Latest / Corie Sheppard Podcast / Episode 249 | Stacey Sobers
Transcript
- 0:00Corie Sheppard: Hi, my name is Corey.
- 0:01Corie Sheppard: David Wears once again insists that I introduce myself on this podcast, and today we have the great Stacey Sobers.
- 0:07Stacey Sobers: The great he said.
- 0:08Corie Sheppard: The great, the great, the great.
- 0:09Corie Sheppard: People don't understand how long we're looking forward to this.
- 0:12Stacey Sobers: We've been looking forward to this for a while, I run for a while, I run for a while.
- 0:16Corie Sheppard: You run.
- 0:17Corie Sheppard: Maybe it's David, we get your corner.
- 0:18Corie Sheppard: Do we have you today?
- 0:19Stacey Sobers: I guess it's too early.
- 0:21Corie Sheppard: That's the idea.
- 0:21Corie Sheppard: That's why we put you far from the door, so in case you try to run again, you can stop it.
- 0:24Stacey Sobers: You have me, I have it All right, beautiful, beautiful.
- 0:27Corie Sheppard: I tell my listeners for some time now that I came and I saw you in a play.
- 0:30Corie Sheppard: Funny place to start.
- 0:31Corie Sheppard: Right, we're supposed to be talking Kaizo and things.
- 0:33Stacey Sobers: It's Kaizo.
- 0:34Stacey Sobers: It's Kaizo Rose musical.
- 0:41Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 0:41Corie Sheppard: So my mother, my wife and I, we decided we're coming to Calypso Rose, we had to come and see this thing.
- 0:46Corie Sheppard: And I seen big, big names on the bill.
- 0:47Corie Sheppard: You know Names in Calypso, names in theater, names in music and things.
- 0:52Corie Sheppard: When I see the band playing I say, nah boy, I had to see this and, of course, roma Spencer.
- 0:56Corie Sheppard: Right, you can't miss that.
- 0:57Corie Sheppard: And I don't know if I could have bargained for what I was getting there that night.
- 1:03Corie Sheppard: So how did I ask you about it?
- 1:05Corie Sheppard: How did I ask you about preparation for that play?
- 1:08Stacey Sobers: Preparation for the play.
- 1:09Stacey Sobers: But I've never really acted before Really.
- 1:12Stacey Sobers: I did something in secondary school interracial marriage kind of thing.
- 1:17Stacey Sobers: I was the lead female and I got Best Actress.
- 1:21Stacey Sobers: That was the only time I ever acted in anything in that secondary school Between 91, 92, somewhere and Roma Spencer seemed to think that I look like and sound like Calypso Rose a little bit.
- 1:35Stacey Sobers: So she said I don't know if you ever acted in here, but you is where I want to play Calypso Rose and I really jumped at the opportunity because it's Calypso Rose and I was.
- 1:44Stacey Sobers: I really jumped at the opportunity because it's Calypso Rose.
- 1:45Stacey Sobers: Of course it is Calypso Rose To live her life through her words Phenomenal.
- 1:51Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:52Corie Sheppard: So you're handpicked to do this thing, yeah yeah, yeah.
- 1:54Corie Sheppard: I think for people on the outside of it, like just the average consumer, it made sense immediately.
- 2:00Corie Sheppard: When they advertise it and assist it, someone says yes, you're right.
- 2:05Stacey Sobers: I wanted to do such a great job at portraying the role.
- 2:10Stacey Sobers: I studied the dance, the move, the voice, the nuances.
- 2:14Stacey Sobers: I just wanted to get it perfect.
- 2:16Stacey Sobers: I don't know if I did it perfect, but I think I was good.
- 2:19Corie Sheppard: You did it perfect.
- 2:20Corie Sheppard: You did it perfect, if I could say so.
- 2:23Stacey Sobers: It was really nice learning her history, and from her mouth as well, because the research was done, the interviews were done, nice, yeah.
- 2:31Stacey Sobers: So Roma really dug into the life and learning it off the script.
- 2:36Stacey Sobers: Was it opened you up to know what that time was like and what this, how different it is now for female calypsonians?
