Corie Sheppard Podcast
Corie Sheppard Podcast
Episode 229 | Kiegs
This week on The Corie Sheppard Podcast, we link up with friend of the show, Kiegs - one of the best voices in Soca Parang and the life of many a wedding. From his early days performing at company competitions and house to house parang to becoming one of the most sought-after hosts in T&T.
Kiegs shares the heart, hustle, and humour and the stories behind the journey. We talk music, culture, Christmas vibes, and the magic of making a crowd feel joy — no matter the season.
So, listen, welcome back. We have a guest today I want to tell all about right, I don't introduce guests, right, right, but I do introduce these guests Because when you get to know these fellas, one of the nicest people you're going to meet family man, parang soka man, soka man, host, corporate man. But I will tell you this, one of the most annoying men you've ever met on a football field is the most sick. I have an Achilles rupture. I'll Achilles rupture. Tell all about this. Some years ago, I waited for this man to come here. Since then, oh yeah, I ruptured my Achilles three years ago because of this man. I would like to welcome Keex, dr Keegan Barrett, dr. Mr the Honorable Right Keegan Barrett, what's up, keex?
Speaker 2:I have a problem with that introduction I have a big problem.
Speaker 1:We've been waiting three years and two surgeries to introduce the man who was responsible for rupturing my right Achilles.
Speaker 2:I have witnesses who could confirm I had nothing to do with that? Who witnesses Everybody on the field, brother Folks, there are many reasons why people rupture their Achilles. In this man's case it was a bit of acceleration at a premature rate. You know, when you start to get older you do a lot of things prematurely and over-maturely. Acceleration is one of them. I was nowhere close to the ball.
Speaker 1:In fact I was able to help him up, but I thought he was close. When the ball people don't understand right, it never starts with sports. Somebody's got to understand, no, the ball come.
Speaker 2:First I was drinking rum with a fellow named jade brown too. He's probably he come in, right, he come in too. So we go address that then. I distinctly remember when it did happen right, so you was there you did call my name and say keegs, where's that? I remember that when you're ball out and you're one keegs, where's that one?
Speaker 1:but here the funny part about it now, when I ball out that and I turn around, you are safe distance away from me. What's your ball? Because I tell myself Keegs coming, because when you're playing football with Keegs, this man is coming. You have no free time when Keegs defending right, so I take off telling myself you're coming and I accelerate because I would need to accelerate. Yeah, you're trying to beat.
Speaker 2:I don't like it. I confuse Sonny Ball Kiggs. Where's that one? I don't know. I try and figure out where's the context here. Like you want me to assess where's the injury, I try and figure out why you calling my name.
Speaker 1:That's why I introduce Dr Keegan Barrett, because I say you, the man, fix it. If you're up to it, you should fix it.
Speaker 2:The irony is, we have a doctor on the feel at this point in time.
Speaker 1:And here now the doctor come, he watch it. He say yeah, boy, drop your gun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go on one time, One time. Yeah, you even check it, Even the man of hope, he say, nah, that gun.
Speaker 1:So it goes, boy. Well, welcome, brother, friend of the show. It's been a long these episodes and your name came up when we were talking to Eddie Right, because Eddie talked about the difference between Soka Parang and the Soka scene. He was a man in the Soka scene in the 90s, maybe from the early 90s up to today.
Speaker 1:I grew up on Eddie too, Right all of us right, and Eddie was talking about the difference between the Soka and the Soka Parang circuit, right, but what I want to ask is you, a man, could sing Every time you hear you could sing, sing, and that's not true? Yeah, tell me that's not true, that's not true.
Speaker 2:Let me put it in perspective. The average person on the street cannot sing. Right, I could kind of sing. So when they hear me sing, they feel I could really sing yeah, better than average. But I know singers I'm with you and singers people who identify as singers could rather sing. The problem is most singers don't really have original work Right, so you don't hear a lot of singers out there For people to know. Hey, this is what a singer does sound like. But when you go to concerts, you know and your vocalists come out, or even you go to like a marionette and they send out a lead vocalist yeah, you want to dance. That is how you just hear what a singer sounds like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am not a singer and I've never considered myself a singer well, it must be the comparison point, because among paranderos, I'm a parandero myself. I won't tell you that he's a singer to a man like me. Well, so again.
Speaker 2:I feel like that would have been one of the points that gave me the confidence to come out and decide.
Speaker 1:Well, I have what it want to be an artist boy we gotta go way back.
Speaker 2:So we're going back, before anything with suka parang at all. Right, in my early that is 20s thereabouts, or probably even say 1920, right, I've always've always been in church, right, right. So in the church choir not necessarily singing, playing drum there was somebody to play guitar. They sent us going to play guitar a little bit Then to play guitar. I used to play pan when I was about five years old, six years old, I stopped somewhere around 10. Then there's somebody to play steel pan, pan. Start back playing pan. But I was always in the choir.
Speaker 2:Um, there was a priest who decided to have a kind of carnival show. Right, calypso, rap, so whatever. Because now mine, kyle alexander and myself decided to do a rap. So, okay, we went to do a rap. So nice little ditty. Um, I thought a priest called father o'Connor who used to always, whenever he preaching, he could have his sermon. This week he'll say sex, sex, sex, money, money, money. That's what everybody have. Next week again, the reading could be totally different sex, sex, sex, money, money, money. It's coming back again. What church is this? So that was. Um, sacred Heart, rsc, gasparillo, oh, gaspar in mind it coming back again. What church is this? So that was Secret Art, rsc Gasparillo. Oh, gasparillo, okay, gotcha right, so naturally we the rap. So come about with.
Speaker 1:That's the context so basically we approach it as that's what everybody chasing.
Speaker 2:So we're talking about ills in society and bringing it back to nobody really care about each other At the end of the day. Sex, sex, sex, money, money, money. That's just what Father Okona say. Right, and that's how we go. I like it From the rap. So now I realize, like I kind of like this writing lyrics, kind of vibe. So we're talking about 1920. Right, I actually wrote Calypso and entered the Casper L'Eucalyptus competition. Okay, right, the first time around, I think, I came third in the competition Casper L'Eucalyptus Monarch. Right. By the time second time around came, I was working at NGC. Ngc now have NGC Calypso competition. So Marlon edwards, right, um, if you're not familiar with the name, he would have been um, performing competing in young kings calypso monarch at this point in time, right, so the competition stiff, but going up, right, and wrote a calypso and I ended up winning gaspar calypso competition. I believe marlon beat off my socks inparillo Calypso competition.
Speaker 1:I believe Marlon beat off my socks in NGC Calypso competition, but Gasparillo didn't take them. Yeah, but Gasparillo has taken them.
Speaker 2:So he was more experienced, you know, writing, performing right, all of these things. But the experience was nice right Continued to write Calypso for about two more years. They had my energy companies. Calypso competition Went up there. Marlon beat my game, no problem, but um, I took the road match. Oh yeah, they have a road match. Yeah, in that competition. Nice right could barely remember this song exactly, but the chorus was like it's carnival, it's bacana.
Speaker 2:It was a nice little tune, just, and I I always used to write my songs Kind of like under the good vibes Kind of thing, because especially with Calypso, I felt like Every time I'm in a Calypso competition.
Speaker 1:It's wailing and lamentation. Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Everything is. Is either Somebody dead? We had to get the guns off the street. It's a nation building and if all that fails, sing about God. You see, god, you can't lose.
Speaker 1:You can't lose if you sing about God, so, but here the singers.
Speaker 2:Singers come from the church too, so very surprisingly, the year I won, right the song, again, I'm not on the goal and the nation building, because it's how, if it's at 20, I win the competition. 19, nation building because it's out. If it's a 20 year in the competition, right, 19, let me say 18, because that one man singing nonsense, right, but 18 of them singing about god and nation building, I come in that year. If I could remember, boy, I was um. Gone are the days when calypso nyans used to be leading carnival bands. They say soka. Now is the thing, cause Kaizo have no rhythm. But I say no, no, we bringing back Calypso, right. So it was basically about Calypso. You're playing mass, you hear Calypso, you don't have to stop and you want to hear Soka? We out there on the road, we enjoying meself Calypso just as important as Soka, even in the revelry, right, when you win a road match with that no, I didn't win, the road match was a proper yeah, yeah, it's kind of all this back and all yeah, no.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, the people is the people and the people want what they want understand that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that was where it started for me to write in music and perform it right, right. Not sure what was the reason. I know my dad would have died when I was 21. That changed a lot in my life, right things like me writing exams at the point in time pursuing ACCA difficult. I fell off with that. I was working already, thankfully For a lot of money too. Wow, wow. I feel like let's not misrepresent any facts.
Speaker 2:Let's represent any facts. But yeah, so I feel like the music as well was one of the things that suffered through that period. Right, I feel like the music as well was one of the things that suffered through that period.
Speaker 2:I come from a family that was mom, dad and me, no siblings, so I had no way to really realize how losing one person in that three person unit would have disrupted my mentality at a point in time, not to say that life was hard or struggle or anything like that, but that's all I've known until that point of course I have my mom there and now, as a son, you feel like you had to be strong for moms to say you're focusing on the house kind of thing with you. Yeah, so all of these things, and I feel like that would have contributed to me kind of well, boy, let me just focus on my job. You know I work in thing, whatnot.
Speaker 1:At some point let me just enjoy life, because my dad wasn't sick and ailing, to say it was very sudden. It was very sudden.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. So all of that, I feel, had something to do with it, right Going through the motions. Now we're talking about Years after. At this point in time, it's done, girlfriend, it's done married, oh right, come back. And what has been constant Is that every Christmas, christmas is a nice time. I love my Christmas. Right After Christmas, even mass Cousins Coming together, same we in the choir. So who are the drum? Who are the guitar Right? Who have our talk-talk? Who?
Speaker 1:have our tambourine.
Speaker 2:We're leaving from church now and we're hungry, we're hungry. I had to say that we're hungry, so we're going out. Everybody don't know you.
Speaker 1:Remember you're in church. Of course you're wrong. The congregation is the community.
Speaker 2:So from who living next to the church Start. We're in front of your house Now. We don't know Spanish, we don't know Paran, but here we could rail sing Baran, we could sing Scrunter.
Speaker 1:We could sing Kenny J and your lyrics.
