Cruisin' along on the LRBC
When you’re “into” music as much as I am, you end up developing a musical bucket list. See The Stones, check; The Who, check; Stevie Ray Vaughan, missed that one; The Clash, no; Elvis Costello, yes.
In 2009, my wife Stacy and I crossed one off the list when we went to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. It was a wonderful long weekend of great music and food. We saw everyone from Tony Bennett to Trombone Shorty. We went to great restaurants and stayed out late at local clubs.
We came home vowing that we’d go back as often as we could. But, though we’ve been back to New Orleans a couple of times, we’ve never been back for Jazz Fest. If I ever win the lottery, I’ll be back there every year. But now there’s a new thing at the top of the list and we’re going to make sure we do this one every year.
Stacy and I returned recently from the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. If you have a musical bucket list, this one needs to be on there. Seven days and nights on a cruise ship with more than two dozen musical acts performing on six stages from noon until the wee hours of the morning.
One of the benefits, if you’re lucky, to getting a little bit longer in the tooth is that you’ve got a little disposable income and a little time to yourself or selves. The kids are out of school and no longer in need of supervision and/or financial assistance. You can plan a vacation that doesn’t involve a potential college destination or anyone in a giant mouse costume. We did this one for ourselves and we’re going to do it again (and probably again the year after that).
I’ve been back for more than a week and I’ve been trying to decide what to write about the cruise without it coming off as “Ha, ha. I was there, and you weren’t.” It doesn’t do much good to “review” the shows that I saw (although I will mention some names). That particular combination of musicians will not be on the next cruise, nor will they all be touring together.
What I can tell you is that the entire experience was incredible. This was LRBC #30, so they have been happening, even at two per year, for a while now. This year there are cruises in February and October. The second one this year leaves out of San Diego, though most years both leave from Fort Lauderdale. The recent cruise stopped in Grand Turk, San Juan and Tortola, but unlike most cruises the destinations are secondary to what happens on the boat.
I will report that the area around the port in San Juan has, for the most part, recovered from the hurricane. The tourism bureau wants to make sure people are aware of this. The rest of the island will take longer to recover, but the putting some money into the local economy through tourism can only help.
I can tell you that the 2,500 or so people on our cruise threw some money in the pot. Plus, three of the artists from the cruise, Taj Mahal, Tab Benoit and Commander Cody, performed a free concert for cruise-goers and locals alike while we were there.
On the ship, every act played at least three times. There were stages on the two pool decks and in the main showroom. There’s also a nightclub-sized BB King’s Blues Club that has a house band when the ship isn’t chartered for the LRBC. There’s also a small piano bar and the Crow’s Nest bar high up in the front that hosts amateur jams in the daytime and the pros until dawn.
The jams were probably my favorite part of the entire thing. These are artists that make the majority of their money playing live, so most of them tour almost constantly. They might cross paths on the road, but not in these kinds of numbers. These cruises are almost professional conventions. Rarely are they all in the same place at the same time.
Every night between 11:30 and midnight the last scheduled show of the day was the Pro Jam hosted by one of the bands. The first night it was Tommy Castro & The Painkillers. Tab Benoit, Southern Hospitality, Ronnie Baker Brooks and others followed later in the week. The host band will play a couple of its songs while waiting for their friends to show up at the aft pool stage.
Then they’ll welcome musicians to the stage rotating drummers, bass and keyboard players and sometimes having three or four guitarists and a full horn section on the stage. The combinations and song selections are different every night.
Maybe the most amazing thing I saw all week was about a 25-minute version of Afro Blue during Southern Hospitality’s jam with J.P. Soars playing a cigar box guitar and Damon Fowler, Eric Johanson and 18-year-old Quinn Sullivan exchanging solos on guitar. (More on Sullivan later.) Had there been a roof over the pool, it would have been gone.
Somewhere around 3 a.m. the jam at the pool breaks up and the hard cores make their way to the Crow’s Nest. Up there, the musicians are playing for themselves and each other. The three to four dozen passengers on hand are just along for the ride. We only made it up there one night, but it was worth lost sleep. Tab Benoit appears to be the ring leader up there. Tab says he doesn’t stop playing until he smells bacon in the morning.
There were some revelations. When Sullivan’s songwriting catches up to his musicianship, he’s going to be a star. He’s being shown the ropes by none other than Buddy Guy, so he’s got that going for him. Speaking of Buddy Guy, he was there and in fine form. Wandering through the crowd and up and down stairs playing guitar at 81.
Kenny Wayne Shepherd played an amazing set on Friday night and Shemekia Copeland’s first-night set was as a great way to kick off the week. But I knew as soon as I saw the list of who was going to be on board that those two would be great. The truth is we didn’t see a bad, or even average, show all week.
Colin James was a name I’d seen on the schedule but wasn’t familiar with. I knew that buried deep in my CD collection was one called Sudden Stop by a Colin James, but I didn’t imagine it was the same guy. But as the cruise wore on every Canadian we met said, “have you seen Colin James yet, eh?” (I may have added the “eh” for emphasis, but they were adamant that we see him.)
Turns out it’s the same guy, and he’s really good. He’s been making music in Canada for years. Also, I dug out the 1990 CD and it’s actually much better than I remember, even if he does look like an air-brushed teenager on the cover. Actually, for the full effect go to YouTube and find the video for “Just Came Back” from that album. It’s a hoot. Then again, how many of us did things in the early ’90s we’re not especially proud of? Good song, goofy video.
There were others I’d heard of but really didn’t know much about. Ronnie Baker Brooks falls into this category. We first heard him during the Tommy Castro jam on the first night and knew we’d need more. We saw him three more times during the week and he didn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, the jam Brooks hosted on Wednesday night was hit by rain about half an hour in, and we took the opportunity for a rare early (1 a.m.) night. The evidently kept playing through the storm.
All told there will be about a half-dozen profiles that spring from the cruise and another few that have been bouncing around in my head waiting for me to sit down in front of the computer and put them together.
For regular readers, I know that in the last year or so there has not seen a lot of new content on the site, but I think the Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise may have been just the source of a second (maybe fourth or fifth) wind I needed.
We’ve already put money down the for #32 next February. There’s a waiting list, so if you think this sounds like fun and you might want to go one day, look into it now. We might see you on #34 or #36. Exactly how many times can you check something off a bucket list?