- 2:46Stacey Sobers: Um, I mean, there's still some struggles, but we've come a long way yeah thanks to calypso rose and people like singing francine and yeah, big, big sacrifices they were made.
- 2:57Corie Sheppard: So before we start I was telling you about nerves right on my end.
- 2:59Corie Sheppard: I always will.
- 3:00Corie Sheppard: When I see people who are seeing stage all my life and I get to sit down and talk to them, it could be intimidating.
- 3:05Corie Sheppard: Are you intimidated at all going into that room?
- 3:08Stacey Sobers: The best will tell you if you don't get butterflies you're making no sense Serious.
- 3:11Stacey Sobers: And I think if you're not getting butterflies, it's overconfident, and overconfidence has little mistakes For me.
- 3:19Stacey Sobers: That's my theory, my thought.
- 3:21Stacey Sobers: So I always get butterflies, I say no, I have a little butterfly as well, yeah.
- 3:27Stacey Sobers: I mean, yeah, we do anything because we have to do the thing, you know.
- 3:29Corie Sheppard: They say do it scared.
- 3:30Corie Sheppard: You know that's right.
- 3:31Corie Sheppard: Yeah, you have to execute.
- 3:32Stacey Sobers: But at the end of the day, once it is done and people accept and appreciate it, I'm good.
- 3:39Corie Sheppard: Oh yeah, I'm good.
- 3:40Corie Sheppard: Well, I think, well, well, I think the feedback again was great right, I'm not the only person telling you this.
- 3:51Stacey Sobers: And it humbles you.
- 3:52Stacey Sobers: Yeah, it humbles you.
- 3:52Stacey Sobers: I don't know how much more humble I could get.
- 3:53Stacey Sobers: But yeah, it really humbles you to know that people appreciate the job that you did and the preparation that went into it, so let me talk preparation again because, again in a talking job myself I understand how tired you feel when you finish finished Like lecturing, for instance.
- 4:06Corie Sheppard: When you're done lecturing, you're tired, I can't move.
- 4:08Corie Sheppard: So I left that central back auditorium with knowing that you had to do this two more nights.
- 4:14Corie Sheppard: I said how's she going to make?
- 4:15Corie Sheppard: What are you doing in terms of the time?
- 4:17Corie Sheppard: Because you had to be exhausted after the full show.
- 4:19Stacey Sobers: I'm going to share something with you Like closing night or the night, the rehearsal before the closing night, because we had the dress rehearsal and stuff that rehearsal.
- 4:31Stacey Sobers: I got into an accident going home because I was so tired, yeah, so tired.
- 4:35Stacey Sobers: A little bouncy then, but it drains you.
- 4:38Stacey Sobers: It drains you and rest is important.
- 4:41Stacey Sobers: Rest is important.
- 4:43Stacey Sobers: People Sleep, sleep, important people Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.
- 4:48Stacey Sobers: If it's five, ten minutes, take a nap, but it's a lot of work.
- 4:52Stacey Sobers: It is a lot of work and you need to mentally be prepared.
- 4:57Stacey Sobers: You need to physically be prepared, you need to be emotionally prepared and once you're prepared, I guess everything will roll into place.
- 5:04Corie Sheppard: It will fall into place.
- 5:04Corie Sheppard: Yeah, and I think it's such an important story that was being told, you know, Rose story, especially because they started at the origin.
- 5:11Corie Sheppard: They started with young Rose.
- 5:12Corie Sheppard: What was the actress' name?
- 5:13Corie Sheppard: Again, Tara Howe.
- 5:14Corie Sheppard: Yeah, she was Tara's phenomenon, something else, right?
- 5:19Stacey Sobers: Yeah, she just fell, fall into the role and the thing about her tara was doing everybody's part, like if she was in the role.
- 5:26Stacey Sobers: So if somebody didn't come, tara would fall in the role and just do the person's part.
- 5:31Corie Sheppard: And the child is phenomenal hey, david, we had to get her, he is phenomenal and I I see great things in her future.
- 5:38Corie Sheppard: Yeah, she was amazing and she said the tone for it, because again some things are stood out right.
- 5:43Corie Sheppard: Is that tobago twang the?
