David Metzl
palmettoreport@gmail.com

* Editor’s note: This podcast is provided courtesy of our partners at Eagle Air Radio.

(Rock Hill, S.C.) — If you’ve been to a concert in Rock Hill anytime over the last 15 years, there is a good chance that Mike Gentry, a Winthrop University employee and alumnus, has had a hand in making that show possible.

Gentry, who graduated from Winthrop in 2008 with a degree in fine arts , is a long-time musician and music promoter who founded Don’t Sweat It Inc., a non-profit dedicated to “fostering local music and offering free and low cost events” for the community, according to the group’s website.

Don’t Sweat It began in 2010 as an annual music festival, but was organized as a non-profit in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gentry says the last few decades have seen growth in the Rock Hill music community.

“I’ve been hosting these concerts for 15 years. That’s a big part of who I am. I organize, I connect people, now I know musicians from all over the world,” Gentry said.

Most of the concerts take place at the Courtroom, which is located in Rock Hill’s Tom S. Gettys Center. The venue is managed by the Arts Council of York County, where Gentry worked prior to taking his current position as director of the Winthrop University Galleries.

“We started a band and when I worked at the Arts Council, I saw the Courtroom space was being used and I was like ‘hey can I use this space to host concerts’ and they were like, ‘okay.’ Because during that time we were hosting a lot of house shows,” he said. “But using the Courtroom kind of made it a little more public and we could invite the community to come.”

Gentry said he is especially proud of his program, because it connects local musicians and provides them and the audience with new opportunities.

“For most of the years the Courtroom has been hosting concerts, we’ve been doing this project called ‘Band From a Hat,’” he said, which encourages local singers, guitar players, drummers and others to put their names into a hat. The names are then drawn randomly to form a new band.

“It puts people together playing music that maybe never would have met,” Gentry said. “This fun activity really fostered local music. So many bands got started, so many people met and some of the bands are still playing today.”

Some artists, Gentry said, now preforming on a national level, got their start at Concerts in the Courtroom, but he says he wants to stay focused on local acts.

When asked about the possibility of hosting bigger name acts, Gentry says smaller music venues provide a more personal feel and an experience that stays with a person much longer.

“I want our money to stay here, I want our energy to stay here, I want to lift up our own performers,” he said. “I’m building something here and I really want to keep building it.”

He said Don’t Sweat It has really grown since those early days.

“Really I started doing this because I wanted to have a place where my bands could perform,” Gentry said. “But now I try to create opportunities for artists to get their start and it’s really fulfilling.”