The Tuesday jam session and open mic at the amiable Oualie Beach Hotel on Nevis is run by a slightly scatty but charming gentleman called Livvy. He plays both electric guitar and bass but he’s so obsessed with running the tech side of things that he never plays for an entire song. He will pick up the guitar, strum a couple of funky chords in the middle of whatever song happens to be playing, then put it on its stand while he fiddles with the numerous knobs and buttons on the dodgy PA system, unplugs leads and replugs them, rearranges the drums and then goes back to pick up his bass and play a few slap-bass notes before returning to his technical tasks. Occasionally he will shout out something like “Are you all having a good time?” Drums are the biggest problem in this setup because it’s an electronic kit which is highly fallible and also the quality of drummers ranges from extremely good to absolutely dire. If the latter is the case it can ruin the evening and remove any coherence from the music.
Normally the first hour or so of a Tuesday session is taken up by a collection of local expats and residents. They include the actual owner of the hotel, a charismatic guy called John, whose CV includes once being shot during a break-in.
These people are in their 50s and 60s and the repertoire consists of songs like Take Me Home Country Roads. In the years we’ve been visiting, their set has scarcely varied but don’t forget that we are only there for two weeks in the year, so the assumption must be that they play the same set every Tuesday, all year. Legend has it that John’s guitar used to belong to Jerry Garcia but I haven’t seen any actual proof of this.
Across the road lives a very good saxophonist called Lee, who is present throughout the whole of every Tuesday session. An affable native of a certain age, he has the unfortunate propensity to honk all the way through every song that is played, regardless of appropriateness. When he does get to play a solo he is a real virtuoso and it would help matters considerably if he were to stick to solos. The bassist is pretty much horizontally laid-back and reliably plays with great feel and groove. There is also a local doctor who plays lead guitar on an ugly instrument with no machine heads.
At this stage more or less anybody is welcome to participate and attempt to sing something or other. You just call out a song title and the key and the assembled musicians will immediately join in.
This is super for my friend Tim, with whom we are holidaying (January 2025), because he is a professional singer with a large repertoire and no shyness about performing. Tim steps up and does great renditions of I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Dock Of The Bay, but there’s more. Tim has persuaded me to join in as well and we have prepared versions of Rhinestone Cowboy, Stand By Me and Roll Over Beethoven (with me on lead vocals). There is a flaw in this plan and that is that I suffer from appalling stage fright and also have zero vocal ability. There is also the fact that there are no monitors so you have no way of knowing whether you are in tune, but a couple of rum punches are sufficient to overcome these hurdles and we manage to get through the songs to a smattering of applause.
Around nine o’clock, a change-over takes place and this is where the music can develop into something really special, although you can’t rely on it. It depends entirely on who happens to turn up or who Livvy can get on his mobile phone, into which he talks the entire evening. On the sessions we attend this year, a delightful married couple from St Kitts have turned up, playing largely pre-programmed but nonetheless super-professional reggae and dance songs. The only down side of this is that they have to catch the last ferry back at 10 o’clock, so just as things are really kicking off, they have to pack up and run across the beach.
So here we are last Tuesday wandering down the lane to Oualie, having almost decided not to bother because the previous week’s 9 o’clock session was woeful. Tonight, there is already a sense of something different and rather exciting happening.
A long-haired rocker from Bournemouth called Chris Payn is on stage and performing rock anthems in a classic metal voice. He seems to specialise in Prince songs, which makes me wonder if he maybe has a Prince tribute band at home. He certainly would be capable of fronting one. Suddenly. a large gentleman is joining in on vocals, singing Satisfaction very impressively, before sidling over to the keyboard which the normally immobile and taciturn owner usually uses to plunk some reggae chords.
All of a sudden, it’s if as if Jools Holland is in the house, as the inimitable sound of boogie woogie piano starts to blast out. Yes, I know exactly who this is and I’m almost rendered speechless by the coincidence. For some reason which we still haven’t worked out, Ben Waters has just arrived on the island and is hopelessly jet-lagged as well as, shall we say, inebriated. This is crazy, I think, I know this guy, and indeed I do. He is Polly Harvey’s cousin and I know his mother Ann quite well. In fact I’ve met Ben several times before, once when he headlined the Railway with his teenage son on saxophone and once on a particularly memorable occasion in Farnham when he played with an American blues musician called Rock Bottom. The night before he had taken Rock Bottom to the legendary Hope and Anchor pub in Bridport and plied him with the local highly dangerous Red Cider. Inconveniently, Rock Bottom proceeded to drop dead the following week and everybody blamed the Red Cider. Anyway, things liven up considerably with the arrival of Ben, controversially pushing aside a local female R&B singer who is hoping to join in but definitely doesn’t understand the finer points of piano boogie. I buy Ben a rum punch which is probably enough to push him over the edge into oblivion and I’m sure he sleeps very well.
We are planning to return next year. Let’s hope it will be the same people playing the same songs. It wouldn’t seem right otherwise.
