right arm amputee guitarist from Pompano Beach, South Florida.
He plays the guitar with the help of a device he made himself. Despite the jab he takes at his ability, his accuracy is quite good, and he can solo as confidently as he can strum a chord.
Kevin is originally from New York, specifically, Long Island. He was born there in 1956 to separated parents with five other kids. His stepfather was the first to introduce him to a guitar at age 11. When Kevin's dad saw his interest and talent, he bought him a Mosrite Ventures for Christmas when he was 15. He was hooked.
Kevin spent his 20s bouncing around from band to band in Long Island, playing clubs at night and waking up in the morning to work as a roofer. In the early '80s, he left for South Florida, where his mother was living. He kept up with music as a side gig but earned his money in construction. Eventually, though, the darker side of South Florida took hold of him, and he began to get involved with what he likes to call "a little powder."
On April 28, 1985, during a drug induced bender, Kevin climbed a telephone pole during an arguement with his girlfriend. He reached the top in no time, where he stayed for about a half-hour, screaming for his girlfriend to come outside. He was dehydrated, high, and drunk. Then it happened.
Kevin says "I slipped, and I reached up". To reposition himself, he grabbed a wire he thought was harmless. It wasn't. He recalls "Seven, eight hundred volts; fell 30 feet. Kaboom". His hand turned black within a few minutes, and his thigh had a crispy, smoking hole where the electricity had blown out of his body. He adds "It's like, you ever see those firecrackers, like on a cartoon when they explode, like that Road Runner guy holding the dynamite and it's peeled? That's what my pant leg looked like".
As a result, Kevin lost half his arm and a sizable chunk of his thigh. After he was released from the hospital, he returned to Long Island to stay with his father. The good news: He was sober.
A few weeks later, he was getting a glass of water from the kitchen when he saw someone using a spatula. The idea hit him instantly. He grabbed some masking tape and attached the spatula to his stump. Looking like a creature from a Martha Stewart acid trip, he picked up his guitar and formed a chord. "I strummed, and I was like, damn! But when I started to play, the tape broke." After some trial and error, he discovered that electrical tape seemed to hold strong without too much pressure, giving him enough freedom and precision to play. He called his mom to let her listen to the good news.
Kevin adds "I could hear them crying in the background. That is what started my journey on the music trail again."
These days, Kevin's strumming device looks slightly different than it did 20 years ago. It's no longer made out of a spatula (Tupperware stopped making them) but rather a chunk of plastic bucket. It works just as well, if not better.
His guitar playing is impressive, especially considering he's operating with 50 percent fewer hands than the average player, but it's his voice that really gets you. When he hits those high runs in "Going to California," the Long Island accent disappears and suddenly it's pure '80s rock 'n' roll glory. Someone kidnapped Robert Plant and Axl Rose and stuffed them into the body of a 60 odd year-old former roofer from Long Island.
After Kevin rediscovered his ability to play in the '80s, he began booking gigs around South Florida, sometimes as many as eight a week. But addiction is an insatiable animal, and three relapses earned him three possession arrests in '91, '92, and '96. He eventually cleaned up with the help of a 12-step program, and by the end of the '90s, he was sober and back on the South Florida music scene.
For a while, Kevin and his wife had hit rock bottom, living in a motel.
Things weren't easy, and the money was slow, but after his wife hit a couple of big sales at work, Millard was able to afford a guitar and an amp. In 2012, he booked his first solo gig in more than four years, at Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale, for $100.
These days, life has been more stable for Kevin than they've been in years. He's still with his wife, whom he loves more than anything. He adds "There ain't a woman that's been born who's gonna fill her shoes".
He even auditioned for America's Got Talent in 2013 and The Voice in August 2015. He didn't make it onto either show, but the producers of The Voice kept him onstage longer than anyone else who'd auditioned. He adds "I believe they want me to try again, and if Adam Levine's bony ass knows what's good for him, he'll turn that f@@king chair around".
Even though the South Florida bar crowds are small, Kevin plays like he's onstage at Madison Square Garden. The tough part now, he says, is getting consistent bookings again after years out of the scene.
Hanging from his microphone stand is a red tips bucket with some bills spread out at the bottom. A few years ago, he remembers, someone dropped a napkin into that bucket.
Kevin recalls "One of the patrons at one of the bars I was playing came up, and in my tip bucket at the end of the night, there was a note from him on a napkin, which read, 'After seeing you, you gave me so much hope.' I get choked up thinking about it. It says, 'I have beginning stages of Parkinson's. I'm a guitar player, and after seeing you play, I want to try it again.' That was the best tip I've ever gotten".
Kevin Millard - Going to California (cover)