News of St. John, USVI

Christmas festival this weekend

This weekend's St. John Christmas Music Festival & Parade  will highlight a number of off-island gospel, R-and-B, and Soul musicians and an outstanding island-born artist, Victor Provost. 

The 22-year-old "Steel Pan Man" will solo and play with other featured artists including Michael Dunston and Maryel Epps during the free Saturday and Sunday concerts being organized by St. John's Steve Simon.  You can most likely also catch him at the Sunday afternoon Beach Bar jazz jam, starting at 4:30 p.m.

Provost grew up on St. John, where his father, Jim, was a public school teacher and is an accomplished musician who passed along his talent to Victor and his bother Eric.  Now working as an administrator of an arts program for the under-privileged in Portsmouth, Va., Provost says he's got the perfect job, "being paid to manage and develop a steel pan band."

This week's News of St. John podcast features an interview with Provost talking about the his music and his life growing up on island. Listen to it by clicking the > button on the player below.

 

How to get NOSJ podcasts automatically. Subscribe by copying this link to your podcatcher: http://fbarnako.libsyn.com/rss Or go to the iTunes Music Store, search for "st. john" and you'll find it.

"The pan", at its most simple, is a 55-gallon steel oil drum, cut down and smoothed, that musicians use a percussion instrument.  Invented in Trinidad in the 1930s, it's developed as an instrument capable of playing anywhere from four not to 3 octaves (28 notes).

Victor is the focus of this week's News of St. John podcast.  Listen to it here, or subscribe through the Apple iTunes Podcast Directory, search for "News of St. John."

Hearing "pan" music on St.. John is easy, Provost said in an interview.  "Look for Innervisions, a house reggae band, which has toured the US for the past several summers.  He also recommends hearing Paradise People, featuring Carl Powell and his brother, Eric Provost.  "Anyplace downtown ... Fred's, the Front Yard, down by Wharfside ... there is so much music on island, you kind of walk into it," he said.

Provost has just issued his first CD.  Here's his Web site, where you can hear samples. You can purchase it at CDBaby.com.  Delivered, my copy cost $17.47.  Great holiday gift. The sound of the pan just says,, and plays, "St. John" to me.

Christmas fest planned by Steve Simon

Three days of free Christmas music and and a parade are being organized by Steve Simon, St. John's resident concert producer and musician. 

"With Love from Love City"  will begin with an evening of Latin jazz on Dec. 16, followed the next night by an evening of gospel and R&B and smooth jazz, and capped by a Christmas candle light festival Sunday night.  Santa Claus and his elves will lead a procession from Mongoose Junction to the Winston Wells ball field, where the concerts will be staged, too.  The final night's concert will feature Calypso and reggae starring St. John's own Inner Visions band and the Ah Wee Band.

The three nights of free entertainment are being sponsored by a number of businesses including the Westin Resort, St. John resident Donald Sussman, Premier Wine & Spirits, Holiday Homes, American Paradise Real Estate, Tropical Properties, Theodore Tunick & Co., First Bank, the Inn at Tamarind Court, and the USVI Dept. of Tourism.  More information is available by e-mail Simon  at stevesimonlive@yahoo.com.

All-Girl band rocks the island

Wanda, Gretchen and Cat have been making music together for fun.  But their success on island is threatening to turn the pastime into a business. 

The bluesy trio, called Nectar, performs regularly at the Beach Bar and Island Blues, and reportedly stole the concert when they took the stage at Steve Simon’s Blues Festival earlier this year.  The band members are Gretchen Rhodes, lead vocalist; Cat Braaten, singer and guitarist, and Wanda Burgos, percussionist. 

“It’s empowering for women and little girls on the island,” Wanda told the St. John Tradewinds. “They are seeing something they haven’t seen before.”  The trio discovered each other’s talents about two years ago at a Beach Bar event.  Asked to describe their music, the musicians called it, “Eclectic funk with a kiss of Latin.”

4th of July Celebration a hit

Soca music, mocko jumbies, kids in costumes ... just another 4th of July in Cruz Bay on St. John.  Hundreds of people wandered through the downtown streets, some sipping a tall cool one, others shading themselves in the bandstand, and most everyone smiling, according to an article in the Virgin Islands Daily News. 

The Celebration parade began at Noon, winding from Margherita Phil's across from the barge dock, down to the ferry dock.  There were some 40 entrants.  Caneel Bay Resort again produced one of the most extravagant floats.  "Fish 'n Paradise" featured about 40 employees and their children, dressed like fish and mermaids and sea urchins. The four hour party that followed featured entertainment from the Love City Pan Dragons, and the Caribbean Cultural Dancers. The traditional fireworks display over Cruz Bay was, in part, funded by the Westin Resort.

"Carnival to me is the parade when everybody comes out," St. John resident Jennifer Robinson told the St. John Source as she marched through the streets of Cruz Bay with the Middle Age Majorettes.

(This article contains links to photos on the Web sites of both the Virgin islands Daily News and the St. John Source.)