- 5:45Corie Sheppard: The accent, you know what I mean.
- 5:46Stacey Sobers: Or the feel the cadence yeah, I could agree.
- 5:49Corie Sheppard: Oh man, yeah, shit, shit.
- 5:50Corie Sheppard: So I think, as the thing opened it started to, I think it's one of the things that we look for in movies, plays or series.
- 5:56Corie Sheppard: You want to forget that you're watching actors.
- 5:58Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah so it happened, and then you came out, and then when, by the time you come out, I don't think you leave the stage at all.
- 6:04Corie Sheppard: It's like you.
- 6:05Stacey Sobers: Oh my god, it's in every scene, in every scene, in every scene.
- 6:08Stacey Sobers: And, um, you see, the people that we had on the cast helpful, they push you, they push you, they push you.
- 6:17Stacey Sobers: Yeah lines, you forget lines.
- 6:18Stacey Sobers: Somebody know your lines.
- 6:19Stacey Sobers: Come and tell you quick, yeah.
- 6:21Stacey Sobers: So, um, I'm going to tell you quick.
- 6:24Stacey Sobers: So it was a great cast.
- 6:26Stacey Sobers: It was an awesome time working with these people.
- 6:28Stacey Sobers: I mean, without them, I don't know where I'd be.
- 6:31Corie Sheppard: Yeah, and my eyesight done bad.
- 6:33Corie Sheppard: When I look I say wait, no, they know.
- 6:34Corie Sheppard: Alicia Drakus yeah.
- 6:36Stacey Sobers: Oh, Alicia was so double as the musical director.
- 6:39Corie Sheppard: I saw that, yeah, and she had a band with Michelle Henry.
- 6:42Stacey Sobers: Band is aces.
- 6:42Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, and she had a band with Michelle Henry and they did a band is aces.
- 6:44Corie Sheppard: So for a band right who played in a pit in a show, I would imagine that they have music scored, because one of these things I found to be very impressive as somebody who loved Kaizo an old time Kaizo at that, and Rose specifically the things were scored out precisely, precisely so they were playing original pieces, all them things, original key too.
- 7:02Stacey Sobers: No, majority of them would have been original keys and scored by Michelle, so yeah, so what?
- 7:10Corie Sheppard: But they watching scores right.
- 7:12Stacey Sobers: You are no people.
- 7:13Corie Sheppard: How you remember all them lyrics for all them sets of shoes.
- 7:16Stacey Sobers: I mean long time.
- 7:18Stacey Sobers: I used to sit down and write out rap.
- 7:19Stacey Sobers: It's kind of like the same thing, but my process is and it's been so since I started doing calypso read the lines, internalize the line, run a verse, learn a verse, add another verse and and the process, that's the process for me internalize, understand what it's saying so that I put it across the way it's supposed to be.
- 7:41Stacey Sobers: And um yeah, um yeah, it's just just to make it your own, yeah.
- 7:46Corie Sheppard: I understood, understood, understood.
- 7:48Corie Sheppard: So you ain't got no worries trying to remember like cause it had to be about 35 rules I heard Some children may know at all.
- 7:54Stacey Sobers: And a lot came out there.
- 7:55Stacey Sobers: She cut out a lot of songs.
- 7:57Corie Sheppard: Serious.
- 7:58Stacey Sobers: Yeah, the the is ridiculously vast.
- 8:02Corie Sheppard: It is, and I feel I know her a little bit.
- 8:04Corie Sheppard: But then I hear all your gone bellies and I was like what is this?
- 8:08Stacey Sobers: There were songs that I've never heard, never, never heard, like there was a song called Back to Africa.
- 8:14Corie Sheppard: That.
- 8:14Stacey Sobers: I never heard it and I ended up doing it in my jazz In one of my jazz shows, got it.
- 8:20Stacey Sobers: So many songs come out from Rose and all beautiful, all, all, all beautiful.
- 8:24Corie Sheppard: Yeah, and I particularly enjoyed the fact that people caught a little glimpse into the early days.
- 8:29Corie Sheppard: As you say, what women would have struggled with, Because I would assume we were talking before we start about getting things done right.
- 8:35Corie Sheppard: You know you had to do it.
