People ask me all the time about the experiences I have had since Tradewinds started. Depending on the circumstances, on different days I will give you different answers, but now, given that I just heard the question again, this is today’s version.
One would definitely be the first time Tradewinds came to play back on the home soil after Honeymooning Couple had become a hit. The promoter was the late Cyril Shaw and the first show was at the now defunct Astor Cinema in Georgetown. Our rhythm guitar man then was Glen Sorzano, of Trinidad, and one of his expressions about something popular was, “hot like a pepper seed,” a Trini expression I never heard anywhere else, and that was us that year at the Astor. The place was sold out but Shaw kept selling tickets because people wanted in; so much so that many of them ended up sitting on the floor in what they called “the house” area of the cinema, in rows between the seats. There was this feeling of enormous tension in the place, at least that’s how it felt to me. I rarely feel nervous going on stage, but this time, the first gig back home since Tradewinds hit, I was. It was something so powerful in the building you could see it in the crowd. It felt like a dam about to burst and that’s how it was when we started to play. The performance itself is a complete blank. I can’t tell you how long it lasted, or what songs we played and what songs we didn’t, but the place was bedlam. I know enough to know that a big part of it was that I was a Guyanese boy who had made a mark, and to make it in Trinidad was part of the excitement. You remember things for different reasons. I remember this one for that “Guyana feeling” in the cinema; you could almost touch it. Later that day, of course, I had a singular experience of a different kind (I’ve written about this before) when we shifted gears and performed for a smaller but equally frenzied crowd at the Cambridge Hotel; having lived away, I had no idea of the place’s reputation and Cyril Shaw wisely didn’t tell me, but five minutes into the performance I found out, as I reported before, that we were in a bawdy house.
A totally different experience, but also memorable, was our first appearance at Madison Square Garden, a place I had read about or heard about as a youth, and now there I was on this huge revolving stage in this famous place. That one was almost surreal; this couldn’t be happening. A barefoot country boy from Hague, at Madison Square Garden? Come on, padna; wake up from your dream. A great memory, too, was playing at Carnegie Hall in New York, a mecca, among other things, for music and it’s funny what you remember; in that case it was the absolutely beautiful sound of the Carnegie which I had heard about but never experienced. It was surreal. Every note you played or sang seemed to be magically circling the place and coming back to you in stereo on the stage. I don’t know the mechanics of it – perhaps the materials used in the building – but I found myself almost pausing to listen to it. A night to remember.
On a smaller scale, but also riveting, was a Mash night in the National Park (I know I’ve mentioned this before) where I was waiting to go on, standing in the dark at the side of the stage, and a woman walked up to me, said nothing, but threw her arms around me in a powerful embrace. I had no idea who she was, so I leaned back and said, “Do I know you?” The lady smiled, stepped back, and said two words, “Ah, you know,” and walked away into the night. It was a warm night, but I almost shivered. It was a thrill. The suddenness, the simplicity of it, and the impact. It truly left me speechless.
There are so many episodes, different forms, different levels. Just this week my friend Vic Fernandes, radio guru in Barbados, Tradewinds rep there for many years, reminded me of another. He wrote:
“There are so many Tradewinds stories…different scenes, different places, many of them you recall like last week.
“One at a place in the country, in Barbados, St.Andrew, Foster’s Funland, power went out, no backup power back then, hundreds of people in total darkness, nestled below the hills, the night lit up from the stars, no ambient lights from houses or street lamps, none were even close, the entrance was a good quarter mile from the actual venue.
“People stayed put for over two hours, just chatting and liming until power returned and the music started up. That was a memorable night, and then the band, and then the drive back, a few women piled into the Ford Maverick coming out of those hills in the early morning hours. There were many others, but that one was a standout. How people embraced you and the band was a feature of Bajan hospitality. The fans were always welcoming and embracing…good folks.”
I replied to Vic: “Wow. I had completely forgotten about that, but your mention of the long wait, and everybody staying put, brought it flooding back. As I get older, I find myself a grateful man for what has come to me in my life…my mother, to begin with, all that I am she moulded, and my own Guyana family, and then the children in Canada and the three in Cayman, and all the folks that made Tradewinds work – you in Barbados, Bobby Clarke in St. Lucia, Peter Michael in Antigua, three or four stalwarts in Trinidad, including the Chinee Man Ellis Chow Lin On, and Freddie Abdool here in Guyana, Stilly Fraser in St. Vincent and in Bequia. And of course, ultimately the people, their embrace as you mentioned, Barbados had a special thing going with us, and obviously here, home, where the glue is the strongest, I see it or hear it or read it every day, no exaggeration, every day, and people, I don’t know most of them, who stop me and hug me or insist on a photo, the list goes on. And particularly, some of the things they say. I recall, just a few years ago, playing a function in West Dem, at a place near Parika, and somebody brought a man over to me – he was actually a bartender in the function – and said, “He wants to shake your hand.” I stepped forward, shook the guy’s hand and gave him a hug. He had this big smile on his face, and he dropped this on me. “Man, to meet you…you gimme chicken skin.” Guyanese would know he meant “goose bumps.”
What a moment. Just from some songs you wrote, giving a grown man “chicken skin”? It doesn’t get much better than that.