Speaker 2:And your melody, and we singing and we jamming, Nice nice playing, hooting bang, and there's noise, we come in ham, there's drinks, sweet bread. We leave there. We call in hey, what's going on? By you, my mother now baking bread Coming up, bread breaking up. We say, well, we're half an hour. First we're going down here, we jamming, so we parang in, but not necessarily with parang. You're right, we soak our parang in Gotcha and the soak our parang in Gotcha In the same vibes as parang band going about and everybody grateful for the vibes, because in Gasparilla especially too, a lot of people preparing for the Christmas, christmas.
Speaker 1:Eve Right, of course, of course, of course. Is that overnight thing? We're not even waking people up out of bed.
Speaker 2:No, they're preparing A lot of them now reaching from church as pop curtains. It's how that man, every Christmas, he now painting that is his ritual, right, right, so he grateful for the company. Of course, he working vibes and his vibes and we going down the road and we eating, we drinking right, and it was the 2017. A man he live in Sandow or his girlfriend was live in Sandow, right, he want to know if you could come down there and no, baby can't come by you.
Speaker 2:We ain't gasping for a little here we ain't gasping for a little here, brother. We talking about Christmas Eve mass used to be late. We can't come by you and guitar man playing a thing and I can't come by you. I can't come by you, it don't matter what you do. And that was the melody that led to I want to eat the song like you could make a song cup like me. And just over the year 2018, I said, well, let me see thing thing and I realized we are right up on ice.
Speaker 2:So this is the thing so I saw again the influence of my life. So my wife right recently married and again we dealing with you. Get the ring on your finger and all the women and them watching you know like, if you use that piece of meat, what do you mean?
Speaker 1:so the whole. Thing so.
Speaker 2:So the whole song was about you know, you're trying to be faithful, right? So it had this woman, jennifer, trying to get me to come by. She said I can't come by you, right? So write up this song and say boy, you know what? I know nothing about recording, of course. Right Before when I did the Calypso and stuff, I never went in any studio recorded any of them.
Speaker 1:Right, that's just for yeah. On the day Never recorded, you didn't record a track or anything that had a ban on it.
Speaker 2:It had a ban for the energy company. Okay, so when?
Speaker 1:you got spray-loaded and everything. How were you performing that was?
Speaker 2:me guitar.
Speaker 1:Seriously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my cousin come and he play guitar Got you and I was singing I'm with you, right, and that was it. So now, no experience. I go on Facebook and I say, well, hey, who to check? Yeah, who to check To get a producer?
Speaker 1:To sing a song as a post. You're looking for information, yeah, before the day when Facebook is allowed. It's like a suggestion, so you just make a post, yeah.
Speaker 2:I just my own Post Right. I'm looking for a producer To sing a song Right, right, denet, mark Nichols, that's Dennett, come in to say Mevon Soudin look who you got. Mevon Soudin explicit is the man. Yeah, so again, it's 2018, so he's still back in the days. Mevon, still not really, yeah, he's not well known, not explicit Mevon right.
Speaker 2:So it was explicit entertainment. So Mevon, I never hear about Mevon, right, but I see a thing, bang Say cool, he tag, tag him. I click the tag. Mevon Message him, say hey, I hear you see man, take a look at the song, I have a tune. He say this time I am in Coover Going up Diggumartin Sing the tune for him. He said well, yeah, I like it and that was it. From then we started working on it. Guitarist, come in Two artists we had. We didn't have any background vocalists. Oh, I got Shannon Navarro did backgrounds on Come by you, and I know Shannon from acting in a A play.
Speaker 1:A production Kuna.
Speaker 2:I even know how I end up.
Speaker 2:In the play oh yeah, I was in the play too. I was in the play I Boy Excuse me, bill for stage Boy. I have no idea how I end up In that production, but that's when I met Shannon and Shannon, brilliant vocalist. Right, shannon came down, did the background vocals on it and that was it. Nice, no set of headache. Right me going up my phone was easy to work with. Right, build the music around the lyrics thing, what not? And. But we say we need some sort of instrument to just bring out the tune. Right, and I say no longer hear steel pan in our song. I see, and I'm thinking about who I could call to play steel pan. It had no, joshua.
Speaker 2:I remember the one thing at this point in time but I'm a new key on the last from secondary school right, what secondary school you in? Presentation college, san. Fernando man so what time is this, I wonder? If you could wrap up now, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that?
Speaker 1:I just grabbed that question yeah press man. It must have been some press man.
Speaker 2:It must have been some press man, right so I called Kian and, boy, no hesitation, kian said, send him the track, send him the track. Kian sent back two full tracks of him playing through oh shit. And then Mevon, so you get an option. Yeah, mevon, take that. And he did his magic in terms of he cut and took from both tracks what it is he thought we needed and come by, you came out and that was really where Keean's today started from as a Soka Parang artist, parang artist. I with you, I with you, I with you, I with you. So it was really Accidental. I didn't have no, hey boy, I really need to get Into this, this hookah Parang scene.
Speaker 1:I really need to get Into this artist scene and I aching to Go in the studio and record, but you realise when you sing that Come by you. You have something Like people reaction and all that or why?
Speaker 2:nah, not either people reaction. I didn't get any sorta real positive response no, not to record any song.
Speaker 1:But when you house paragon, you realise you have something when you keep singing it house to house and it have a vibe. Even then, nothing, no, even then. So who make you connect?
Speaker 2:that you could go and vibe, but even then nothing, no, even then. So who make you?
Speaker 1:connect that you could go and record this.
Speaker 2:Even then, nothing. I think what it really was is I like it, I got you, I got you, I like it right. And while while I would not corroborate that I have a hell of a bag working where I work right, I had enough money to go in the studio and record it we get that oil money, you know.
Speaker 2:So that was really it, I'd like it, and I mean music as much as it is a business, is art, and it was my expression and I wanted to put it out there. Still now, very nervous, even to this day, I don't really like to write with people Serious. Yeah, it's just, boy, I like to. I will come and ask you how the song after I have enough confidence in it, right, okay, and I know that's a handicap on my part, right, but that's my little insecurity there when it comes to creating, you know so it was really just. You know so it was really just, but I like it.
Speaker 2:My cousin would say, well, that could be a song thing. He like it, I run it by my wife, I run it by my mom, them like it. But the first year when I sang Come by you and I actually did another song, parang Priorities, because when I did did another song Parang Priorities, because when I did come by you, same Facebook, our producer, he have a rhythm, if we know any soccer parang artists. So I come in and I say, well, look like.
Speaker 2:I am one now Of course, of course, went down by him, did Parang Priorities. Nobody else came on the rhythm, okay, or whatever songs was done on the rhythm, wasn't so that? Ended up released as a single Right, so I had two songs Right.
Speaker 2:So you debuted with two songs in the Christmas, two songs in the Christmas and it might sound like a nice thing, but my experience in that first year was nobody wants to hear me. I am now going on Facebook again and I searching Parang event, soka, parang event, seeing all the events, calling the promoters and asking if I could come and perform for free, right, promotion, promotion. I went on Amazon and I purchased a hundred flash drives small flash drives, nothing too big, it could only hold basically the songs right, and I carried that. Bars, venues, the men on the streets, and I carry that. Bars, venues, the men on the streets in town. Shogun, sando, right, all the playing music. Yeah, see how that song. Put that on a CD for me.
Speaker 2:Mix Thing. Go on to all the radio stations. Email, leave it. Trying to get interviews Thing. Are people on the radios Requesting this song? Requesting this song? You get your own people to call yeah, text and call Me begging people to perform. People telling me no, I want to come and perform for free. Nah, but we are not. I saying, yeah, well, I'll just come. If your parang band Reach late, you need a space fill. I have a fill in. Every parang band Is reaching late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, for Christmas, every parang ban is reaching late. There's no such thing.
Speaker 2:So there, five minutes pass. Hey, parang ban thing more going.
Speaker 1:Nah, now we're 10 minutes, so at that time the promoters and them, they hear any song, you think?
Speaker 2:or they just Well.
Speaker 1:I am sending them the song.
Speaker 2:You, of course, right. So there was one event done by Previ. That was the first one, right? They say, yeah, come true, perform down there Again. And the Soka Paran crowd is a hard crowd. It's a hard crowd, but are they? It's an established music.
Speaker 1:We don't want to hear nothing else.
Speaker 2:It's a hard crowd.
Speaker 1:People underestimate that it's an established music we don't want to hear nothing else.
Speaker 2:It's a hard job. People underestimate that Boy. Not a soul, a move, nothing, a man even watch me. You swear as a DJ playing it. Have nobody on stage, all right, no problem. When I finished, the promoter I think it was Kelly, kelly is his name, right he came and said hey, good job, keep doing what you're doing. And that was enough. That was enough for me to say well, hey, I don't know what the crowd's supposed to be like this week. First, am I doing it right? But if you want to come and tell me, he felt like his event had some value, of course I promote, understand so that was me.
Speaker 2:It had an event known in princess song they. They didn't fight me long, actually I said I'll come and perform for you. Come through. Same thing the crowd had, but a little one or two watch man. Okay, all right. Then I see the faces saying this might be something. So just those little things is what really pushed me through.
Speaker 1:But that first year rough. But I had to ask you because most of the people who I asked this question I started to get to expect the answer with the start of the school competitions. But I mean they went press so it's not much competition but most people come through that school competition so at least by from primary school you would hear some of the bigger artists talk about understanding the mechanics of a stage, connecting with a crowd, seeing what the response is. But you learn that big you learn that live.
Speaker 2:You learn how to do another song. I had to learn that live.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that was it, it's a big difference, because you know what I always notice the company competitions might not be the best gauge of it, doesn't?
Speaker 2:connect right.
Speaker 1:No no.
Speaker 2:Those people in those company competitions. They came out to have a good time. The average Chinbegunyan didn't come out to have a good time. They came out for you To sit far on and scrunch yeah and they came out for you to make me have a good time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's your work, brother. Yeah, I'm with you, but this DJ, he's on stage. You're entertaining, you're batting, you're the work.
Speaker 2:You're the work. I didn't come out here to just have a nice time, just so, brother. But I pay my money. I didn't I out here, what you could do to make me smile Of?
Speaker 1:course.
Speaker 2:What you could do and if you can't do it it's on the back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, rough, rough, it's different Rough rough, different.
