Jamaica Day 1: Team Goals from the German’s Blue Collar Castle Above Kingston, by Davin Michael Stedman

By admin on Wednesday, January 31, 2018

You might want to stay tuned the next three weeks on my return to Jamaica. I spent every day since my return getting ready to go back, and I am still not ready. How could I be?

This cover represents what happened on my first dance with Jam Rock. It was like a novel about a musical that became a road movie. I am bringing some new songs, in the case of Kingston and its thirst for tunes, is the closest legal thing to packing a suitcase full of gold bars of actual magic and skeleton keys.

But it’s what the island does to that magic that really counts. The first time I got lucky. This time it’s double or nothing.

I could tell you what is going to happen, except I don’t really know what is going to happen. Am I going to be on stage singing Jimmy Cliff as hundreds sing along with me? Maybe.

What singers will Ras Isachar bring me to see?

I have two goals really.

1) shoot the ‘Free Your Mind’ video with Anthony Red Rose. Working with Susan Smith, the studio publicist and pushing the record on the streets of Kingston and to TV and radio, is part of that, but the video must get done and be product.

2) I want to sit down with Earl Chinna Smith and show him the songs he produced, that I added Andrew D.B.Joslyn’s symphonic arrangements to. I want his approval and to see if he wants them to Inna Di Yard releases. I think he’s going to love them. I love them. I hope he loves them. It’s complicated.

Scott Rowe is mixing the second song ‘Maybe It’s Too Late’ just in the nick of time for me.

It’s going to be a roller coaster. To break this record I literally have to Stomp The Yard, and I am not sure what that even really means. Not really. But I will tell you as soon as I find out.

But tonight I spent time with Megan Lueck on my last night in America. I also sat down with Morgan Henley and Tyler Weber and did some work on BrodieNation Music Festival, and just hung with two good friends before I jump into a head spinning kaleidoscope of patois.

…and also I regret to admit that there will Sun, because this January was grim though. Winter done came.

Guess how much money is in this bag? This is how much I am hustling for this return trip to Jamaica. It was time to bust out the change.

This is the first time I may do a Patreon and Go Fund Me. We’ll see. I am not trying to be that guy asking to crowd source my vacation. This is a little more dangerous than a vacation. But I am also confident that what ever money I do raise, is going into the hands of musicians and filmmakers in Jamaica.

This might be a cool way to distribute some of my friends hard earned money into something that is not charity and will make a difference. Jamaicans
want to work.

Time to finish packing. I leave in a couple hours and there is still so much to do. And I can’t sleep on airplanes this is the beginning of a long day that end 24 hours from now as I fall into the bed waiting for me above the City lights of Kingston, Jamaica.

PS. I kept Sacajawea.

It breaks my heart to say this, but too much of America is stupid and plugged into the internet.

That sounds undemocratic, but social media is about as Democratic as electroshock therapy and a public beheading.

I am speaking to the Left and also the Right. Trump couldn’t win with Republicans alone. It took a village…of idiots.

The Lynch Mob was America’s other vote count

Here’s an American Airlines story. I went up to the nice lady at the gate and mentioned Obama’s awesome law about making sure instruments get to be carry on, but I also mentioned that I would not hassle her if she had to check the instrument. I was charming and honest.

She whispered to me minutes later and let me board early. She said she didn’t want me to go through the hassle – that inevitable showdown of law vs space vs capitalism.

It helps to not be a D Bag. D Bags are not considered carry ons or medical equipment.

Being nice doesn’t always work, but I write songs about sugar not vinegar.

Lets let Honest Abe explain why MAGA and Donald Trump suck Suck. He even ties in Russia in an absolutely relevant way.

We have seen these dirtbags before. If you thought MAGA was stupid, what about the Know-Nothing party?

“I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy”

I have arrived. Lenni I-Music and I are mobbing through Kingston is search of a key to a place. I haven’t slept a wink since yesterday but Jamaica is invigorating; exploding with color and splashes of the sun.

Stay tuned. Dennis Brown’s birthday is tomorrow. Ras Isachar has a vision

Team Goals Jamaica from the German’s Blue Collar castle flat above Kingston:

Jamaica is all about the second wind, especially on the day of your arrival. I haven’t slept since yesterday morning because I can’t sleep on planes, unless I am too tired to stand. Only then am I capable of sleep that worthless.

But Jamaica, through every living breathing leafing and ancestral thing, exudes enough complex energy to contribute to the power grid.

After all it was a good low key first day in Jamaica. Enormous by any other standard. But turn key nonetheless.

I always appreciate Lenni I-Music grabbing me from the airport. He’s the guy you want to see when you are that tired and the sun explodes like a atomic blast as you step out of terminal in a foreign but familiar land.

This Brethren as they would say has got it handled with his trusty white van. You aren’t even sweating anything more than their 84 degree winter as he runs the Jamaican roads like an all knowing Russell Wilson on a blitz. He’s got this. And I am no longer ready to fall over.

The neighbors are blasting the most intense modern Black Gospel praise music with a gigantic choir on a school night as the sun has set and it’s awesome. Even if you don’t believe, you want run through the streets, running atop atop oncoming cars shouting like a preacher, accepting honks as Amens.

“I have no idea what is going to happen these next three weeks or if I can even afford this.”

“HAVE MERCY!”

“Hallelujah”

“I can’t even tell you what I might do on Bob Marley’s birthday because I might jinx it”

“Amen”

It’s the little things. Showing Lenni I a title track called ‘West Indian Rock’ I want him to help me finish and sing all over.

Having him really dig what Brains Gad did production wise in making my song ‘Rum Kings’. To paraphrase, he said the song contemporary and Jamaican, that he said he could see his county men drinking Rum and raving it up to this song about Captain Morgan’s evil Privateers.

Imagine that in his Patois.

We only notice the end game but there are a thousand thrilling pieces in between you don’t want to miss or you will never arrive. You will never shout Gospel atop cars in the Caribbean as your driver, friend and songwriting pal rolls a doobie. We didn’t get there tonight but if ‘Free Your Mind’ with little ol me, Sly & Robbie, and Red Rose hits, I will shout the New Testament on the hoods of cars joyfully like stepping to the dancehall rhythm like Flash Dance.

Now the cricket choirs begin to drown out the laughs of school kids joshing indecipherable to me, as the gates click closed with iron moans that sound like your own gate each time.

– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many musical ventures and is one of the driving forces behind the Staxx Brothers. He is partying in Kingston, Jamaica right now.