- 8:36Corie Sheppard: However you feel.
- 8:38Corie Sheppard: I feel the work important, you had to get it done, Correct.
- 8:40Corie Sheppard: But thought, but when somebody likes Sparrow, I'm telling you hey, you know, a giant at the time telling you hey, and it was played perfectly that interaction between two of you.
- 8:51Stacey Sobers: And that was my favorite scene.
- 8:52Stacey Sobers: I mean, I got most emotional for that scene because, hey, you're telling me dude, you know, let me stand up for myself, you from Grenada, you can't tell me nothing, but hey, I got really emotional for that part.
- 9:05Stacey Sobers: So I think that was my best scene yeah yeah, I think that's my best scene.
- 9:09Stacey Sobers: But the interaction between Sparrow and Rose I would have really liked to see that in person between them how they interacted if he was a fly on the wall because, remember, at two she would have emulated him man a lot of her moves her dance style.
- 9:24Stacey Sobers: She would have emulated him man.
- 9:25Stacey Sobers: A lot of her moves, her dance, her style and stuff would have come from him, from watching him and learning from him.
- 9:28Stacey Sobers: So their relationship.
- 9:30Stacey Sobers: I would have loved to be a fly on the wall.
- 9:34Corie Sheppard: It's something else to see, especially when you reach the point where now you close in 10 times.
- 9:38Stacey Sobers: Hello, you feel it boss.
- 9:44Corie Sheppard: Yeah, that's exactly right.
- 9:45Corie Sheppard: So you talk about writing rap something long time right.
- 9:49Corie Sheppard: Where's your origin?
- 9:50Corie Sheppard: How you start with artistry?
- 9:58Stacey Sobers: If I tell you, I started singing dancehall.
- 10:00Stacey Sobers: We used to call it long time dub yeah, dub music.
- 10:01Stacey Sobers: These were commonly local patria Around the time.
- 10:04Stacey Sobers: My patria, yeah, because I was around the time.
- 10:05Stacey Sobers: My patria was out when I started doing that entered party time in 1994, right singing with Michelle Mendoza and that group Black by Nature right so I started doing that.
- 10:18Stacey Sobers: But I I grew up in a pan yard.
- 10:20Stacey Sobers: My father is pan and calypso, so it was always embedded in me I would do background vocals for my father.
- 10:25Stacey Sobers: I did background vocals for Mr Mark's son, cleaver McDonnell, so I started in dub singing in dub.
- 10:35Stacey Sobers: But that wasn't it.
- 10:36Stacey Sobers: I did some rap so for some time with Shallon as well, under Karriga Mandela.
- 10:41Stacey Sobers: They would have invited us to shows and stuff like that.
- 10:43Stacey Sobers: So we would have done that kind of thing.
- 10:45Stacey Sobers: But Calypso and Soka was the calling.
- 10:50Stacey Sobers: I would have been doing Soka, writing for myself, managing myself, doing the work until let me know when you're coming, came along.
- 11:02Corie Sheppard: Well, you carried me there.
- 11:03Corie Sheppard: You carried me there early.
- 11:04Corie Sheppard: I know you want to talk about it one time.
- 11:06Stacey Sobers: We can talk about it.
- 11:08Corie Sheppard: So it's one of them things where, since we spoke and you say a comment, I've been asking people who sing this song.
- 11:15Corie Sheppard: You know what people get right?
- 11:16Corie Sheppard: Zero, none.
- 11:18Corie Sheppard: And I'm talking about people who know music, people who like kaiso, people who like soka, everybody get wrong girl.
- 11:23Stacey Sobers: A lot of people thought it was TC from.
- 11:25Stacey Sobers: Tc is what.
- 11:27Stacey Sobers: Babidas a lot of people thought it was TC and I am not the frontish girl.
- 11:32Stacey Sobers: I am not.
- 11:33Stacey Sobers: I sing this song.
- 11:35Stacey Sobers: I sing this song, this song.
- 11:36Stacey Sobers: It's a good song.
- 11:37Stacey Sobers: Everybody's enjoying this song.
- 11:38Stacey Sobers: But I'm not putting myself on it to say I sing that.