Speaker 2:No, even with the radio, my music wasn't played on the radio.
Speaker 1:So that's why you say you didn't get much radio play at all. You hear it at all on the radio.
Speaker 2:Here's what happened. Here's what happened with that. The radio stations were not playing the music at all. But because people were requesting the music constantly and that one Sunday, mr Gerard On Street 100, right, say, boy, too much people asking To hear this song, they had to find out he played from YouTube. Ah, played from YouTube. And then other people now, mm-hmm, say hey, that song, nice boy Sing, what, not Right? And then he messaged me on Instagram, mm-hmm, and asked me to send these songs to him. Now, okay, right. And then he messaged me on Instagram and asked me to send his songs to him. Now, okay, right. And it's after that.
Speaker 2:that's basically when I had the opportunity to say go to interviews on Suite 100, get the music started to play, but without him just doing that piece of charity for me I would have still be here begging people to yo send in a request Let me see what we could do, and a flash drive on yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So it was still that uphill Fighting, fighting and the songs had a play, little bit by little bit. So up to now you could still hear Come by you On the radio every Christmas. Nice, right, the venues and performances. I feel like boy. People don't like Parang, right. People don't like Soka Parang. People don't like Soka Parang. You feel People like the line, right. It's not about the music, people like the line. The average performance for me is reach down to the venue and it's Soka playing or dancehall playing.
Speaker 2:Even in christmas, or chutney playing, it could even be reggae playing folks. We now have some entertainment. Oh man, I know, have to run out. I like it and sing soca par, and we're spending Christmas cheer here now. In between, of course, and as soon as I done perform, it was back to dancehall, chutney, reggae, soka, right, right, and again, that's probably. I can't even blame the DJ, because he probably there. Yeah, he entertain people. He probably there all night and he playing Christmas, you know.
Speaker 1:And you realizing that he playing Christmas and it not. That he's playing Christmas and it's not doing anything when you say it. People waiting for you to entertain them. So if they don't entertain them, it's stand up.
Speaker 2:So he's doing what he has to do as well, of course, but that has been my experience a lot of the time, even in the Christmas events. Christmas there's choking, right, it don't be a Christmas event as much as we have Parang down by this bar. Advertisers Parang, but singer Parang. No, you'll get one hour of Parang and that's six hours, yeah, between the Parang band and Soka Parang artist, you'll have one hour and people upset when they see the thing.
Speaker 1:People see that as a dip in the event sometimes Because I suppose In your earliest days you're not doing end part events, you're not in that circuit or anything yet, no, nothing yet.
Speaker 2:So I'm still trying to, on my own, find little spaces where I could fit in right. So the end part events now is where you'll find the parang, yeah, the parang crowd and there's still more parang so yeah, parang, parang, yeah, you're not rocking a hard place. So now on that end, and all them are too interested in me. Oh, I got you on that end now because that is not parang.
Speaker 1:Them come for parang.
Speaker 2:Yeah, them is purist parang them come for parang parang them really come for that soka parang thing, because that is the thing now. So for a sort of water dung, and no fault of theirs, necessarily they're not in love with soca parang, because most of it has been right, it's not. So the disillusion immediately when you hear soca parang after sitting can you just say next man coming again, right, this thing, some sort of backhand, some sort of rudeness, right, but my music has largely not been on that wavelength.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd actually that as a writer. Is that deliberate? Because when you listen to your music you do a lot of double entendre as a writer, I was here with Ozzy Merrick a couple of weeks ago, right, and he was talking about a song he had named Fan Mopolori. Of course you can see where that goes as a writer, right, because you see he had this big message about family business and his husband and wife going around the savannah. He said nobody got that. Everybody here find my Polaroid and Christmas started to become a lot like that with Soka Parang over the years. Somewhere it went from Maria to several different types of Dublin Tundra. They're on the edge and you find a way to do it. That is not. It could never be said to be crass or to be lewd. Is that deliberate for you?
Speaker 2:as a writer. Yes, and it's just come from a place of um catering to the audience, right? So before I started music, I was an event host, and my whole, so your hosting started before music, long before, really long before. I was hosting events from 2009 and that was with um quiesce's wedding actually gotcha, gotcha right.
Speaker 1:Next man responsible for my Achilles rupture, whether indirectly or not, because his family took it.
Speaker 2:So I always had a gut into it. Just from necessity on his part, he needed someone to do it. But then people kept calling me to do it and it was kind of like from a service Performing a service, I kind of like serving people, you know asking them to smile on your face and making your specialty even better, that kind of vibes.
Speaker 2:So when I was coming into the Soka Parang scene, I felt like it had enough of that. The crass, the understand, the not so much double entendre, yeah, not too double yeah. So it had enough. So the audience have that like, yes, somebody might say, well, keegs, why those singers say well, but you could get that from any other artist. They are ready. So the, the section of the audience that might appreciate my music in terms of it not being the bacchanal or the, the smut or crass, you know, might be smaller, but they are still part of the audience, of course, of course. So there's still christmas music coming out. We have who looking for hey, where's the rude tune? But it have a section of people who are cleaning the house with a chair, of course, and they want to be able to put on music that everybody could listen to, yeah Right. So I just catering to that part of the audience so that audience have something for christmas.
Speaker 1:I will tell you and it's something that continues to observe, because even double entendre is such a trinidadian too, because the first one is in english, the next one is in french we don't know how we do it no, we don't know how we do it, but the thing is, double meaning does not mean smart, because one of my favorite songs from you is like pay me.
Speaker 1:yeah, I remember seeing you for the first time doing pay me again, I don't know who you are at the time and we we my father and I have a band, ken kobe and friends we play in the circuit and we and I it's so funny where you talk about coming from the church and going house to house, because we two know no spanish, so we really just singing a few soca parang, so we can sort of sing gin and dina and melda and them thing. Right, that's how I know, as house parang and I was at a school in Monrepo. Right, they had a performance and almost exactly what you say is what happened. The Allard brothers and sisters, they have a band I forget the name, all of them is doctors. They have a Parang band.
Speaker 2:I think it's Dr.
Speaker 1:Allard. Allard is his name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the sisters Tight, very good band band and, um, they asked us to perform and I think our engineer, something happened, the guy who's usually set up the stage for us didn't show up and we our side of just comparisons is four or five people, right, yeah, get our quattro buck place and we come in to jam some tunes in our school. You're going on that stage, nobody paying attention to what happened on the stage because it's almost set up like a bazaar and we went on and their engineer kind of helped us with leveling out and things. So we do, we couple tune, do we scrunch and thing and we out, we just jam it, we just get a space and we do it. And I remember ready, being ready to leave the venue.
Speaker 1:And you come on and, um, you do pay me, and I find this is such a clever song in terms of how you write it. But somehow pay me is a double entente, right? So if people don't know it, the song about you want to go by people's house, you're hungry, like you say you're looking for pay me, but you say nobody ain't want pay me, because that's how soca parang is to our music, and somewhere along the line double entendre in this country starts to mean rudeness.
Speaker 2:I don't really mean that, it's an entendre. I feel like if Sometimes it's a little direct.
Speaker 1:So it's almost like if they hear the entange?
Speaker 2:yeah, and they feel that because it's french. Yeah, that don't mean it hasn't to do with meaning that entange, right? So, um, just a piece of info. I went to money piracy, yeah, oh serious. So that is why I was there. I understand my mom was a teacher at money piracy as well, well, so that's how come I was there Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 2:Right. So when I was doing or writing, pay Me again, it was to have the double entendre, but catering to the audience, who are not necessarily looking for the rudeness because we were double meaning, we were to be clever. We're looking for a rudeness because we want double meaning. We want it to be clever. Right, we're looking for a nice melody, but we already have, if 20 song releases for this season.
Speaker 1:You know, people like people, pay attention to some artists when they do double, but they don't even hear the ones that they don't hear, some of the ones that they don't hear. It's bad, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's rough, it costs on the ears, especially as I get to my age.
Speaker 1:It has some of those songs cannot play on the radio yeah, it rough, it rough, it cannot play on the radio you think is our ears get?
Speaker 1:I was asked this when I recorded by myself is it my ears getting sensitive as I get older? Because we do listen to a lot of? Let me say kenny g as an example. God bless his soul. Right, we do. Did it for a long time, the woman brush. I suppose in the 80s that was a song, real course. Is it that our ears get more sensitive as we get older?
Speaker 2:No, that that paintbrush is probably a as crass as it gets. Yeah, that's the top of the hill. But why I would always defend it is because as a child I had no idea what that song was about. I'll wait till you. I'll wait till you. As a child I was singing, I Want my Brush and as far as I could remember in my head and my process, when I am thinking about that song, it had no video Right. Thinking about that song, it had no video right. But I am seeing a man trying to paint and you want to paint the kitchen and you want to paint the living room and I want more brush. Yeah, right, not until teenage years.
Speaker 1:I started and you know when it become obvious, it's become real I want to hear it.
Speaker 2:but you don't even have to be christmas, I'm looking for it. You want to, but that's why I will come to the fence of paintbrush, because, as more, you don't even have to be Christmas looking for it. You want to, but that's why I will come to the fence of paintbrush, because, as a child, I don't know what that's about.
Speaker 2:I find that to be the case for a lot of them in our time. So a lot of the music was so, so, very clever. So paintbrush right, kenny J Alexander. Now, for some it might sound obvious.
Speaker 1:I want.
Speaker 2:Alec. No, no, I want Alec, yeah Right. What would have probably helped in my case is my mom's some like them had actually known Alexander, who he was talking about.
Speaker 2:So Kenny J used to always lime in South and whatnot. So if you're from South, more than likely in that generation, you cross paths with Kenny J right south, more than likely in that generation, across parts with kenny j right right. So alexander was a real person, I see, I see. So what them saying is yeah, alex, they used to call him alex. Oh, really. So again, his life inspires the art, you know. So, yes, it, it could be a nice like I want, alex, and you feel everybody oh, I want ac yeah yeah, yeah, like this, and Kenny J hold on to it.
