TEMPLE TERRACE — When the pandemic shut down live music in 2020, musician Colt Clark turned his living room into a stage and ended up creating a viral family band seen by millions.
On Sept. 20 at the Hutchinson Auditorium at Florida College in Temple Terrace, Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids — sons Cash (15) and Beckett (14) and daughter Bellamy (11) — will be playing its first local concert.
Clark, who started playing James Taylor and Tom Petty songs on the guitar as a teenager and has been a professional musician for 25 years, may have dreamed of one day being a rock star, but what he got was much better.
“This was definitely not the road I thought I’d take,” he said, laughing.
As an out-of-work musician during the COVID pandemic, Clark’s friends encouraged him to livestream solo performances to make a little extra money.
Instead, “I just think I’m going to play a song with the kids instead,” he told them.
He grabbed his guitar, called in his kids, at the time just 10, 9 and 6, and launched a new band.
The idea was to make a video to post on Facebook for the kids’ grandparents to see, since everyone was trapped inside at the time.
Wife Aubree recorded the group’s first cover, the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care,” and posted it.
By the time the family returned from a drive through shuttered Temple Terrace and around the golf course, the video had racked up more than 10,000 views.
“We were like, who saw this? How did this happen?” Aubree said.
The answer: everyone.
Within weeks, Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids were lockdown-era luminaries, striking a chord with audiences craving a little bit of joy.
Their wholesome and happy takes on classic rock reached millions, landing them spots on “Good Morning America” and “The Ellen Show.” They turned down “America’s Got Talent” on several occasions, and their videos found their way to the artists they covered — Jimmy Buffett, Bob Seger, John Fogerty, Micky Dolenz of the Monkees and Randy Bachman of Bachman-Turner Overdrive all sent notes and emails saying they enjoyed watching.
“None of us expected anything to come of this, other than our parents would get a kick out of seeing the kids when you know we weren't allowed to leave our houses,” said Aubree, a professional photographer who is essentially the band’s art director, handling the video and social media.
Five years later, the family is still making music. Its YouTube channel has nearly 500,000 subscribers, and its social media following tops 1 million.
And on Sept. 20, they’ll bring it back to where it all began, playing their first hometown concert at Florida College’s Hutchinson Auditorium in Temple Terrace.
For Clark, it will be personal.
His parents met at the school, and he studied music there. Some of the concert proceeds will benefit the school’s music program.
“We’ll be playing for people that we love, and we thought it would be cool to open it up to the community and meet some of the people that might be music fans in the Tampa Bay area,” Colt said.
Ironically, despite their millions of views, Aubree says she is not sure how many neighbors even know about them.
The Quarantine Kids aren’t a local band that has gone national, but rather an international band going local.
During the pandemic, their videos exploded in places like Nova Scotia, which embraced the family’s infectious performances on their own online platforms. In Brazil some of their repurposed clips on TikTok scored tens of millions of views. And they have received emails from all over the world.
“Our audience is spread across the world,” Aubree said. “There may not be many people in Tampa who even know we’re here. So we’d love to play more live events locally.”
The recipe to Colt and the Quarantine’s Kids success is simple: Dad teaches the kids a new song every day, sometimes in less than an hour, and then Aubree records the performance.
The set list leans on 1970s and ’80s rock, although they occasionally mix in Prince, Jonas Brothers or even Taylor Swift. The Beatles are a family favorite, and Colt estimates they have played over 200 of the super group’s songs.
“We’ve played even their most obscure songs,” he added, and Colt considers the Beatles use of chord progressions and harmonies a foundation for teaching the kids how to play music.
Some of the Quarantine Kids’ biggest hits online include the Beatles “Ob La Di, Ob La Da” (9 million views), the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” (3.2 million) and “Come Together” (2.4 million).
What began as Colt rearranging songs, sometimes from scratch, to fit young hands has turned into something more sophisticated. Cash plays guitar and bass; Beckett is a drummer who also dabbles in bass; and Bellamy, the group’s firecracker performer, handles keys and bass while learning guitar.
“They’re all multi-instrumentalists now,” Aubree said.
The kids even have side projects. The boys are in their own bands, and Aubree says she’s been hearing a lot of Toto drifting from practice sessions lately.
Meanwhile, the family is working on its first original album, with several new songs in progress and a couple of Colt’s older tracks reimagined.
“We were really interested in showing them the process from writing to recording to, you know, playing their music live and having it be their own and things like that,” Aubree said. “So this has been just another part of the learning process for them, which has been really cool to see.”
Colt is having a blast. He says his kids have caught up to him when he was just starting out at age 14.
He grew up in Ocala playing coffee houses and restaurants as a teenager and has been a professional musician ever since. He has had a regular solo gig at the Don CeSar for 15 years and also plays at the JW Marriott in Tampa and various corporate events.
Sometimes, he even brings his kids to work with him.
“It’s been a blessing,” Aubree said. “But it's always about doing something fun with our family. We've all always agreed that if ever it becomes not fun, we're not going to do it anymore.”
So far, the fun hasn’t faded. The kids continue to learn something new every day, like how to write songs and produce an album. They are also eager to get out in front of new fans.
“During the live shows, it's like something possesses their souls,” Aubree said, chuckling. “They become these people that are just very comfortable on the stage and smiling and taking their solos and stepping out. It's really cool to see them doing something they really love.”
And as long as they can keep that feeling live, Colt and the Quarantine Kids say they will keep sharing their music one hit song — and soon, maybe one of their own — at a time.
To purchase tickets to the concert, visit FCFineArts.com/tickets.
For more information on Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids or to watch their videos, visit Facebook.com/ColtClarkMusic, or YouTube.com/c/TheClarkFamilyCreative.