I met with Dan Joyner recently at Cups, in the heart of the Fondren district where, as Joyner puts it, people interested in the arts can hang out together. Joyner, 28, himself is an example of creativity nurtured. Now he is the area manager for Cups, but when I first met him in the spring of 1993, his senior year at Forest Hill High School in South Jackson, I also met his parents Evelyn and Robert. Like many supportive parents, they were again involved with one of Dan’s creative undertakings—Colonel’s Classics, a Forest Hill tradition that gave high school students, aided by dedicated teachers, a place to hang out: to write scripts, build sets, rehearse and present skits to an audience of their peers and loved ones in packed auditoriums.
Later I joined the Joyners on a drive to Brandon to a teen club where I witnessed even more parental support. Dan and three of his school friends had formed a band called Stanley right after junior high. Joyner had known Scott Brantley since elementary school and had met Will Golden and Matt Pleasant in the early years of Jackson Public School’s APAC performing arts program. “We learned so much that we just wouldn’t have gotten out of a regular public school curriculum especially since we were in the performing arts,” Joyner said.
Not too many years after their band started getting gigs, though, they became aware that another band “somewhere in New York” also was known as Stanley. “We’re like, ‘Well, we’re still Stanley!’ so that’s where [the band’s current name] came from.”
Joyner is glad he’s home after spending several years at college in Tennessee and with the band out in Los Angeles, trying to find their niche. Those boy bands were just becoming popular then, and record executives didn’t know what to do with original rockers Still Stanley. Besides, Joyner explained, “the longer I stayed away from here, the more I realized how much it called me back.”
Married since June 1998 to Amy Stewart—they’d been dating since high school—Joyner started at Cups about two years ago as a barista on Lakeland, then moved on to manage in North Park. “I couldn’t ask for a better job. I just love it,” he told me. He’s in and out of all the Cups daily and, besides helping the managers with their responsibilities, Joyner schedules the art at the Fondren and AmSouth stores as well as the Fondren weekend musicians. Turnabout is fair play—now it’s Joyner’s turn to do the nurturing of others’ creativity.
—Lynette Hanson
Recent Immigration Stories
The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the MFP Solutions Lab, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
