Ulysses Owens, Jr. has been surrounded by music all his life.
He began playing drums when he was just two years old, learning to play before he could even read or talk. His mother was a choir director and his father ran the sound ministry for their church. And it was in that church on the Northside that Owens first began performing and playing drums. Once he attended Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, Owens said he knew he wanted to play drums for the rest of his life.
After graduating from Douglas Anderson, Owens moved to New York in 2001 to attend the prestigious Juilliard. His professional career went through several chapters, from jazz drummer to band director to Broadway musician and Owens has loved it all.
“What I love about being an artist is you never stop growing, you never stop innovating and creating new pathways to know more about what you do,” he said.
Today, splitting his time and his life between New York City and Jacksonville, Owens said he feels a bit like Superman and Clark Kent.
In New York, he pursues his music. In Avondale, he can spend time with his family, including his three-year-old son and be involved with Don’t Miss a Beat, the nonprofit he and his family launched in 2008 to enlighten youths and young adults through the power and community of musical theater production.
Owens decided to make the Bold City his home base once again in late 2019. Three months later, the pandemic hit and everything changed.
“I tell people that if I had lived in New York during the pandemic. I don’t know how I would have survived,” he said.
While being near family was the an immense relief and priority during that time, being in Jacksonville also allowed him to thrive in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in New York. It was during that time that Owens launched jam sessions at Riverside’s non-alcoholic bar, Wildcrafters and, later, organized the Don’t Miss a Beat Jazz Festival in 2021.
“What I loved about being in Florida was that it gave me this open terrain where I was the only person doing what I do versus in New York, I’m one of thousands so I love it,” Owens said.
Today, the two cities bring out two different sides of Owens’ personality:
“Florida is my downtime,” he said. “When I’m there, I’m just a single dad, I’m hanging out with my family, just doing really cool, chill things. Then I come back to New York to sort of be, you know, larger than life and engage in artistic activity. So I kind of feel like it’s Clark Kent versus Superman. In New York I’m Superman and in Jacksonville, I get to be Clark Kent.”
When the pandemic ended, Owens began to split his time once again between his two homes: Tuesdays through Thursdays during the school years, he was in New York, teaching at his alma mater, Juilliard, and Fridays through Monday, he was in Avondale with his family and raising his son. Summers were spent on the First coast to be involved with Don’t Miss a Beat’s Broadway Experience summer camp.
Today, Owens still splits his time between his two bases, but his days in New York are committed to his Broadway debut as the drummer in “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical.”
His regular commutes have made him a familiar face at Jacksonville International Airport.
“I know the folks at Jacksonville airport very well,” he said. “…They’re like extended family.”
And though he admits that his schedule every week is grueling and at times very difficult, it’s one that works best for him to feel fulfilled in multiple aspects of his life. A life in New York has allowed him to grow and flourish as an artist in a way that may not have been possible had he stayed in Jacksonville, he said.
“We just haven’t built the [musical] community yet in Jacksonville,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of great artists but we haven’t built the community financially yet to be able to help artists sustain. So you have a lot of artists in that community that are doing great work, but they have to do all these other things to maintain their art versus in New York, you can actually survive as an artist because you can make enough income to do it.”
Owens co-parents his son, who splits his time between Owens and his mother in Orange Park. Music may be genetic since Owens said his son has also started showing some interest and skill in music.
“Everything is Mickey Mouse right now and he’s singing along and actually in tune, which is kind of scary,” Owens said. “There’s some musicality in there somewhere because he’s not just singing, he’s singing the pitches and sometimes he harmonizes. I’m like, ‘Oh, did I recreate another one?’”
