Mad Love

“Tragedy sometimes leads to triumph. The lesson is especially true for Tee “Precise” Williams, frontman for local group Mad Love. “Without music, I don’t know how I would have dealt with it,” said Williams, whose love for music began with his two older brothers. “My brothers got me into it with freestyling and writing my own poems and rhymes,” he said. When his brothers were rapping lyrics, Williams would beat-box. While in elementary school, Williams often joined his brothers onstage during their high school talent show competitions. Williams eventually wrote and performed his own lyrics. The future was full of possibilities until tragedy struck the family. “Both of my brothers were murdered,” Williams said. “That was in ’06 and ’07. And then my father in ’08.” Williams turned to music. “Just writing music and recording, that’s all I did,” he said. “And now, those same recordings, we’re making them live songs with the band.” - Michael Smith

“Opening the evening’s festivities was local hip hop group, MadLovE. The lead singer is called Precise by many, his given name is Terrence “Tee” Williams. Williams hails from Pensacola and shows a lot of pride for the area he’s from, with original music written about the area and video’s made on the streets of Pensacola. Williams teamed up with a group of talented musicians and formed MadLovE. They are a hip hop group that perform originals from Williams solo and mix albums. They fuse classic hip hop covers every now and then. MadLovE has opened for a number of performers such as, Grammy Award winning Arrested Development, Fishbone, Hip Hop legend Big Daddy Kane and The last Supper, platinum rapper Coolio.” - KATE PETERSON

MadLovE front man and Pensacola native Terrence “Tee” Williams, aka Precise, likes to say he plays the esophagus. The band’s vocalist first took the stage at 10 with his brothers, then moved on to writing and performing on his own.

“I started writing when I was 18,” Williams recounts. “I just wrote poetry, what I was feeling on a daily basis. Life around me.” Offstage, Williams, who lives in Midway, is the General Manager at Third Base Pub in Gulf Breeze.

The band came together five years ago. Its current lineup includes Williams, Paul Pugh on drums, Joshua Hawkey on guitar, Nikolai Savino on keyboard/vocals and Brian Vogel on horns. The band MadLovE’s first collection of original music comes out at the end of the month.

They’ve opened for Big Daddy Kane, Coolio, Arrested Development, Fish Bone and Slum Village; and just a couple of weeks ago, Juvenile.

The band’s sound is eclectic. “Ours is really hip hop, with a splash of reggae, rock and funk,” Williams notes. “Once they hear us, they always ask us to come back. People really dig the music.”

Williams writes about everything. “The first car I ever drove, the stuff going on in our generation, our community, it could be stuff about love. A little bit of politics here and there; just life in general. Every song’s different. We give you style, but we also give you substance.”

Working with MadLovE introduced him to the range of sounds the band draws from, Williams recounts. “It opened my eyes up to different kinds of music,” he notes. “You’ve got five other people and they all grew up differently. I learned different stuff so I would go home and download and look at all of it.”

Drummer Paul Pugh came on board three years ago after seeing the band open for Arrested Development at Vinyl Music Hall in Pensacola. “I asked them if they we having tryouts — that’s how it started, going for a little jam and I’ve been playing for them ever since,” he notes. “Within the three years, we gone through a couple of different changes. Right now the line up’s real good. “If you’re playing with people who are not on the same page, it’s hard, but if you have good chemistry with your band mates, it’ll come together. That’s all it is, really, is good chemistry.”

Pugh, a former SeaBee who served 5 years in the Navy, cites a range of music influences – from punk rock to reggae to 90’s alternative grunge. “I like all kinds of stuff,” he notes. “I pretty much grew up following 311. When Dave Grohl came out with the Foo Fighters, I was definitely on top of that.”

The release party for MadLovE’s new album is open to the public. It happens October 24, 8 p.m., at Castaways, in Gulf Breeze. The band plays a variety of local venues — get details at: reverbnation. com/PRECISEMADLOVE. - Deborah Nelson