Speaker 2:But he know and Alec probably still don't know what this man doing with my name. Now, boy them calling me Alec, right, baron? Um, she goes, start a ball if I ain't come. Yeah, I was probably in my 20s, yeah, when you before. That occurred to me what the song? Yeah, what's he hitting me? The song's so well written that, as a child, or even a teenager, picturing what the song is talking about, I am relating it to. Yeah, boy, people is really want me come by them for christmas and I can't reach by them. Yeah, and things like that. So now, I'm not sure that our air is getting old. It's not old. I feel it's fed up Because we're going through it every year and it's just distasteful in some cases.
Speaker 1:A lot of it is direct, a lot of it is not hidden. Forget the hidden parts of it and what I feel hurts as well.
Speaker 2:I feel on the surface, subliminally it hurts because it's christmas, right? Yeah, of course it's christmas, of course, of course, at the end of the day it's still christmas and even if it's not a religious outlook you have on christmas, christmas is still supposed to be a kind of happy it's family. You know it's not supposed to be this jubilee morning and I even feel my jubilee morning need to be, yeah, that bad night I will tell you something that I observed right and you get into it almost similarly to us where it's house parang.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think people who never had that house parang experience mightn't understand people like your complaints. Because when I have to go in somebody's house Christmas morning I just remember going and parang with my father in Gasparilla itself and them days are lost in the back of Gasparilla, I don't know where it is, and there a guy was with us. The man could sing. He had good little songs. He's writing his own songs. So he decided, of course he's excited to sing his own song and daddy only hushing up the man.
Speaker 1:But I said why you not let you doing, let me hear it and I pick up and I go into them. Boy, that man's song is. I ain't buying cat in bag. So I know to tell you the rest, kids are feeling a hole now because people house Christmas morning. People come out in their dust coat, that thing, and you know you don't know what religion, the background, the tolerance for smut. So I could understand why you would come through thinking like that, because it seems as though some of the artists who in Cripsoka Parang now might not come from, might not come from any of that at all. You know.
Speaker 2:Well, that that's a big part of it, right? You don't know what you don't know, I suppose, right, and you might not have sensitivity to certain things. The next thing is too, as an artist as an artist, young or old you're coming out there, you're trying to score, right, you're looking far forward, aren't you Right? Now I have the benefit of I have a day job, good one. Apart from a day job, I have a side job, right?
Speaker 1:As kids the event host Gotcha Gotcha, so Only I gain one basket.
Speaker 2:Gotcha gotcha, so only air again one basket so even if I come out for the season and me again, don't set out gigs and people are listening to my money. Life goes on for me and your wife has a big Zumba cut run in the country.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of you have a lot of incorrect information.
Speaker 2:You have a lot of we're going to have to do our video after this called the bunking. We're going to need that because you have some wrong info so for a lot of these artists.
Speaker 2:They're coming out and in their head we had a score. So look last season here, big up on Mel King of Hearts Maria Box Dead. Maria Box Dead, right, right, it's a hearts. Maria box dead. Maria box dead, right, right, it's a little bit over the line. It's a little bit over the line, but the song is about he going to perform by somebody's house. Right, she bring out she box for him to perform. The box dead, gotcha Right. And if you listen to the song, the song really sticks to that Right, that storyline. That is how the box dead. But Maria box dead. There's a hook. It have some people as they hear that they completely turned off, of course, of course. But I'm telling you, yeah, after performing with that whole Christmas season there and seeing different crowds, no, maria Box dead, gone, there's a hit Gone.
Speaker 2:There's a hit Right With the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at the end of the day, yes, you could want to make all the music that you want to make of a certain type, mm-hmm. The music is not just for you, of course, of course. So, yes, I want to make music and I'm proud that I could put on my music and play my music Anywhere, and no skips.
Speaker 1:I could listen to my whole playlist and I want to hear it.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't skip that song. I want to hear that. I like all my music and I enjoy it. Yes, but the music is not just for me to our audience. I am happy that there are so many other men out there who will fill that space? That I don't have to do it, but I cannot tell you that we do not need that music. I cannot in good conscience say that, because I can see people want it, and as long as people want it, it has a space for it, that is what the audience wants and the audience will control it right.
Speaker 2:That is what the audience wants and as long as that is what the audience wants, that is what the audience will get, yeah, for sure. So the artists who are writing music and who are looking for that forward, and they are looking for that opportunity this season for my song to hit. When I perform in, when I perform in, when I perform in Nice Time, even if I perform in PME, if I perform in Come by you, I get no kind of response that a man will get when he perform in Maria Box.
Speaker 1:Dead.
Speaker 2:It'd be real.
Speaker 1:But let me ask you this, as you're talking about this when you some of these songs, now you have a. I let me ask you this, as you're talking about this when you some of these songs, now you have a I was just telling you this the other day you go end up with one of the biggest catalogs in Tokopang, right At the rate you go in, which is why I foresee it, but by far because, number one, you're writing your songs, right, yeah, good, so yeah, most people not writing In any genre. It's how most people not writing the music right. So is it your experience that when you sing a song like Come by Me, people might be. You know you're watching it and they didn't pay no mind, but it builds over the years. You find that to be experience?
Speaker 2:no, boy, what I have is a hope. I have a hope. I've not really seen it. Now Kamba U has, I don't want to say, a study test, our time, right, right. But it has been playing every season since.
Speaker 1:Right and the reaction when they perform it. It's changing over the years.
Speaker 2:No, it is, it is not a song that you could get a reaction from when you're performing, just like that, okay, yeah, so you're the caterer to the crowd, right, so Come by you. Before I sing it now, I will have to preface it with boy this song. I write this song because I see a problem in society. Right, ladies, all you have to stop liking people, man. Yeah, you get attention.
Speaker 2:So now, if I say, what would that man say there I know I could sing my song About come by you and people paying attention, oh, it's here. But all that is the entertainment and the performance, of course, right, but the song, again, is probably of more value To the man home Cleaning his house With his family For Christmas, listening along Christmas day, family come over and music Playing Christmas music.
Speaker 2:That's probably where the value gotcha is more than you're at an event and you come to yesoka parang and you want to hear that a lot of people come out that event and them feelers jump and wave.
Speaker 1:Of course yeah that's something that I don't understand because I never, I don't, I don't go a lot of parang events like about, and if we go we go into play and I go on. So I don't get to see the crowd and see how people respond to things. And plus we're singing real old Kaiso. So I suppose we don't have that experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it is tough. Yeah, I bet you it is tough from that bottom. Again, I it's hard to predict because I was not wrong when Baron and Kenny J and Crazy and Marcia Miranda released their music. Right, but hear music. But it would have been a different landscape for sure. Yeah, but over the years now, when Barron sing Come Go, I'm sure it didn't start off as a hit.
Speaker 1:No, no. Plenty of Barron Christmas tunes take long to build. Spanish Woman is the latest example I was telling you about the other day.
Speaker 2:It was years before that song picked up, so that is really where my hope lies in.
Speaker 1:But remember too that that is still barren don't tell them fellas and them singing. I mean his legacy cemented in Christmas. But remember that at the end of the day, if the crowd think he could say I'm the barren, you know, they must be the real sucker.
Speaker 2:They used to sing crazy too they would bring the hits so I still dare with, but it's a long game. It's a long game and even if it doesn't work out to be that, in the next, say 10, 15 years, christmas come and keys in her name synonymous with christmas. Yeah, at the very least, at the very least, I like my music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you. I know artists who not listening to the music I hear. I know man.
Speaker 1:I started to not do this. Yeah, no, it has been. Men start to dislike the song.
Speaker 2:They dislike the song and that's because they did the song just with the motivation and let me try and score. So the song itself and the writing. If you wrote it writing, if you wrote it in the performing, you had no personal connection with the song, but for me that's so important and, like I say, boy, I can't tell you how much of my songs is not a hit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah but do you like it? But I like it. Well, let me tell you something, one of the things I got going through a phase somewhere close to the middle of the year where I have some people to come here. I'll tell you some names, right? Levi Myers, charlton Bailey, colonel Roberts. The children are, some of them artists. Because when you talk about 15 years as legacy, I'll put it to you like this Whenever you decide to hang up your guns with music, your children will be big people and they will be proud to come and sing your songs, to come and sing your songs, whereas there are some people who turn and who's watching.
Speaker 1:I always remember Crazy Ayer, right? Crazy Ayer turned Christian when he joined the church you know what I mean. And he said he's done with music and couldn't perform. I mean, crazy Ayer is a legend to me. Crazy Ayer had real songs, but I went and see him perform in Central Bank and Crazy Ayer had to sing too. But when he looked back at a lot of his songs, I'm glad now we come to terms with it, because it's nice to not like your music, but he reached a point now where he performed in all, because even in Soca, chris, he was always, even for his time, like drive it and everything, a little bit on the edge in them times too. No, a little bit Bad, bad songs you mean a little bit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That was his style. But I'd ask you too, as you mentioned building the songs, because one of the things for me I'm not comfortable on a stage and in front of people. I was telling you this the other day. I have a good partner of mine, podcast listeners too he and his wife now but they come to me and ask me I guess when you talk, plenty of people feel you're kind of hosting it's not true.
Speaker 1:Right, it's very difficult, right, right, it's not true, right? Let me put that out there. It's very difficult, right, right, and I want to talk to you a little bit about that. But I come and tell you I say Kiggs here, what's going on. I want to pay to host this for me and I'll get them that as the gift. No-transcript, and I wasn't right in the end, right, but it's not something I don't think I will do it. I wouldn't do it again. I find it to be very difficult to do now weddings, especially, at least for me.
Speaker 2:This is my opinion, right. Other people might not agree or have the insight that I would share now, right, weddings for me, very different from other events, right.
Speaker 1:So you host, you are a host. Yeah, it's not a wedding host, right?
Speaker 2:So as I event host. Over the years I have done, from company dinners, the after work, limes, calypso, competitions, cookouts, graduations, retirement, team building, long service awards.
Speaker 1:Anything you can think of, they don't top the NGC money and the Zumba money.
Speaker 2:I get it, we don't do that. But when it comes to weddings, weddings are a very personal type of event, very sentimental, right, and what I feel a lot of hosts, a lot of personalities don't realize is that these people need more than a presenter. You need more than somebody who can just speak. Well, of course, right. So weddings for me, favorite, right, yeah, serious Favorite, and for various reasons. One is boy. I just feel like I'm in love with my wife so much Because every other weekend it's like, hey, boy.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you get to revisit it, I love her again, man, I pull out my phone and say hey, gail, I love you. You know thing thing bam, but every weekend it's our good vibes.