- 11:42Stacey Sobers: People just more say you know how much videos and whatsapp messages I get with the song when I play.
- 11:49Stacey Sobers: Now that people know that I'm the singer of the song, but I I don't rate up myself some people finding out more now isn't?
- 11:55Stacey Sobers: it.
- 11:55Stacey Sobers: No, because two have performed it.
- 11:57Stacey Sobers: After Dirty Soulfish right come out and people realise that a song is like this, I started getting shows To perform this song.
- 12:07Stacey Sobers: I see.
- 12:07Stacey Sobers: So, yeah, so a lot of people Now know Gotcha.
- 12:11Stacey Sobers: Oh that's the singer.
- 12:12Corie Sheppard: Oh, it's funny because my son A day.
- 12:14Corie Sheppard: I come out In the living room A couple of years ago and I hear this man Singing a Paul Anka song and I say, but what?
- 12:20Corie Sheppard: He's 12 now, eh, so that must be when he's eight, nine.
- 12:24Corie Sheppard: I said, but you know the song and it's TikTok, because they get in the game.
- 12:27Corie Sheppard: I heard him singing.
- 12:29Stacey Sobers: They're a pretty little baby.
- 12:30Stacey Sobers: A lot of old music, a lot of old music.
- 12:33Corie Sheppard: Tiktok is you use them things and bring them back to life.
- 12:35Corie Sheppard: So I feel like, if I wonder we have been in that kaiso TikTok Because I would not track is the same.
- 12:40Corie Sheppard: So what was the origin of the song?
- 12:51Stacey Sobers: It was written by Gerald James and the song wasn't supposed to be for me.
- 12:54Stacey Sobers: Somebody else was supposed to sing the song, but people who knew me in Enterprise.
- 12:58Stacey Sobers: I'm from Enterprise.
- 12:59Stacey Sobers: Enterprise home People who knew me in Enterprise.
- 13:02Stacey Sobers: I know that I sing directly to the person who was managing or was looking for somebody to sing a song to me.
- 13:11Stacey Sobers: And I mean he came and he asked me if I wanted to do the song and I listened to the song.
- 13:20Stacey Sobers: I was like not my kind of thing, but I'll do it and I do the song because I wasn't the.
- 13:25Stacey Sobers: Wear the short pants.
- 13:28Corie Sheppard: Wind down kind of artist.
- 13:30Stacey Sobers: And the song needed that kind of vibe.
- 13:33Corie Sheppard: But you like it when it hits, you like the vibe, the song was nice.
- 13:36Stacey Sobers: The song was a good song and I ended up doing a duet with Snakey's brother, ashford Jazz, because it just needed that kind of extra boost to the song.
- 13:44Stacey Sobers: Duet with Snakey's brother, ashford Jazz, right, because it just needed that kind of extra boost to the song, right.
- 13:48Stacey Sobers: And we did the song.
- 13:49Stacey Sobers: And the song didn't release in Trinidad, it was released in New York, I see, and yeah, so when it came back to Trinidad then people started to gravitate to the song.
- 14:00Stacey Sobers: It was a good song.
- 14:07Corie Sheppard: They might have just song.
- 14:07Corie Sheppard: It was a good song then, but it just it played, but no big recognition until yeah, no, that makes sense because if it released in new york, that's why I don't feel like I imported so much people, because I never and I've never said tc till you said.
- 14:13Corie Sheppard: So I say, but I know it just feel beige, I feel up the islands, I feel like it come from somewhere.
- 14:18Corie Sheppard: Yeah, you know, but your voice I don't know yeah what that voice?
- 14:24Corie Sheppard: that voice is something else, so so who it was supposed to be for you remember, kitty?
- 14:28Stacey Sobers: oh seriously, kitty, my good friend adana, that she was supposed to do that song yeah, but uh for some reason.
- 14:38Stacey Sobers: I'm not sure why it fell true right, but she's from enterprise too so oh, nice, nice, nice I wasn't sure what was the reason for it falling through, but it fell into my lap when it fell.
- 14:47Corie Sheppard: Yeah, and it seemed to be that kind of song that it just keep bubbling, bubbling, bubbling.
