I was in Barbados performing some time ago and a young lady interviewed me and asked about my approach to music and to song-writing and arranging and so on. That’s a common line in virtually every interview I’ve done, the focus on the music, and it’s an understandable one. After all, I’m known as this lanky guy with a guitar who has written some popular songs about Caribbean life. On the surface that’s true, but if you dig deeper and go past the musical talent there’s something else in play that is actually more significant. To illustrate the something else, I’ll take you back to the 1970s when Tradewinds had our We Place nightclub in Toronto. The band had become popular virtually overnight across the Caribbean and we would tour the region every year from mid-January to March, and then around August/September, and each year before the January 
trip, we would have a special Christmas show in the club in Toronto where we would also have a number of other invited performers. One year on the schedule we had a Trini singer listed, and he didn’t show up, so Tradewinds took his slot and did a few songs including the Christmas favourite ‘Mary’s Boy Child’. About half an hour after we finished, Trini rushed in the door, ran up to Mike Rosteing, the Trini stage manager of the show, “Okay, padna, yuh boy here and I ready to sing now, ah doing Mary’s Boy Child.” Mike told him, “Tradewinds did that already. Pick another song.” Trini says, “But that’s the song I practised.” Mike said: “First of all, if you were here on time, you would have been able to sing it. Secondly, you told nobody what you were going to sing; we only know that now, that you’ve arrived…late. Thirdly, you’re appearing on a show and you only rehearse one song? This is show business; you understand? Show… business. You’re obviously not in show business – you’re only in show.”
That’s the critical something else that is part of any successful career in the entertainment business: you have to be an entertainer, obviously, but you also have to be a businessman, or woman. So, yes, I am the lanky guy with the guitar and the ability to write songs, but I’m also a businessman. It may sound like a contradiction but it is not. Any time you see a successful musical career anywhere in the world, business acumen is involved, if not in the artiste then it is in somebody managing or steering the artiste. I can’t tell you the number of very talented Caribbean performers I’ve seen come and go because of failure on the business side. Since moving back here I’ve seen numerous examples of talented persons who are basically knocking about because they have no business acumen to go along with the talent. (Of course, the bigger problem is no places to play, but that’s a different subject I’ve mentioned before.)
For any business, there are some keys: whether it’s Dave Martins selling songs or Shanta selling puri, you have to know the market. You have to know what products your customers want, what price they’re willing to pay, and how you can always keep your product in stock. Another one is be alert to opportunity. Tradewinds started in 1966 and quickly built a following among Caribbean people in Toronto in a little downtown bar on Yonge Street, the Bermuda Tavern. Around 1968 we started playing occasionally in a small club called The Mercury Club, and every time we played there the place was jammed. The two Canadians who owned the club had other businesses, and overall the club was in the red, so I offered to buy the business. I didn’t even ask to see the books; I recognized the opportunity. Purely from eyesight, I could see that the place was full whenever we played there, and I knew that business was terrible when we were booked somewhere else or on tour in the Caribbean. I knew that with Tradewinds on stage, the gate receipts were there and the bar sales were great, the waitresses told me. I mortgaged my house in 1970 and bought the club, and it became Tradewinds home base, and for the Caribbean people in Toronto, a home away from home, six nights a week. I paid off the loan in six months, and We Place was a success for 10 years until I sold it and moved to Grand Cayman in 1980. I had been alert when the opportunity came.
When the opportunity comes, however, another key is to ensure good quality. With the Mercury Club, I changed the name to ‘We Place.’ Caribbean people knew what that meant Our Place…it confused the Canadians (they would call it The Wee Place) but they weren’t my market. We couldn’t do anything about the club exterior (it was a large building) but we remodelled the interior into plain walls with wide wood borders, took out the tacky ceiling decorations, put up enlarged photos of the Caribbean, brought in new chairs and tables with bright red table-cloths, and improved the lighting. We put cups of peanuts on the tables, complimentary.
In the overall, then, another key is get your product right. The product, and by that I also mean service, because if you’re in the service business that service is your product, so you have to make it the best it can be. I know in Guyana, problems in other businesses can hamper you – you know, the stelling floats away, or the container blocks the road so your truck can’t pass, or somebody hires a man to build a road who never built a road – such things are beyond you, but there are things you can control. For instance, I can be writing a song and it feels finished, but every time I go over it there’s a particular spot that bothers me…it could be the flow of the melody, or a rhyme that isn’t quite right, or the wording is weak, sometimes it can be a single word…one word…that jars every time it comes around. You can say this is in the area of creativity, but it’s actually a business decision to fix the flaw: I am making the song as good as it can be. I hear songs all the time that I know the song-writer didn’t fix the flaw; it sticks out; it’s obvious when the product or the service isn’t right.
Here’s another key for persons starting out: launch your business properly. Ensure that you have enough financial resources to launch yourself in a manner that gets attention and establishes quality at the same time. If you don’t have enough money to do that, wait until you do. The cliché about not having a second chance to make a first impression is true. As the Trinis say, “come good or don’t come at all.” I learned that early, but it’s my mantra. I started Tradewinds in 1966 in Toronto to create music for a Caribbean audience. Think about that; it’s a conundrum; I was living and playing in Canada but starting a band for an audience 2,000 miles away. But again, I had been watching the Caribbean market where small groups were emerging, as opposed to big bands, and I had seen in Canada the economic value of small groups where everyone played an instrument and could sing – that was Tradewinds. It was a long shot, yes, but there was good reasoning behind and it paid off.
This may come across as strange to young musicians starting out here, but along with learning your instrument learn to be a business person. It may even sound boring, but in the long run it’s the key to success.