Speaker 1:As much as life could be hard, I didn't even want to come and do this wedding today. I understand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but them love boy, yeah them people are real happy for them boy, and just that sense of wow, look it's vibes all around, just kind of keep me up. The next thing is, too not a lot of the time in this life you get to see in real time, immediately how whatever work you're doing inspires or affects others. I thought you was going to say immediately if they're going to make it or not?
Speaker 1:no, no, we don't go through that that's not my job as the host.
Speaker 2:I was at the edge of my seat. You know like, yeah, what's the thing? Suppose I analyze and I realize I shouldn't get married. What are you going to do? Oh yeah, you have your work to do, I have money to make. Yeah, what are you going to do? Get married, boy?
Speaker 1:hey the president let me hope for the best here. Let me hope for the best here. You never know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but like, say, the podcast. You don't get to see how a man reacts home watching it. No, he might like, and he got inference that a man enjoy it? Of course no it's completely disconnected, but you don't get to see his reaction in real time. No, I would too, but I on stage there at a wedding I could see a man come in here and he looking like boy. I'm not sure I really wanted to be here today. I had so much things to do.
Speaker 2:But I felt like it's taking up time, right, and I could take him from that place and two hours later, see that this man looking forward to what's coming next. Wait, hey, you want His whole demeanor changes. Hey, yeah, now we're having fun here today. Boy, there's good vibes.
Speaker 2:Right A man come off and say, hey, boy, how long you know the groom. Hey, you see, you see who cousin thing, I don't know them. But at the end of the day like that, to see that in real time, to see a bride not having a good day because photos take too long or something, I reach on time and being able to say, hey, you relax, you relax From you relax, you relax From now this year, reach back here for the reception From now till I leave, you don't worry about nothing, have a good time. And putting that on my back and seeing that transformation from my frustration, from my fatigue, from just boy, this is my wedding day too, this is my wedding day. That that, for me, is a big deal, right?
Speaker 1:So weddings now, people just feel you come and you just talk yeah, it's not to host our wedding properly, you had to meet people before yeah, so when you talk about some of these questions people asking you, they feel you know the people long because your process starts long before the wedding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I'm meeting with you and it's not just a meeting to ask the questions. The information I get from asking the questions is important, but what I am leaning on the most in that meeting is how you interact with me and how you interact with each other. Yeah, because when you see me host a wedding for jim and carrie last week, it can't be the same wedding I hosted for Tom and Wendy this weekend. Next thing you know, they invite Jim and them?
Speaker 1:Oh, I didn't think of that. You are no script.
Speaker 2:Even if they don't have the same people, remember it's your wedding, Of course it should be different. Just by rights, of course. Just by rights. It should be different. So I now have to understand what my delivery could be. Jim and Carrie could be slackers. I could say real shippiness on that stage on them. Hey, this man funny. But yeah, when I come now by Tom and Wendy, them want to know. But you're out of time and so what are you saying?
Speaker 2:there and it's because so simple things. I ask people like what's your family? Like simple adjectives the religious, the laid back, you're no serious. Or a lot of them in corporate life entrepreneurs, yet let me know just, and from that I will gauge what the guests that are coming to should see from me. Right like is I don't want to be there, thinking well, yo, everybody here is lively and is here. Them coming for a fit, and when them come, them still in wedding ceremony mode, because the most important thing to them is, you remember, is God bless this thing and whatnot. And I come out here like, hey, if only know how these two meet there, them whining and a fit, and them just stop whining till this day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he lost them from the gate what yeah, he lost them from the gates. What is man doing?
Speaker 2:right, but it have some weddings where you could start the expectation there. Suppose you come there now and you want to say well, folks, today we gathered and you know we want to just be thankful that god has blessed us it's our two priests.
Speaker 2:It's our two priests now. So that's what I gauge, the personalities, and I try to figure out what's the best performance for me to sit down in this space, because catering to the crowd, the audience, and catering to the couple is not the same thing and it takes a lot of effort to marry it and bring it together right. So you need that process, get the information, find out about them, and it takes by these different days I still don't have nothing to do. I pull out my notes and I go in through. I go in trying to think about it. It has some days I don't know what I'm going to see. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have my little tidbits, right.
Speaker 2:But during the wedding I host on the him, I don't make up my mind. I say, no matter what this man say, I'm so good, I have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wherever you say a bunks, enough, right. Sometimes men leave me here, yeah, stranded in the desert, I'm all come up and say, well, I don't really have much to say. I just want to say congratulations to the bride and groom. They like I really tell myself a bunks, enough for you, right, but I tell myself a bunks off of these things To make it right. But I have all my notes in place and like I'm driving up the road and something hit me and I realised Wait, no, no, there's a better angle Right, so you could even. So, weeks I work Down the drain but I still focus on what's the best thing For the couple, what's the best thing For the guest On the day. Plenty times after wedding people come hey, it was real good, you're really nice. I don't know, I'm sad, I'm not feeling good. Yeah, because I remember five things.
Speaker 1:I could have said that everything I do there be better thanks for saying that, because it's good every week now every week now I study and my actual accent, mr, should I actually talk to him? But? But how long your wedding so in particular, how long. You also not know about how long but from 2009 also. That was the first one gotcha, so, but you have a. You know, if I come up there and I say cheers, yeah, then I go on and you have plans.
Speaker 2:But you have enough experience though, yeah so, depending on how the crowd is right remember, I feel in all the crowd from since the cocktail hour, right, so I could kind of sense how loose we are Right, or still how, yeah, we still a little, yeah, we still cool, we are really warm up that much. But a man could come up there and just hit it a short one, yeah, and you had to go, yeah, and I could say we have somebody in the crowd who knows he could have done better than that, right, right.
Speaker 2:We have somebody in the crowd who knows he could have done better than that, right, all right. And everybody laugh and he shake his head. Yeah, boy, for real, what they make me. Come up here and talk and it's like, but stop out with him. You cannot do that, of course I'm an insulted people like, but have somebody else you could come up there and properly roast everybody you know cool, and that's the best time of the life and them telling you yeah you're getting thumbs up.
Speaker 2:You're getting thumbs up from your man yeah, boy, and you could roast. So different situations. But, um, what you could do too, what I do a lot of is I am a married man so I have different things to draw on. So I might just use a personal experience I gain. I have so much information from these couples at any point in time I could draw on that Right. So a man might just say congratulations thing, and I just say, well, boy, we're saying congratulations. But this man said the hardest part about me and my already feel going on be to kick your cup Right. And it's just little funny moments just based on information I thought I already have. But it's just knowing how to, when to, if to. Most importantly, because it might have some weddings where you don't say nothing that man come out, just sit here, congratulations to the bride and groom and you say short and sweet, just like we like it. Next up, we have and we go down the road.
Speaker 1:You say like an MC yeah, we go down the road because I am not a comedian Right, so I'm not a comedian Right.
Speaker 2:So if you're looking for me to hit your joke every minute, in your own place but what I've come to realize is when you get people on your side early on you could do anything after that.
Speaker 2:There's no joke. So during the cocktail hour I am building relationships, even if I'm not on the mic. I hey, everything all right, right, I'm not on the mic. I hey you, everything all right, right, you good, yeah, you all good. You enjoying the drinks, you try this. Yeah, this thing isn't real nice, you know. And these people start to feel like we are friends Right by the time the receptions start. It's not strangers, I hear with, it's my buddies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a big part of just gaining the trust and the attention of the audience. So when I start off with a nice intro, I realize, yeah, and I could see it on your face, like I have you in my pocket. All right, I have you in my pocket.
Speaker 1:You might just die. Yeah, boy, wow, what is that about? Try that out, yeah.
Speaker 2:That happens every now and again, yeah. So when it is, I have that confidence. Now just push this bugger back, right. Yeah, even if somebody leave me in that space where I don't really have much to bong so far, I tell myself I'll get them next time, right, somebody else coming, I'll get them next time. There you go, right.
Speaker 1:Do what you hope for the best now could probably get two in a row, but if I got three in a row, the other one never will. You hear. Well, you see, this is my problem. I end up with this damn wedding host. I start to see what horses go through and I mean I, everything I do is a lot more scripted than people think. Right, yeah, because I lecture for a long time uh, you know, talking on the podcast and but I know I come to say most times I'm very nervous in front of crowds, so I cool with it. You see that talking in a room by yourself and then put it out two weeks after, I feel that's my sweet spot, talking live in front of people. I just feel like I don't want to say this, I don't want to say the wrong thing. So I'm very will not feel scripted most of the time. I've been doing it for a long time, so, but I have, like you say, I have a structure as to where I feel it could go, and it's the same thing coming here Driving over the lady on something. This happened. Every time I come to interview somebody I say, right, I have it now, but that is here, right, in a wedding. I forget.
Speaker 1:You have to study who mother-in-law is, talk soft, who don't like to talk into mic. I have a woman. When she came to talk right, this was the mother of the bride of the group. No, I talk in to her, I have to do things going good, right? I say right, I'm just looking at the end of this, I will get through. And she comes and starts to talk and no matter where you put the mic, she moves away from it. She wants to talk to them directly. This is our big audience. I struggle now because I've come on that thing, I say, nah, boy, this thing will be good. I fix the mic Because I would have thought our people might think that it's just about who can talk, who's funny, who's personable.
Speaker 2:But what I underestimated is how much things you're managing to make sure the people have a good day.
Speaker 2:That's what it is like for you it is, and a lot of the time it is exactly like that. Yeah, you're managing a lot more than we're keen to do. Yeah, and it's never just talking. Even if it's just talking, it's still being able to talk and deliver right. But, um, a lot of people don't realise how much Things could go wrong In a wedding or how many things Need to be Controlled. Yeah, so I depend A lot On a good coordinator. Right, the better your coordinator Is, the better I am on the day. Thank God I had that. I was lucky to have that. So if your coordinator Is great, you get Probably the best Kicks you could get on the day, because all I had to focus on Is what I do.
Speaker 2:If your coordinator not good Problems, you turn coordinator. Everybody who have a problem Comes to me. Yeah, I guess it's the face, because I am the face, the same and we don't have no cutlery On the table. No problem, that's all I have to fear.
