Native’s Alternative Suggestions: Nadene Grossman Orr

Key West’s wildly inventive Nadene Grossman Orr holds the keys to one thing many can’t unlock — an insider’s information of all issues Florida Keys, her personal success, and among the Keys’ craziest, most outlandish and widespread occasions.

“We’ve obtained connections,” mentioned Grossman Orr, Key West’s occasion planner extraordinaire.

As president and chief government officer of her 21-year-old firm, We’ve Received the Keys, she possesses a lyrically melodious — and persuasive — voice.

Grossman Orr produces the annual Key West Songwriters Competition, which is now in its twenty ninth 12 months and runs April 30 to Could 4. The favored competition boasts almost 250 performers on greater than 50 phases all through the southernmost island metropolis within the continental United States.

The Key West Songwriters Competition, launched in 1995, is understood immediately because the world’s largest competition of its variety. And it’s develop into a launchpad for rising nation artists and a showcase for high nation music expertise.

This 12 months’s artists embody Nate Smith, Chase Matthew, LOCASH, Jeffrey Steele, James Slater, Raul Malo, Rebecca Lynn Howard and a large number of award-winning and rising expertise.

“It’s a ceremony of passage… a stepping stone for artists,” Grossman Orr mentioned. “We had Luke Combs right here in 2016, a 12 months earlier than he hit it large. We’ve had wonderful artists reminiscent of Kasey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, Maren Morris, Morgan Wallen, and Lee Brice. The artists have as a lot enjoyable because the followers do on the competition.”

Grossman Orr helped water the fledgling seeds of the Key West Songwriters Competition’s growth with founders Charlie Bauer and Drew Reid, the domestically well-known proprietor and musician, respectively, at Hog’s Breath Saloon.

Whereas working as each a Hog’s Breath cocktail server and a Hilton lodge concierge, she satisfied Hilton’s native administration to accommodate a couple of songwriters in change for a sundown efficiency on a waterfront pier.

“This allowed us to develop the competition and invite extra performing songwriters,” she recalled. “From the inaugural occasions, we continued to associate with extra inns and venues every year. I’m only a inventive thinker. The celebrities aligned.”

The Key West Songwriters Competition has proved to be so widespread that present proprietor Rams Head Presents in 2022 franchised the Annapolis Songwriters Competition, modeled after the Key West fest, in Annapolis, Maryland. Sponsor BMI, representing greater than 1.4 million songwriters, composers and publishers, selects featured expertise.

My occasion director, Liz Love, me, and Kirby Myers at La Concha’s 99th celebration and grand opening occasion.
(picture courtesy of Nadine Grossman Orr)

We’ve Received the Keys organizes the fest’s occasions and schedules. “It’s logistical, like an enormous puzzle, and my most difficult occasion,” mentioned Grossman Orr.

Grossman Orr additionally produces and organizes different widespread island-wide happenings together with the Key Lime Competition, held July 2-6, over the July 4th weekend; Fantasy Fest, this 12 months themed “Bedtime Tales & Magical Monsters” and slated Oct. 17-26; and a Style of Key West, scheduled March 23, 2026, at Truman Waterfront Park.

Grossman Orr, identified for creating full of life outrageous occasions, mentioned her favourite private Fantasy Fest recollections embody showcasing lots of Key West’s native personalities as grand marshal for the Fantasy Fest Parade and within the 10-day occasion’s Masquerade March, often called “the locals’ parade.” She particularly enjoys seeing Fantasy Fest’s inventive floats and parade teams delight scores of spectators.

We’ve Received the Keys, shaped in 2004, additionally organizes and plans incentive journey packages, celebrations and occasions for teams, sometimes starting from 25 to 400 contributors.

“Our common dimension group is 50 to 80,” Grossman Orr mentioned. “I like working with individuals and making recollections of Key West experiences that may final their lifetimes.”

Grossman Orr first arrived in Key West in 1991, “contemporary out of faculty” and only a week previous to Fantasy Fest, with a serious in artwork and sociology from SUNY Geneseo. The native of South Setauket on Lengthy Island, New York, got here to handle the Excessive Tide Gallery within the 800 block of Duval Road.

Through the Nineties, she additionally labored in gross sales and crewed at Sebago Watersports Key West, was a cocktail server and a resort concierge. She has fond early recollections of native icons Jimmy Buffett and Richard Hatch, the Blue Heaven restaurateur, and famed treasure hunter Mel Fisher.

“It was a reasonably wonderful time,” she recalled. “There have been plenty of Key West personalities who strolled the dock.”

In 2003, she reigned as Fantasy Fest Queen through the occasion’s milestone twenty fifth anniversary, using her native contacts as a concierge to lift essentially the most quantity of funds for AIDS Assist Inc. (now A.H. Monroe, supporting people affected by HIV and AIDS).

My Household – My husband, Trevor, daughter, Meredith, and me.
(picture courtesy of Nadine Grossman Orr)

In Key West, Grossman Orr’s husband Trevor additionally works with We’ve Received the Keys, overseeing advertising packages with concierges. Daughter Meredith, 10, enjoys singing and performing with Bravo Theatre Camp, a five-week summer season program culminating with a full-scale musical manufacturing.

“Key West is only a magical place,” mentioned Grossman Orr, about her adopted hometown of 34 years.

Her motto: “Dream it. Do it.”

The place she dines: Origami Sushi Bar and Sq. Grouper Key West

The place she explores: All through the Florida Keys and in Michigan

How she relaxes: “I work an excessive amount of … however with household and buddies, on the seashore, lake or wherever close to the water!”