Steven Quesenberry Talks About His Floyd-based Memoir
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on April 22, 2021.
Steven Quesenberry had the first inkling to write his Floyd-based memoir, Caveman Supersonic: A Tale of Three Brothers, when he was a teenager. Much later, when his brother Darryl (Animal) was visiting him in Northern Virginia where he lives, they were sitting around the kitchen table telling old stories of family dysfunction when Quesenberry’s wife (at the time) interrupted them to say, “You guys do know that this isn’t normal, right?’
The idea to write crystalized with the realization that his was a unique story.
An executive chef by profession, Quesenberry is an avid reader who has always written for himself and sometimes writes song lyrics for bands he’s been in. He comes from a musical family. His late father was a local virtuoso on the banjo. His brother Darryl (Animal, Funky D), who passed away in 2020, was a consummate musician locally, and later in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida.
Told primarily from the perspective of the author as a child while living in a downtown Floyd trailer, the book chronicles Quesenberry’s early childhood, which was fraught with poverty, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, his oldest brother Gerald’s (Caveman) rages and the confusion and fear of being a child frequently left on his his own at an early age.
With the Mayberry Funeral Home on one side of the run-down trailer and the Old Jacksonville Cemetery on the another, Quesenberry’s young life was the stuff of haunting stories. He played in the cemetery and was especially drawn to the stone table grave, which he named “the witches table.” “I don’t know if there was a witch there. But the terror was real,” he said, referring to sleep paralysis that he struggled with, which caused him to sometimes wake up on the floor.
Writing the book “opened the floodgates,” Quesenberry said during a recent visit to Floyd. He was on his way home to Northern Virginia after visiting his niece (Darryl’s daughter) in Asheville NC.
“A by-product of the book was that I had to be wide open. It was very cathartic,” said Quesenberry. “I’m more comfortable expressing emotion now. It was a little rough in the beginning,” he said.
When asked how he has been able to adjust as an adult after experiencing early-childhood trauma, Quesenberry said, “My coping mechanism has been work. I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic. Even as a teenager, I was working full time jobs, mostly in restaurants.” He noted that being a hard worker is a trait that runs through-out his family.
Caveman Supersonic, which concludes with the author leaving Floyd with his mother and step-father at the age of seven, is the first book in a projected series of three. It was written in 4 months. It poured out from memories and the narrative took on its own a timeline. Quesenberry described the second book, which he’s recently started working on, as a continuation of the first book. Although there is a plotline for his brothers, it is primarily his own coming of age story.
“I’ll be introducing a new character. There’s a new Caveman,” he said. “I love Appalachian characters. People don’t believe they exist, but they do. I’ve met them,” he continued. He added that he also likes to include local lore in his books.
After stopping at “the witches table,” Quesenberry took some photos of Dogtown Roadhouse, which was where his mother worked when it was a garment factory, and where he and his brother played two years ago, under the name of Animal’s last band incarnation, Funky D’s Deja Voodoo. It was Animal’s goodbye tour, as he was dying of cancer. He was joined by a band of regional musician friends from the old days (80s).
“Animal was a drummer, a bass player, a keyboardist, a singer, a booker, a festival organizer and a sound guy. His death devastated me,” said the younger Quesenberry, who periodically lived with his older brother after he left home at the age of sixteen.
The response to Caveman Supersonic has been positive and now Quesenberry is reaching out to a larger audience, with the help of his editor Rebecca Hill, Quesenberry said. He likens publishing and promoting the book to putting out a music CD, which he has done in the past. Animal taught his younger brother to play drums and Quesenberry has played in punk and blues bands and a Phish tribute band over the years.
“The first book is sad,” Quesenberry acknowledged, “but everything worked out for me. Everything worked out with Animal. He ended up at a pinnacle.” Quesenberry described how Animal mentored young musicians, recorded albums (the last of which is in the works now) and performed the original songs he wrote over the years at his last concert.
“The ultimate goal of these books is to put it out that you can be whatever you want to be. There’s nothing that holds you back. Say yes,” Quesenberry said. __________Colleen Redman