Speaker 1:But now.
Speaker 2:I have to go and tell my man yo, we don't have no cutlery. If that cutlery don't go there, they come back to me. Hey, we still have to get the cutlery. Hey, don't worry, I'll fix it for you now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go back, let me get the cutlery. Observing the crowd and realizing what needs to be done where, at what time?
Speaker 1:but, kiggs, you take that on yourself. You take ownership of the again.
Speaker 2:I come back to service. Right, I am deeply invested in your wedding being the best wedding it could be. Now, yes, I'm not doing it for free. You had a payment to come here. But when I come to a house I'm not going to say, well, so I've come to a wedding before where everything running late, chairs had to pack up I hear I'm not going to sit down and wait. And then when whoever comes to pack the chairs now had to pack the chairs and be delaying things further, here you go, help, but I'm not passing pack out chairs for a whole wedding already. Then when they finally reach the same night not supposed to be here and we had to move it, but still we packed it out.
Speaker 2:So really and truly, I am there to make your day better. If your coordinator is not doing quarrel with the client and say, hey, you had to do X, y, z and so on. So you know, now is the time for that. Are you doing what I could to make it better? So if a man asks for extra glass, no problem. Somebody threw down something within a new tablecloth, sure? No problem. You need somebody to handle that Now.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to try to do it myself.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, but it done Right Again. Another person might say, well, that's not my work, but you have to realize everything that disrupts the event makes your job now harder.
Speaker 1:And I guess it could also make you look like not the greatest host too, and you know your future would.
Speaker 2:People having a bad time. It's people having a bad time. You know, at the end of the day, when people remember they had a bad time, you know, oh, it's yeah At the end of the day, when people remember they had a bad time, yeah, they're going to remember everything.
Speaker 1:Them had a bad time in their wedding.
Speaker 2:that's Keeg's host. That's the headline Of course, of course.
Speaker 2:That's the headline. Keeg's host bad wedding reception that is the headline. Your future will look bleak. So it's. At At times you are the programmer as the host and I'm looking at well, time to cut the cake. I should not have gone and run down the newlyweds and say, well, hey, time to go up on the stage as the coordinator job, but people getting antsy on time going. I can sit down and say, well, no, wait till the coordinator handle that. It's affecting your product. Plenty of times two coordinators will come and tell me, hey, hey, time to cut cake. And I'm watching them like, yeah, time to cut cake, right, what are you using? Yeah, so now we both are watching each other, right, what will go up? Somebody had to get in the universe. Yeah, them around the room. Time to cut cake. Yeah, I know, yeah, let's go. Who do we understand now? But I, but I did. I eaten, I drinking, but I feel like my personality is so laid back so helpful.
Speaker 1:Also very adjustable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know how to fit into wherever that audience is or whoever the people are, and that's another thing about me, and I mean not to pat myself on the back, but still I know some hosts who will not go by people's houses. Yeah, house, community centre Hired.
Speaker 1:Oh, you mean, if the wedding is by the house, they wouldn't go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am anywhere.
Speaker 1:You don't care where the venue is You're about the bride and the groom.
Speaker 2:Right, you Could afford my course Right, and sometimes you can't, but I understand, right. Right, you meet me Not halfway. Halfway is not enough. I'm saying that halfway is not enough. You had a meet my about 80 percent ways. Let's fail, right. But there are people who I could earnestly see by. There's all you could afford? Yeah, and you can work with them. I come, and especially if it's a good month, I don't have three, four weddings, no problem how much I have, I come and down. I buy a house. Now, everybody's wedding deserves some level of sophistication and I bring in that. But some people are done that son too. You bring me down by your house here and I cage in your audience and your crowd All the sophisticated kids. You're responsible for the vibe. He out of place here.
Speaker 1:I understand out of place here. I understand what you mean.
Speaker 2:I understand what you mean. He out of place here. So, yes, speaking properly, speaking clearly, but I had to meet people where they are, of course. Of course, right, it have a wedding. I went to already. I come in soup creepy sting bomb. When I see what going on, I take off my jacket.
Speaker 1:That's what I was gonna ask you. You, you tend to based on the wedding. So, for instance, if you have a Hindu wedding, or you adjust what you look like and everything to suit that exactly because you don't necessarily want to stand out.
Speaker 2:What we need to realize. Whatever you might be in the wedding DJ decorator, you don't want to stand out. Everybody needs to compliment each other. This is not. This is not the wedding decorated by you.
Speaker 1:This is not the wedding hosted by kings.
Speaker 2:This is just this whoever wedding it is, this is their wedding. That is the spotlight. Yes, I want to be a good host, but I don't ever want that after somebody's wedding, they feel like it was Kiggs and Conceal they use the most memorable.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you that. I know because if I had songs, kiggs, I'll tell you something right now and you give me a mic and a thing to promote. I carry my bar, I carry it on the radio station, I carry it all about and people are blaming me. I'm telling you what's going to happen now. Boy, listen, I hope they don't pay me, I hope they get me introducing Brighten Up Group.
Speaker 2:I can't bring myself to do that.
Speaker 1:I can't bring myself to do that. People request it sometimes, I'm sure. Yes.
Speaker 2:Like Christmas, yeah, people want to hear it, even after Christmas weekend coming up. Right, she is telling me, yeah, sing your songs. And I'm telling her I'm not singing Soka Parang. Right, I'm not singing Soka Parang until well, if I dare. And I realize that the audience saying, hey, wait, not these gigs, use your Soka Parang, let me hear some tunes that different, that totally different, of course, but I'm not coming out on myself to disrupt the flow I have here. And this is where it is important for me to understand who I am in different scenarios. When I'm performing soka parang, especially as Kiggs, I am not host Kiggs. When I'm hosting an event, I am not soka parang Kiggs, right, when I'm hosting an event, I am not Soka Parang Kiggs. Same way, if you're calling Kiggs to host an event, you can't pay him. The same thing you want to pay Soka Parang Kiggs.
Speaker 1:I would imagine.
Speaker 2:But Soka Parang Kiggs is going cheap, yeah, yeah yeah, so the wedding, not two weddings Soka Parang Kiggs. When you call Soka Parang Kiggs, they rate something nice, different price. When you call kegs event, host kegs, right the price, not all that nice and you're not really negotiating right now so caparan kegs might be on the phone a while and well, all right, I could do this for you and thing thing event host kegs, then you know this is what it is.
Speaker 1:No thanks, okay. So young couples here, what to do? Right, when you're getting married, book it on a friday night. It's like take one for the team here. Just put your wedding on a friday night, call paris okaparang keys, pay the okaparang price and hope for the best. You never know what will happen.
Speaker 2:Hope for the best that might be like bad advice type bad advice.
Speaker 1:But you know you're saying that it's different people showing up, but it's almost like like one of the things I talked to my father about when we performing a lot is we the playing and singing on stage. I think I get over that a little bit white oak and so on, you know that'll bother me but you know it's real. Bother me talking in between songs, like introducing a song, saying like how you say easily though I go make a joke about this say this woman, take this man and I would, so you.
Speaker 2:It seemed like there's a marriage between the two things so it helps at that point in time, but it's still. It's a slap. It still has some gaps, right, because the host keegs might get wrong. Right, he might get wrong. Yeah, yeah so kappa and keegs might know better what to say here at that point in time gotcha.
Speaker 1:So the mood mentally and everything.
Speaker 2:So you're really depending on the skill that host keegs have got you, so it's the movement and everything I got you. So you're really depending on the skill that host gigs have. But you really had to be Soka Paran Kiggs in that moment, because host gigs is not no slacker really to say telling you know. But Soka. Paran Kiggs might have to jump out a little bit and realize also, you know if it's the dead. But they were that rah, rah, rah and nobody. Quickness in the brain helping them, yeah, I suppose.
Speaker 1:So you're still drawing on these skills, but it's still two different personas I would imagine they really need.
Speaker 2:I would imagine because, in terms of so event hosting right, I use that skill right and the skill is what you want, sonny Bling, to JW, give me oh, you got you. Right, I got you no, if you're one sunny bling, you could get it hundred. No, you can't, yeah, better you call sunny bling.
Speaker 2:You were close to sunny bling, all right, it could go. I could get close to sunny right. Right, you were jw. I could probably get jw what I gain. Don't look for exactly j JW, because you still had to get my persona, my personality, right. But that's my skill. What are you looking for?
Speaker 1:but my question too was like, for instance, I was who I had last. Oh no, I had Ben Geyer here recently.
Speaker 2:He said he done a lot of weddings and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I realized in putting up his episode is I'm thinking, okay, this man talking about some of these things, and he's talking real matter of fact. He's talking real cool, he's humble and I'm thinking if I could have built anything he's talking about, he'd be on top of this table talking about it. He's amazing. But his work you're saying part of asking him and getting more work his work is private, like weddings. It's like somebody privating their pictures, pictures and their videos. So I wonder sometimes, when you have to promote yourself next, how do people get to know who keegs is?
Speaker 2:so that no keegs can host my wedding right. So that's, that's a bit of the difficulty. I do get a lot of footage that I could use for myself, because some couples are uncomfortable with their weddings being out there right, and then some is like, yeah, I not comfortable putting your wedding out there, but I try to get little clips here and there. Sometimes I might do a reel right and I'll see some of them. I try to escape the intimate moment so I wouldn't put up.
Speaker 2:You're cutting a cake, your first dance this kind of thing unless you're okay with it, okay, right, but I tend to focus more on just generally their core. Like I eat something earlier, like I drink something now, the mic on me here, I don't really have the couple in the background or anything like that. So you don't go live in people's wedding. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's what I would do. Some people do, alright, some people do, I've seen it, but that's, that's not my, that's just not my style, because it come like. It's very parallel to me and how I feel like I'm serving you on the day I get to make your wedding better. Also, I'm not trying to, after the fuck, upset you.
Speaker 2:There was one time I'm did our wedding. Everything was good, right, and I did a tiktok, right, wasn't the first time I've done it right. So what happens sometimes is I always take a picture with the couple. Sometimes I am the one smiling and them looking serious, and it could just be that that's just how they take pictures. Of course, yeah, no problem, no, nothing.
