A year ago, St. Thomas was awash in Old School funkateers, upwards of 7,000 of them, arriving on charter flights, staying at the hotels, spending in the shops and filling Lionel Roberts Stadium — with a lot of help from the locals — for the three straight "main stage" nights of the 5th annual Sinbad's Soul Music Festival.
This Memorial Day weekend, there is no 6th fest, here or anywhere else. Short on sponsorship, Sinbad canceled it without ever saying whether he would have returned to St. Thomas.
However, not all is lost.
Tuesday is the day that Tom Joyner's ship comes in.
And that's on St. Thomas. Wednesday, it'll call at St. Croix.
The ship is the SS Norway, which normally visits St. Thomas on Wednesdays. But this week, the Tom Joyner Foundation has taken it over for the "first annual" Fantastic Voyage, also known as the Old School Cruise. The vessel sailed out of Miami on Saturday night for seven days of Caribbean cruising and will return Friday night.
The week-long itinerary has the Norway making land only three times. Sunday, it anchored for a few hours at Great Stirrup Cay, a private Bahamian island that is a regular stop for the ship. Other than that, the Virgin Islands has the Old School cruisers to itself in terms of off-the-ship options — and for longer than the average passenger.
Initial plans were for the Norway to anchor in the outer St. Thomas harbor at 1 p.m. Tuesday and depart at 1 a.m. Wednesday. Now, however, the ship is scheduled to arrive at 8 a.m. and still stay 'til the after-midnight hour. Then it will steam south to St. Croix where from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday it will anchor off Frederiksted. The vessel, which has a relatively deep draft, carries two tenders aboard that are used to shuttle passengers to shore and back.
The Norway can carry 2,558 passengers. It will be one of two cruise ships in port at both islands. The other, the Carnival Triumph, with a 3,000-passenger capacity, will tie up at the West Indian Co. dock on Tuesday and at the Ann Abramson Pier on Wednesday.
All of the regulars on Joyner's Dallas-based ABC radio show, carried on WWKS-FM (101.3), are scheduled to be aboard: J. Anthony Brown, Miss Dupree, Myra J, Sybil Wilkes and, of course, Joyner himself. Sinbad hinted when announcing the cancellation of this year's soul music fest that he just might come along for the ride, but this has not been confirmed.
From 8 a.m. Tuesday, passengers disembarking from the tenders on the St. Thomas waterfront will be treated to music by the Pandemonium Steel Pan Orchestra. They'll be invited to check out shopper attractions, including discount coupons, at a welcome tent. From then until the evening, the visitors will be pretty much on their own.
The main event will be the 7 p.m. "Juke Jam" concert in Lionel Roberts Stadium featuring R&B/soul artists Frankie Beverly and Maze, reggae performer Maxi Priest and the local Starlites band. The onboard talent line-up includes Beverly and his band, Ashford & Simpson, Gerald Levert, Vesta and Kirk Whalum as headliners, plus Gerald Albright, Clarence Carter, Jeffrey Osborne and Betty White. Some of these other performers are expected to make cameo appearances at the stadium show, and the radio show regulars will perform between the musical acts.
The stage for the Juke Jam is "very similar to Sinbad's" and is being erected by "the same people that put up the Sinbad one," WWKS/Knight Quality Stations general manager Mark Bastin said. "They started assembling it Friday and have been working all weekend."
As luck would have it, a sizable setback occurred as a result of the heavy rain that fell Sunday night and early Monday morning. Water collected in the tarp that serves as the roof over the stage and it collapsed, twisting and breaking some of the metal supports. Welders were at work on two of the braces Monday as about a dozen other workers continued setting up the stage.
According to Bastin, the Starlites got tapped as the local band from a "short list" reviewed "a couple of months ago" by Al Walsh of Dallas-based ALW Productions, which works closely with the Joyner operation.
"They were looking at the 30-and-older demographics, looking for R&B hits and oldies, and the Starlites seemed to fit into that category," Bastin said.
The Joyner stadium event is aimed at least as much at the local community as at the cruise passengers, who are already getting to see all of the off-island artists except Maxi Priest (he flew into St. Thomas Sunday from London) perform aboard the Norway. The cruise packages include admission to the shore event. For everyone else, concert tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the gate. Outlets are International Records and Tapes, Modern Music/Havensight and Nisky Pharmacy on St. Thomas and Connections on St. John. Sheldon Turnbull's Melloside Promotions is Joyner's local liaison.
No local presenters have organized any entertainment events featuring local artists in an effort to attract the cruise passengers. Steven Bornn announced last fall, before the Joyner cruise was being marketed, that his Cause Effective Arts Program (CEAP) would put on a Memorial Day weekend concert featuring world music artists. However, earlier this year he called off the event for lack of major sponsorship.
According to Bastin, "Lots of people from the states are flying in for this concert" too. For them, as well as for the public, Bolongo Bay hosted a beach party with Imaginations Brass on Sunday afternoon, the Renaissance Grand Beach Resort put on a barbecue with local music Monday afternoon and the Inn at Blackbeard's Castle will host a pool party from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday.
On St. Croix, because Joyner has made a point of visiting the island, the Tourism Department is making a special effort to greet the Norway passengers, Assistant Tourism Commissioner Pamela Richards said. "They actually diverted the ship to St. Croix," she said. "Since they made such an effort for us, we're doing a little bit more."
The welcome will include a complimentary rum punch and entertainment in Buddhoe Park by the Ricardo Richards Pan Connection, Alli Paul's Mocko Jumbies, the Education Complex Concert Band and the Central High School Steelband.
Richards said the Tourism staff's goal is to make sure Joyner's cruisers, primarily middle-class, middle-age African-Americans, have such a good time that they'll want to come back to St. Croix for an overnight vacation.
"This is something we've done before, but the audience is different," Richards said. The Joyner cruise "has a lot of professionals who travel frequently, but it may be their first time on St. Croix."
She added, "All we need is one time" to convince them to return.
Early Monday morning, Dalton Associates in Frederiksted faxed a release to news media saying it would be staging a special Harbour Day event in conjunction with the Tourism Department to greet the Norway and the Triumph. Pledging "a fun-filled day of arts and crafts, live entertainment, food and lots of local culture," the release said artists, artisans and food vendors are welcome to take part and should call 772-1624 for information on space availability.
"Best of Joyner" radio programs are airing this week in the "Morning Show" slot, and Joyner will not be doing a live broadcast from St. Thomas this time, as he has done twice in the past, Bastin said. Instead, "We'll be doing a live remote on Jamz and Kiss from 10 to 11 a.m. on the waterfront," he said.
