- April 23, 2026
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Michael Cohen was taking a walk in his neighborhood, The Landings, when he turned a corner and heard a sound.
That was during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when the musician says there were no performing gigs, which left him "bored out of my mind" but with nothing other than home recording to keep him occupied.
But there in the driveway was a group playing an upright bass, a banjo and a guitar. Cohen approached them and asked if they needed a bass guitar player. The banjo player, Gary Eason, replied, “You know one?”
Cohen has sat in and played with the band every Monday during season since.
The band, known as The Driveway Drivers, has become a ritual for many neighbors as well.
Attendees trickle in from homes around the neighborhood and set up their chairs on the driveway, just across from The Landings Racquet Club, for the performances that take place from October to April.
The band began with just Gary Eason and his wife, Angie Eason, who plays the upright bass, during a time he was working on a song for Good Friday and decided to bring it out for the neighborhood to hear.
After that, resident Peter McHugh stopped by and asked to join in, and he was followed shortly afterwards by Bill Green, a longtime friend of Gary Eason.
McHugh died last summer, but today, the group consists of 10 people, although there is no formal membership for The Driveway Drifters.
“It becomes like a religious experience because you get to sing together in a group,” Cohen said, noting that many of the songs are "old traditional, folky bluegrass songs that come from the hills of Kentucky and Virginia and Tennessee."
But the impact has grown, with the performances repeatedly drawing 30 or more people, who arrive carrying the lawn chairs that they set up in a semicircular shape around the musicians.
Arriving before the music begins, attendees enjoy refreshments and snacks the band brings along, and catch up with neighbors.
Each performance of about an hour and a half starts with the same two songs: “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” by Flatt & Scruggs, and “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere" by Bob Dylan, and each one closes with the hymn “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”
Yet from there, the music heads in other directions, spanning the genres of bluegrass, folk, classic rock and blues and featuring whatever songs members choose to include that day.
Eason emphasizes that each week, there’s a new learning curve for the members.
“I can tell you that everybody here is talented enough that we can kind of sit in and just make it work,” he said. “You show up. You have to, I guess, be confident enough in your knowledge of what's being played that you jump in where you can, and do your thing.”
However, as much as there’s learning involved, there's also one musical collaboration that brings a long history.
Gary Eason and his friend Bill Green started performing together while attending college in Indiana, playing gigs at local bars and a Loyal Order of Moose lodge.
Eason calls it “kind of amazing to us, really,” that today, they’re both residents of The Landings and are still performing together.
They both found their way to Sarasota for similar reasons.
Angie Eason’s family had spent the winters in Sarasota for 24 years, with Gary and Angie both visiting them during the holidays. Eventually, the couple decided they wanted their own residence there.
Meanwhile, the family of Bill Green’s wife had owned, for a similar amount of time, a residence on Longboat Key, a home which, after her mother died, became theirs.
“We come down every year, and I get to see my buddy in the wintertime,” Green said.
He says their performing together happens "probably" as regularly as it ever has since the old days.
Yet the overall rapport on the driveway also is central to the performances. Members will look at each other and ask who wants to present a song, or sometimes, the audience will request songs as well. Sometimes when a song isn't suggested, the band will turn to the bluegrass playbook.
According to member Ron Fellman, the enduring appeal of the band comes from “making music with your friends.”
“There’s something about instruments and voices joining together where one plus one or nine plus nine equals much more than the mathematical sum,” he said.
For the neighbors who attend, the weekly concerts are also a tradition.
“It's something that happens every week, that there's always some new music,” said attendee Linda Wegner. “And I like just listening, just about any kind of music. And it’s a regular neighborhood event. It’s important.”
Living just around the corner, she says it offers something much easier than listening to music at a venue.
“This is just something, you walk out of your house around the corner and it's happening. So it doesn't require planning,” she said.
Frank Pipers, a longtime resident of the neighborhood, has also been attending the performances for years.
“It just drives everyone into a wonderful feeling,” he said. “Everybody loves it. It's just a lovely, lovely way for everyone to get together.”
In fact, band members Ron and Debbie Fellman were introduced to the band as audience members. They first discovered The Driveway Drifters when they walked by and began listening to the music, and after three years of serving as spectators, finally started to perform with the group.
“I was a teacher for 30 years, and I just always used my guitar to work with kids,” Debbie Fellman said. “I was not a music teacher, but I loved being around music all the time. We loved coming by here and loved seeing what they were doing. These guys have been so patient.”
“And welcoming,” added Ron Fellman, who plays the cajon, a box-shaped, Afro-Peruvian percussion instrument. “I think that’s the key.”
Debbie Fellman says while she doesn't play to the band's caliber of performance, it's a "real treat" to be part of it.
While staples of the tradition always remain, the band also felt the challenge of losing McHugh, a percussionist, last year.
McHugh would lead the group in the John Denver song “Home Grown Tomatoes,” which Angie Eason said had “really touched our hearts.”
“We haven’t actually had the guts to play it,” she said. That is, since the group played it at his celebration of life.
The group said they figured he's still with them today, leaving out a chair for him sometimes.
“It was hard for us,” said Angie Eason. “For almost two months, nobody sat in his chair. It was hard, especially when his wife would come pedaling by and listen.”
She said he was "a big asset to the driveway band."
Although the performances are about to come to a close this year, attendee Betty Greenspan says the band performs in weather of all kinds, whether freezing, hot, or even raining.
Gary Eason says if the weather is "iffy," they'll crowd into the garage, as they did about two weeks ago.
Sometimes, Greenspan says, she’ll open the window and say, “Good job!”
It's not just the immediate neighbors that have embraced the band; they have also been invited to play at community events like a Christmas celebration and the community's Nature Day at the Bay.
“There's always people who like traditional type music, which is kind of what we play, and I think people get a kick out of it, as long as you keep it upbeat. I think they enjoy it," said Gary Eaton.
Cohen notes that not that many communities have similar opportunities for live music.
“It's a more interesting phenomenon, I think, than just that we enjoy it, but the fact that other people do it too is huge, I think, for the community,” he said.