Speaker 2:But it had a, a comedian reel that was um, what's his name? By dion dion, something cool, yeah. So it was a joke where he was saying some guys approach him to take a picture when he take the picture with them, he's smiling and everybody else right. So now it looked like I wanted to take a picture with all of you. So that's basically the audio I used. You all could have told me you weren't going to smile. Now it looks like I wanted a picture with you all, so that's not the first time I used it. It was never a problem. Put it up on TikTok, get a message, take down that picture. Think we don't really like it? No problem, sorry about that. Apologies, of course.
Speaker 2:Right, that bothered me for weeks, I would imagine I would imagine that bothered me for weeks, because that'll happen with me, because at the forefront of me, approaching weddings, is me trying to make sure that I'm not stepping on any toes. I don't want a bad memory for your wedding to be associated with me at all, of course, right.
Speaker 1:So after that experience especially, I yeah, yeah, yeah, I would imagine, I would imagine I don't tell you, kiggs, that's part of the reason you're here. Because let me tell you something when I don't talk to people here again, my goal, really my purpose, is to make sure that the light shed on people who make impact you know what I mean who make it, who are doing positive things. So I approach this thing very, very pure. When I leave here and man say, well, you let this man say this, and I can't sleep when the night comes. So I say everybody happy because they see pan people promoters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the matrix to see it rough I had to do pan promoter artists, soca, parang and wedding going forward, because this is a big gap. I understand how you feel because I guess you're such a part of the center of somebody's special moment in their life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to hear that somebody just unhappy or disappointed in something or even associating something negative with the best day of their life, exactly right that. That to me.
Speaker 1:I looking to not be the reason for that at all it's something that I always watch your social media and I'm impressed with. I see the care you treat couples with and, um, not to compare to any other wedding host, I'll show everybody great. But sometimes it seems as though like for for my wedding, for instance, I made the fatal mistake of like just now when he was talking about singing Soka Parang in a wedding. I come from a Parang family both sides, so when I have a Stacey uncle, when my father going for a get and I going for a quarter, acting way boxed, basically I leave that home. I thought it was a wedding. I was like, boy, go for it, what are you talking about? I have nothing we do as a family without that. Yeah, so I was thinking it would be ideal for you to come and sing soca parang in our wedding. But then I was gonna say, well, we get married in, but I couldn't remember the month so I decided I would skip that question. You know, she kind of looking for them guy problem.
Speaker 1:I turn out to be december anyway when I cycle through mine. But when you, when you're there and you bring that to the table, it's like I I made the mistake of not hiring a host or not hiring a coordinator. We got married during covid. We had a limited number of numbers too, and I felt that because my father could talk, so I say if you could host. But I realized that that wasn't the best decision, because now he's so focused on doing what he had to do that his speech was, or even things like you talk about. I did it in hilton, and while my father was giving his speech that's what I'm looking forward to for my whole life and while he given his speech they brought the bill and thing for me to sign. So I try to sign and that should have been the coordinator.
Speaker 1:Well, here now me and uncle tell you how bad it was when time to stick the cake, because you know we're a king Stacey drunk, and I drunk like a fish by the time we reached. Yeah, now when we reach across the thing I walk in on. Stacey dressed Me, know where she took go when we reach, I say well, how we sticking this cake. I have no idea. It's the photographer. Salute to Mark Anthony. He come and run. He was like the quality.
Speaker 2:Mark.
Speaker 1:Anthony was my photographer as well, serious he's a hell of a man. He organize everything on the day, you know what I mean and he come and bring the knife and whatever the hell he's called them thing and we end up having some. All I study on the day is the cattle and them with them line up to play with. I have no concept of cake sticking and all these types of things.
Speaker 2:Boy. What is why? Again, like I have a lot of a young host right who asks me for advice and stuff and really and truly my, my biggest piece of advice is to is to care. You have to care, like you see, when it's corporate charm them.
Speaker 1:So you do a lot of that too, right? Corporate, corporate gigs and that kind of thing, but charm them.
Speaker 2:Corporate, have money, charm them and go down there. And yes, I'm not saying go down there and give them a half of the work, but jam them and go down there and you do. Corporate, too, will give you a lot of information and script exactly how they want things.
Speaker 1:Weddings not so much, yeah, so corporate is more like an MC presenter.
Speaker 2:You go, you bring everyone up and you leave and you could veer off and corporate vex with you very easily.
Speaker 1:They may be looking for too much of your personality, necessarily depending on the event.
Speaker 2:I see they want somebody who could speak well and represent the brand and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Try and stay more within the lines, but weddings are the colour. Yeah, because you don't know what the lines are. I see that's the problem. Yeah, learn this as you along. So I was a lot of weddings would be the first time people ever in this situation. They don't know exactly what should be out here. So you have to care. You have to care because you will see things. Look, I did a wedding last weekend. Came to the wedding, um, just me looking around making sure everything in order. Again, just based on my experience. There is no speaker box in the dining area. There's a speaker for the ceremony, a speaker for the cocktail, so they have a separate dining. They have no speaker in the dining area, like you know. Hey, on the boxing side there, boy, now the coordinator tell us everything happening right here. Right here Say nah, you go full flat on the police. That, no, but in the dining area is where the entire formality is happening as well. Oh, I see all the intro the speeches, sticking at the cake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody forgot to power box. Or somebody forgot to let somebody know how boxing to go there, right, hey, we gotta power box now. Everything happening here, I said yo listen, listen to me, we have to power box in there. Take my stupid advice we have to put our box in there. We have to put our box in there right now, otherwise we're going to start the reception and then we're going to have to stop the reception for you to come and put our box in there serious boy thing and we put our box and the days go on.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows. This is the first time anybody has heard that that happened. I'm not going out to say, hey look, I'm going to make the man put our box in there. No, because I just I care, yeah me, you make the day a little better.
Speaker 1:That's all it is I care. Yeah, I see you live with the weddings. I was gonna say live with the couples, right, but he's a high now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see you live with the weddings for long after the wedding done, and that caring shows like you carry them with you a little bit after the thing is done a lot of the time too, and I could understand why people feel that connection and it's almost like we are friends, Right, right, some of the times we actually do become friends and it's not necessarily I come in and check you on the weekend, friends, right, but it's still a response to a story.
Speaker 2:I see something. I see everybody's anniversary. I just gonna ask the anniversary and I sent a little message hey, congrats, nice to see you. They're still together. Right, some stories I see and they're not together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so now you have two when they're together before.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't know how nice it would have been when two become four, but you see that too. Another recent experience where and it all comes back to my my um, life experience with grief and stuff, and like after my father died, I feel like I kind of started to hold back on building relationships with people, not really on purpose, but as an aftermath of that, because I don't want to have to lose people. You understand, like I don't want to go through that grief again, so I don't really go out of my way to build relationships right here. So, the same way, I would have known you and yeah, I mean it happened over time and organically, I didn't really put myself on, of course, right, um, uh, three weeks ago, one of the couples that I hosted a wedding for that would have been in 2019, her husband, died.
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, I suppose shit and again. So we didn't really get all that close. We didn't really get all that close, but we were still like, yeah, seeing your stuff and I, I seen what going on and whatnot, so it still feels like a loss now, right, of course. And I, I seen what going on and whatnot, so it still feels like I lost. Now, right, of course, and I mean Some people's Thought process will be Well, you know, it's a benefit that you get to know somebody Rather than you didn't know them at all, but for me it's a toss up, right, right, right. It's a toss up Because To hear you died Automatically the same old memories On the day, yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Then the memories, everything I seen happening and I seen you and your family growing and progressing over time and what not, so is you invested in it. And if I doing 20 plus weddings, oh, yeah, a year, yeah, you living with a lot of stories, there's a lot of people, a lot of stories. I seen people you're going on vacation, everything nice. You having your first child. I living through miscarriages, I living stories. I see in people you're going on vacation, everything nice you have in your first child. I live in true miscarriages. I live in true children being born. It's happy, it's sad. I live in true illness. I live in true debt. I live in true grief.
Speaker 2:Parents yeah of course, yeah, who was a big part of the wedding day, and it's people that I would have been there with and experienced things with. So what's your outlet?
Speaker 1:for daily. There's a lot in O'Keegs. What are you doing? Drink rum? Oh right, yeah. And bus people are killing something. That's what I said in Magda. You know, no but the sweat. But there are a few things I want to get to too, because you say drink rum, and there's a man. He enticed me immediately so.
Speaker 1:I custom drinking with your lime and then we're playing football, we meet playing football, right, and there's a man who used to take a drink with drinking wiver and then one day he come and tell my boy, I'm a doctor and they tell my blood sugar da, da, da, da, da and you change completely. It was done, annoying and sick and fast and had all the energy to play it for the length of time. Anybody who ever sweated with me know I have a solid couple moments from every sweat. But that is it. So when you had that, when you had that change, I always admired how quickly it seemed to be fast to me, because one day I see keegs and he was keegs and next day keegs wore club soda and perrier to chase with and thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how much of an adjustment was that for you when you had to change your diet and everything, boy, um, I don't want to say it was easy, right, right, it wasn't easy, it wasn't easy, but I feel like I had big motivation. Again. My dad was diabetic, I see. So what I was able to be there for was, I guess, the change in how they approach diabetes. Back in his time they kind of just defaulted to medication. We had all these diet, soft drinks and all these things across the period and we kind of realized later on that actually not better.
Speaker 1:So all of these things across the period and we kind of realized later on that actually not better, not so good for you, yeah.
Speaker 2:So all of these little things. So when I was at the doctor's appointment and he was dealing with the results and he for himself was saying, well, you know, it would be good if he could reduce this. So reduce eating white rice, reduce flour, reduce sugary drinks, I asked him, well, why don't you tell me to cut it out? And he said, well, most people can't just cut it out now. I've never been big on sweets, but I'm drinking my juice and things because I'm healthy that's what people do.
Speaker 1:That's right. It's just cultural, it's drinking.
Speaker 2:you're chasing with ginger ale or what not, so you're drinking. Of course, right Rice is a staple Rice is rice.
Speaker 1:You're eating rice three more times. Rice is sweet.
Speaker 2:Right, right and flour. You're eating flour twice for the day. You're eating flour breakfast and dinner Right, more than likely A sandwich. Or if it's a bake or something, every Tuesday it's a roti. My Like a sandwich. Or if it's a bake or something, every Tuesday it's a roti. In my list, everybody making a roti, no matter where you go To get food, it's a roti. So you're eating flour. Right, and that's it. He said, basically, a lot of people Can't just cut out.
