Filling Pier 7 With Song

Musician Chris Breeding is putting a soundtrack to an evening ritual in Coconut Grove, strumming and singing as the sun sets over Pier 7 at Dinner Key Marina.

As the sun begins to fall and Coconut Grove’s crisp-blue sky fades into hazy pink and orange, Chris Breeding shuts his laptop, grabs his acoustic guitar and heads to the bow of his red Dufour sailboat.   

With nothing but gentle waves on either side of him, Breeding begins to strum the tune to whatever song calls to him that night. Tonight it’s “Scarlet Begonias” – the Grateful Dead song he named his boat after. 

Breeding, 52, is not playing for anyone in particular. 

A single father of three coming off a hard year where he lost one job only to find another that takes a heavy emotional toll, Breeding says music brings release. 

“Truly, for me, it’s cheaper than a therapist,” he said. “I get more out of it than anybody else gets from hearing it.”

But the liveaboards and boaters at Dinner Key Marina have taken notice of his twangy, gritty renditions of rock tunes. 

In the beginning, when Breeding first began to play, they often pulled their dinghies close to listen, and sometimes crooned along to end another day on the waterfront. 

Over time, Breeding acquired an audience, and a following. 

That’s when he decided – in December 2024 – to take his talents to land, in hopes of reaching more people and possibly building a community united through music. 

Every evening since – weather and children permitting – Breeding has made his way to Pier 7 at Dinner Key Marina just in time to perform as the sun kisses the horizon. 

“I’m like the postman, you know, I’m going be here – rain, sleet, snow, shine. I’m here,” he says.

Plugged into an amp and microphone, with an 180-degree view of the sunset, Breeding sings looking into the horizon — sometimes for hours at a time — until the stress of the day fades away. 

Breeding starts each night without a set list. Sometimes his playlist is inspired by the color of the sunset – think “Something in the Orange” by Zach Bryan – or by the moon, which might coax him to play “Harvest Moon” by Neil Young. 

“My favorite song is what the person in front of me wants to hear,” he said. 

As he performs, Breeding says hello to just about everyone that passes by, and he often asks people – including this reporter – to join him in song.

Breeding doesn’t put out a tip jar – he says that has never been his goal.

“I don’t do it for money. I just do it for smiles,” he says. 

Still, he’s received many tips over the past year, often in the form of food or beer, and once, a sailboat. 

He’s also developed a following, and become a fixture at Dinner Key in the process. 

People now set up folding chairs to listen, marina employees crack open a beer after their shift, and liveaboards bring dinner out to the nearby picnic tables.  

“It’s become a location,” said Jennifer White, a regular along the Grove waterfront. “Before it was just a space to walk by.”

Breeding’s Journey to Pier 7 

Breeding seems every bit the typical “Florida man,” often donning the liveaboard uniform: a backwards baseball hat, short-sleeved button-down shirt, flip flops and a pair of shades. 

But he hails from several states over. Born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, Breeding moved all around the United States for a former corporate job, including a 15-year stint in Nashville, before his work brought him to Pembroke Pines.

Two years into his time in South Florida, Breeding was let go. With three children and a sky-high rental market, Breeding scrambled for a solution. He wound up at Dinner Key, tossing around the idea of buying a houseboat to list on Airbnb as a side hustle. 

While he didn’t pursue the venture, the houseboat owner offered to let him live for free temporarily while he sorted his life out. Breeding sent his children to live with their mother and became a Grove liveaboard. 

“I fell in love with it immediately,” he said. “If you had told me a month before that, that I’d be living on a boat I would have laughed.”

With no job, no permanent home, and separated from his three children, Breeding wondered how he would make things work. 

And then one night changed everything. 

As Breeding tells the story, he was headed home after a late-night grocery run – dinghy style – when he heard a woman call for help. When he found her, the woman was slowly sinking underneath the dinghy dock along Pier 7. 

“I’ll never forget it,” he says today. “Eyes open, looking straight up at me. And I just reached out (and) I grabbed her.” 

Back on the shore, Breeding sat with her for hours, waiting for her family to arrive. Weeks later, to repay him for his kindness, she signed over the title to the red, 27-foot Dufour that had been sitting idle in the marina. 

Breeding had a boat of his own; he could stay in the Grove.

He never forgot what happened that night, and when it came time to choose his inland stage, Pier 7 called him home. “I’m a Christian, a spiritual guy, so I don’t want to say it’s a spiritual place, but it kind of is,” he said. 

Within a few months, Breeding’s entire life changed. He found a home to rent, moved his three children back to Miami, and started a new job as a financial advisor for low-income employees. “It was a blessing in disguise, that whole layoff,” he said. 

Now he lives for days spent on the water, and nights spent singing with neighbors, friends and passers-by. 

Breeding has also begun to perform at other spots around the Grove. He’s busked on Fuller Street, been recruited to perform for the Coconut Grove Sailing Club, and has a new gig as the Sunday musician at Shore to Door Fish Market on Grand Avenue. 

White sees Breeding as a present-day addition to the Grove’s musical tradition – a tradition that includes Joni Mitchell, the Eagles and Jimmy Buffet. 

“It’s really about bringing the groove back to the Grove,” she says 

White is one of several people who have joined the Pier 7 club – a cohort of artists, liveaboards and locals, all drawn in by the magic of the marina. 

As the music continues into the new year, you can find them here, discussing boat engine maintenance, passing around a crock pot, and tapping their toes to the melody.  

“When the sunset and the music are combined, it’s the perfect mixture,” said Cynthia Fleischmann, a local body-paint artist, fresh off singing “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” with Breeding.

And here is where you’ll find Breeding, singing “Feelin’ Groovy” with a smile stretched across his face while White invents new lyrics and dances as night falls at Pier 7.