At night John Hancock sits at the entrance of Skipper’s Smokehouse, watching customers filing in and out, their money in hand, men and women ready to dance to whichever band is playing under the big oak trees that evening. A metal feather earring dangles from his left ear, and he wears a leather jacket because it is cold. As he watches the acts that drift in and out of Skipper’s every week, he remembers nights from 25 years ago, when he would sing and play guitar at bars with different bands; some sets acoustic and others electric.

            “John used to perform when I bartended at Skipper’s,” said Bonnie O’Connor, who is now the manager of the smokehouse. “There were some nights where all I saw were butts. People would have their backs turned to me, watching John, during his sit-and-listen acoustic sets. He’s a very charismatic performer.”

Skipper’s Smokehouse, a 25-year-old Tampa Bay institution, is an outdoor venue and restaurant. The twisted trunks of oak trees, strings of multi-colored lights and a psychedelic mural of Jerry Garcia only add to the whimsical setting of Skipper’s. This hangout for locals has grown from a smokehouse serving gator ribs and oysters to the ringmaster for local and nationally touring bands alike. With the likes of Steve Kimock, Keller Williams and the Radiators playing music upon the Skipper’s stage, local acts such as Uncle John’s Band and the Bird Street Players also frequent the smokehouse.

Hancock has worked at Skipper’s for thirty years now, first as an entertainer at Sunday Jam Sessions, then as a cook in the kitchen. O’Connor estimates that she must have fired him a dozen times, but always hired him back because, well, he’s just plain funny.

            “The only reason I kept hiring him is because he broke some of the stress in the kitchen, you know, by putting a conch fritter on his forehead and talking like Aaron Neville,” O’Connor said.

            Throughout his career at Skipper’s, Hancock, a native of the Tampa Bay area, played music in bars, hotels and on cruise ships on the West Coast. It wasn’t long until Hancock became discouraged with playing into the wee hours of the morning, stifling his creative side with Lynyrd Skynyrd songs that the audience would beg him to play.

            “I played at bars for 25 years. When I started playing that was your goal. You’re like man I can’t wait to learn more songs and get good enough for a bar to hire me. But what ends up happening is you have no life, you go in at 8 p.m. and set up and play till 3 a.m. Then you get up at five, with $10 in your pocket because you paid the bar $90 for your tab,” Hancock said.

            Hancock’s love for music grew after he watched The Beatles legendary performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He picked up a guitar at the age of eight, and by the time he was 16 he started to play at a local coffee shop. 

“In 1971 I ran into a hippie coffee house, called Tranquillo in Sulphur Springs. It was a little coffee house where everybody would get high and play “All Along the Watchtower” for three days. That’s pretty much where I learned how to play, and I got hooked,” Hancock said.

            Jim Beckwith, friend and producer of Hancock’s debut album Tampa Town, remembers meeting Hancock at another local hangout, where they met and vibed.

            “I think it might have been when the Rainbow Garden Cafe was open on Nebraska Avenue. It was a cool little hangout right there, a cool spot. And it turned out that John lived about 100 ft across from it in a log cabin house. It had kind of a hippie vibe going on. They had open mike night there and we discovered each other’s voices playing out there,” Beckwith said.

            Hancock began playing all over the Tampa Bay area, but he realized that playing covers didn’t leave much room for creativity.

            “I played at all these hotels at the beach. That was really a drag. Kids are screaming while you’re standing in 90-degree weather singing stupid Jimmy Buffet Songs, and you’d think I would be at the pinnacle of my happiest, right? Wrong. I was about to throw my guitar into the pool,” Hancock said.

            That’s when Hancock began writing his first and only album Tampa Town. The album is laced with memories of Hancock’s childhood, especially track three, “Tampa Town”, a Johnny Cash like song; a ballad, a story. The track incites imagery of old Tampa, and the troubles the Hancock family faced. It took Hancock 10 years to complete the album, borrowing free studio time with producer Jim Beckwith and hashing out songs whenever he felt inspired.

“I would put in 30 minutes here, an hour here. We would lay out a track here and a track there. I kind of look at it like it was The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper thing for me. You can’t say it’s an alternative country record or it’s a pop record, you can’t really say that because the album is so different,” Hancock said.

Hancock is not focused on fame, and he’s not focused on getting people in town to notice him; he just wants to play.

            “I want to be known as a singer/songwriter and a person that was more talented than you knew. I don’t want to be a big star, I don’t want people bothering me; I just want to show my talent,” Hancock said. “I’m one of these slow but steady people. I’m like the tortoise and the hare, and I’m the tortoise. I look at it like I’ve been planning this whole career of mine methodically, forever, you know? I have a lot of fans at Skipper’s that just know me as a doorman. They don’t have any idea that I play music, and when they see me playing music they’re totally freaking out. They’re like whoa!”