Speaker 2:These things Right. So, in all honesty, I couldn't cut it out Completely either, but that's what I aim to do, and I actually did cut it out completely three months. I didn't eat any flour, I didn't eat any white rice, I didn't drink any juice, any soft drink yeah right, I was drinking water and green tea, which is still why the drink I looking for a switch up green tea right from water, see is there much of a switch up.
Speaker 2:Green tea, green From water. See, it's that much of a switch, right. Coconut water in between, right, but for the flour, the rice, I was eating more provision, green fig, a lot of meats, a lot of vegetables, right, and I lost 20 pounds. Yeah, quick In that three months Almost.
Speaker 1:Between the two times I see it, I see one sweat, next thing. I get smaller and faster and lighter.
Speaker 2:It's the worst. So like now, that's like three years now we talking about, so now I'm not as strict with it, but I still. I don't drink juice, I don't drink soft drink. If I'm drinking rum and I'm chasing a silver club soda or I'm drinking I'm light Listen, it's still a club soda, yeah, still conscious of it. Or drinking a light beer. Surprisingly, light beer don't really have no big sugar content. You could drink light beer. I wake up the next day, test my sugar. You're good, everything good.
Speaker 1:So you're still on top of it all the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I wouldn't check every day, but I'll check once every week just to make sure. Right? I don't have any symptoms to say give me any indication, I need to check on anything, but I don't want anything to get out of hand. Yeah, of course, of course. Yeah, take it in front and the problem is now weddings.
Speaker 1:Well, this is what I'm wondering. I can't eat all them people cakes, so use me as a reminder.
Speaker 2:Every father week or every week, so this is going to be the third week in a row Wedding. It have rice.
Speaker 1:In wedding. It have rice. Right in the wedding it have rice for sure.
Speaker 2:You see how bad it is I study in cake because you're right, you know what else it have. It have doubles, yeah.
Speaker 1:It have doubles in all them wedding yeah, of course so that you bust out a whole set of mini roti you wasn't eating that, so you avoid it completely, as much as you can yeah right. So, cakes, you're gonna be busting achilles for a long time. This is, this is not. It's this thing. I know it's not.
Speaker 2:No end to this road I want us to take unequivocally state that I did not have anything to do with this man erupt chain as achilles tinnon. Because I know how we like headlines in this country.
Speaker 1:I mean, that cannot be the headline well, the nice thing about editing clips is I could edit this so soon I go and put a picture of all the surgery I went through. I think this is going to be part of the clips, geeks. That's why we're here. I've been waiting for this for a long time.
Speaker 2:The Bunking Quarry Shepherd, I will start that podcast. Every time you release an episode, I have one coming right up the Bunking Quarry.
Speaker 1:Shepherd, but listen two more things before we go in. Quarry shepherd, I did see you at one point in time and I was inspiring for me doing a podcast. Well, I don't know if it was a podcast, it was a news type of show which I find was real entertaining, something that you will continue to do, or you're considering.
Speaker 2:That is, that was the weekend review. I started by myself to drain covid times oh, it's covid, okay, right. And then, um, I reintroduced it as part of the ttnl show on our Radio. Dot FM Right to Our Radio, to Our Radio, yeah, if you haven't checked it out yet, online radio station, get that promoting strictly local Writers, producers, right, poets, just local artists, right, yeah, and if it's doing great, well, it's doing great with them. So we're supposed to start back in May, right, so that will be coming back. Beautiful, so that will be coming back. So we could look forward to that. But my gain is just to get the work and do the work, because, remember, keegs, have a day job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, keegs is still Keegs event host.
Speaker 2:Keegs is event host. Keegs trying to get music done for Christmas. Yeah, of course, trying to get into the soccer space still Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's something I want to continue to pursue, because I mean Mevon and them no.
Speaker 2:No, I can't go by Mevon. You can't go by Mevon. I can't go by Mevon. And that's not me saying it as a lament. I don't know what you mean. Mevon, I can't go by Mevon, so it's the same thing. Mevon as a Soka Parang, and then let me phone, bring it in and say this could be a soca serious but let me do that nah, but no, but I respect that. Yeah, of course you know, and I I fully support. I'm very proud. I celebrate mevon every time I see mevon making strides.
Speaker 1:he continues to do great. So I call on my mother, but there's something you will continue to pursue.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so I do my thing. I don't. I'm not sure that I like it, but I feel like I have something to offer. Right, I'm not sure the audience want it.
Speaker 1:No, but I like how you you, starting with the, as Zan had come here and say saying yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, I'm not sure the audience want it, but once I like my song it had real hits for this year for canny ball and I build my playlist and I put mine inside it of course, so mine was when I hear mine inside I say hey boy, this too nice kicks you a better man than? Me, you wasn't really okay weddings.
Speaker 1:I don't make every event about me. That way I would have no more work.
Speaker 2:That way I only use one wedding ever now that that way said there is poor from a marketing perspective. Yeah, but I see I really care about no, yeah, that comes true, more than me yeah, I really care about people's experience more than me. Yes, I could go there, but I've been in places where I've felt like yo, what you're doing right, of course, of course I ain't coming for that. I could see people that come here for that, but I'm not promoting anything on here, yeah people.
Speaker 1:Some people don't care, some people don't care. Somebody I had talked to and they were saying the same thing. They say but if I had to do this again, when I go on the radio, I play my tune. How you're sleeping In the night matters, yeah, and I think it's One of my biggest takeaways From talking to you.
Speaker 2:But um Soca, yeah, I feel like I have Something to offer Right, and Again I rather have, like I look into, do a power soca Right. And producer, don't tell me. Well boy, people already listen To power soca.
Speaker 1:So, unless it's A bungee or a martial art.
Speaker 2:Nothing. I feel like. I like music Power, soca, I like that, I like that as if you like this song. I like it as much as we have Our kind of seasonal nature and if it don't pop this season, it gone. I got a power soca, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I do a power soca Years from now. You know, I do a power soca.
Speaker 1:I just tune up, I say that tune really bad boy.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm looking for. I would say, somebody else appreciate my art, right? And yes, music is business and I understand people making the livelihood from the business, but music is expression and music is art and anytime we have abandoned the fact that we have people who willing to just express the self and create, right, we lose the art form itself. Yeah, of course, of course, everybody looking to forward. So it had to have some people who willing to create and yo, you have your art it once. You have it it there yeah, it can't spoil.
Speaker 1:It's not no expiry date, or not it there? Yeah, I remember telling you after sweat is a good place for you to wrap up, because after sweater they are telling us the gigs. You had to keep doing what you're doing, whether it's forwarding it, hitting, hitting or whatever, because my prediction is this, and I've said it many times I think you will land in the same place as Ahsoka Parangreat. That sacrifice you're making, because I understand that's a sacrifice too, because the more I drink, the more I want to follow certain songs.
Speaker 1:I promise, before we come here, I will talk to people about their own music and not talk to nobody else, right? But some of those songs that I write, let me go back to my partner who sang Cat in Bag. You can't do that because you are a writer. If you're still young you could do that. So I always admire writers who and I find it with writers more than anybody else A man who's by song tends to want to, and I hope to have impulse here one day who's one of the greatest at ever doing that ever, right? But um, you, you take that conscious decision to keep your music in a certain direction. Yeah, and I hear you know I are not around as much events as you, but where I am, a lot is by people, house at house, parang, and I talk about simple people. You go up camera and they go up param and you go up they go up anywhere, say simple people.
Speaker 1:All they want is a little music and year by year, the first time I meet you, I see these gigs because I hear people playing a little song over the years and me don't know who is this, with sweet voice and all them kind of thing. You know long me hear sweet voice and music in this country sometimes and I've seen over the years where your music starting to get you know you're watching people, right. I always hear people talk about this in studios, where you bring people in the studio and you just throw on a song, nobody know, and you watch how people pop it, and I've seen that happening with your music. More so, all of a sudden I start to see a year where because when, when baron say come go, man, drunk, man thing, but you go here, will you come go? And if I play that, people will respond.
Speaker 1:You know, I see over the years on people house, people start to say pay me, pay me, and you must be seeing it too. All of a sudden random people say boy, this gig's easy. You know, I think it, I think it will land very well. So I hope it's something that you're gonna continue to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. But even with like, pay me, it was a struggle for me to do all that repetition. Yeah, but I had to meet the audience halfway, of course, so I had to let go the fact that I feel like some kind of purist and I want to write my song. But no, the song is not just for me, no. So if I had to say, pay me 26 times, you're doing it From a man to a bobby head and get him to pay me that Boy listen, keep doing it, keep doing it, You're going to land in the right place.
Speaker 2:Christmas with Keegs oh yes, please. Thanks for bringing that up. So what I aim to do With Christmas with Keegs Again Is give people Christmas. When you come for Christmas with Keegs, it's not Soca and chutney and dancehall.
Speaker 2:If you don't like Christmas, don't come on, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't like it Because it is A night Of Christmas Now we in Trin o'clock in the morning we could get something else to close off, but you reach by me for 7 o'clock till 12 it's Parang it's traditional Christmas, it's the Christmas on the hill and it's the ribbons and all of these songs that is nostalgic and you bring a lot of other artists.
Speaker 1:You give them the space too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Parang bands that's on the circuit, circuit um I had yonkey manny, nice, nice um she's about seven or eight by now beautiful. Um, my fish are brown. Yeah, um artists that you probably don't really know of necessarily right, but in this space will key is one who has been alongside me throughout the daily space, right? So I try to give people an event that is just authentically Christmas. It don't have to be a great long day. Oh God, oh God, becoming is Christmas.
Speaker 1:Well, you're creating the space that you want. Well, congratulations on that. I'm glad that you're doing it. I hope you continue to do it and continue to make your music and do your thing, and I forgive you for busting my Achilles. I just want to end on that note. Since you talked, you know you touched my lot in this. You know I was very touched with your words in this episode. Yeah, see.
Speaker 2:I'm glad I didn't touch it. I don't want to forgive you. I'm glad I didn't touch it, man, you didn't touch my talk, though I'm glad I didn't touch it.
Speaker 1:I thought this man kicked away the back of my foot.