TV time for St. John

Looks like the island is going to see some video crews this summer and get some more national exposure in November.  Thanks to Kenny Chesney.  Again. Billboard Magazine reports the entertainer of the year will appear in his first network special on ABC-TV the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 23.  The one-hour "Kenny Chesney: Somewhere in the Sun" will include tracks from his concerts as we;; as "moments shot both on the road and at his home in the Caribbean."  Several unnamed celebrity friends, and even Mrs. C., are expected to make cameos in the show.

More about Buffett and Chesney

Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffett did sing at least one song together at this week's concert for Philip Morris executives at the Westin Resort, St. John.  One person who watched the show from the beach, outside Buffett's custom-made tent (lighting grids, huge amplifiers, generators) said, "I heard Kenny.  And I saw his hat."  Another report said Eric Clapoton was in the audience. And the boat people at the shoreline were having a great time ... lots of skinny dipping and topless dancing on deck,  sources tell the Inquiring Iguana.

Buffett rocks the boats

Reporting from Blue Tang villa, above Cruz Bay
   The perfect place for your spring vacation. E-mail frank@newsofstjohn.com.

Jimmy Buffett performed for the Phillip Morris conference Tuesday night under a tent at the Westin St. John while hundreds of would-be concert crashers lined the shores and villa porches of Great Cruz Bay. 

Close to the beach, at least a dozen small craft, dinghies and even a fishing boat with a Tuna Tower seemed lashed together to line the shore to applaud and sing along to tracks from Buffett's newset CD, "License to Chill," as well as old favorites like "Margaritaville" and "Cheeseburger in Paradise." Fog horns punctuated applause and cheers rose from the crowd whenever Buffet began a song that was recognized.

For the first time in memory, there were security guards at the Westin restricting access to the resort's main entrance and its service road behind the facility.  We saw several people turned away, with no amount of yapping successful.  One woman, carrying a 12-pack of Miller Lite, trudged back to her car.

The concert began about 10 pm and went nearly to 11:30pm.  Nobody in the neighborhood seemed to mind the late hour. 

We started out at a picnic table along the Estate Cruz Bay-owned dinghy dock.  In the dark, Donna and I sat down and the couple across the table recognized us.  We'd met them last weekend at the Battery, when we attended the Artists Association of St. John show.  They are residents of St. John, moved here from Chicago two years ago - but he's heading up a DC-based biotech company and so commutes back to the capitol two weeks each month.  When he's here, he works online

There were about 20 other people on the shore with us, some asking "Who IS playing."  While we'd been expecting Buffett or even Tina Turner (! - another rumor), a reggae band (Cool Breezes?) opened the show.  Then came Buffett, and for the Phillip Morris people - whose parent company also makes Miller beers - it was Buffet Time.

Amazingly, the sound down on the water was kind of soft, so we repaired to our house, Blue Tang, and its pool deck, quaffed a few Greenies, and had a marvelous, memorable evening.

Old music, new friends ... ah, this island!

Music in the park

Koko and the Sunshine Band played old-time calypso "scratch" music in Great Cruz Bay Park at Wednesday as part of the week's St. John Arts Festival, featuring musical and arts events on island to celebrate the historic African culture of St. John. Right click with your mouse to download a minuite of the music.

Tuesday, Inner Visions amped up their reggae tunes, creating a thunderous sound in the local plaza, making it difficult to have a conversation with anyone anywhere around the ferry dock.

Later today, Elaine Estern is opening her Coconut Coast Studios at Frank Bay to a "Meet the Artist" event.  Meanwhile, at the Annaberg ruins, boat makers from the British Virgin Islands are telling stories and teaching old techniques.

It's Chesney time

Kenny Chesney has a new album set for release Jan. 25 and it is laden with references to St. John.  Some folks wish the singer, who has a home at Peter Bay, would stop drawing attention to the island, and that visitors would stop asking where they can find him. The singer has been known to mix libations at Morgan's Mango and the Beach Bar while he's on island. 

"When I went down  to the islands, I didn't know what I was going to find," he says on his Web site. "I think the pace and the people have allowed  me to just quietly get in touch with who I really am and the things that matter to me."

The new tracks include plenty of references to St. John, plus TWO versions of "Old Blue Chair," the song which refers, reportedly, to a chair Chesney found on the beach below his house - and in which he sits, contemplates, and writes.  Some of the  lyrics: ""He's an island boy, living a stone's throw from St. Croix, he's finally found his piece of serenity" and "Oh I wish I was there at night, on Jost Van Dyke , sippin' on some Foxy's firewater rum"

You can hear clips of the new album AND see videos of Kenny with his shirt off, here

It was party time!

They were looking for thousands at Foxy's annual year-ender party on Jost Van Dyke.  The 40-year tradition at the Great Harbor usually draws about 600 boats and 8,000 people on New Year's Eve, the Virgin Islands Daily News reported.  "Everything is jamming," said Foxy Callwood, the dreadlocked businessman who started it all with a beach side bar so long ago. "There is eating and drinking and there is music on the big stage on the outback.  It's just people having a good time."

There were good times on St. John, too.  Not the least of which was Steve Simon's jazz concert/party at the Westin resort. Read all about it here.