- 14:51Corie Sheppard: But now it's a classic right, it is In our culture.
- 14:53Stacey Sobers: It is.
- 14:53Stacey Sobers: I mean, people send videos from beach lines.
- 14:57Stacey Sobers: It's ridiculous the amount of videos and stuff that I get with this one because it plays everywhere at any given time.
- 15:06Stacey Sobers: On a weekend I could turn on the radio any radio station not the gospel ones though.
- 15:10Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah.
- 15:11Corie Sheppard: I might not, I might not fit, I might not fit the format right and here let me know when you're coming yeah any radio station yeah, or any fet because Carnival.
- 15:20Corie Sheppard: There's no chance of Carnival Saturday coming and it's have them big fetters, be like brainwash or pink neck, or them boat rides and thing, or Carnival.
- 15:28Stacey Sobers: Sunday morning breakfast parties, the youths now them listening to that like if it now come out, like it now come out and it sounds fresh, it sounds fresh.
- 15:36Corie Sheppard: It's the opening, though.
- 15:37Corie Sheppard: Yeah, boy, I mean you attack the opening.
- 15:40Stacey Sobers: It is.
- 15:41Stacey Sobers: It's almost like you must stop and listen to it but I am, I do, I do dub plates with it.
- 15:47Stacey Sobers: So a lot of people, oh, you do yeah, yeah, yeah, I had to make it work, man, david, gotta make it work, gotta make it work, yeah it's perfection.
- 15:57Corie Sheppard: It's perfection, one of them, classics, and it's something that you perform and things still.
- 16:00Stacey Sobers: I do it.
- 16:01Stacey Sobers: I do it.
- 16:02Stacey Sobers: I do it um.
- 16:02Stacey Sobers: Depending on the nature of the show, I will do it right, what's your yeah, the nature of the show.
- 16:07Corie Sheppard: I feel you should abandon that to you like somebody was talking to about a song.
- 16:11Corie Sheppard: Oh, it was um mevon.
- 16:13Corie Sheppard: He was talking about producing his song pone annie for rope.
- 16:16Corie Sheppard: And I said boy, this smarty, 10 christmas time and he said here you see it right.
- 16:21Corie Sheppard: Yeah, he was right because when I see the comments when I post this song, many, many people in comments saying well, I never even know it was that, so I would.
- 16:29Corie Sheppard: I would be surprised if people could we just ask around lemon, when you're coming.
- 16:33Corie Sheppard: People singing that not really thinking I don't yeah, the double answer is not um recognized.
- 16:38Stacey Sobers: Well, a lot of people don't really take it on them, just saying what they hear.
- 16:41Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, classic, classic, classic, so early enterprise.
- 16:45Corie Sheppard: You say you're born in a pannier, you live that, so that's pretty much in you.
- 16:50Stacey Sobers: Yeah, absolutely.
- 16:51Corie Sheppard: Stage is comfortable by that time.
- 16:53Stacey Sobers: By that time absolutely.
- 16:54Corie Sheppard: And what kind of ages are you talking about?
- 16:55Corie Sheppard: When you're uncomfortable on stage already.
- 17:05Stacey Sobers: Nine ten, any artist in Trinidad.
- 17:06Stacey Sobers: If they ain't start in church, if they ain't play this thing on the concert stage in church, there's something wrong.
- 17:09Stacey Sobers: So that's your start, that's my start, that's my absolute start in church.
- 17:12Stacey Sobers: And then in secondary school, like I went to Shigonaz Junior Second at the time, that was the name of it, so secondary school my friends decided that they want to write a calypso for me to sing because I was a singer, and they write a song called Tell them no.
- 17:25Stacey Sobers: It was a song about drugs.
- 17:28Stacey Sobers: And this is me on the stage singing Tell them no.
- 17:30Stacey Sobers: Tell them no.
- 17:31Stacey Sobers: Tell them a big fat no.
- 17:33Stacey Sobers: Tell them no.
- 17:34Stacey Sobers: Tell them no.
- 17:34Stacey Sobers: Take your cocaine and go.
- 17:36Stacey Sobers: Since then, I saw Since then, and the amazing thing is that these people that I went to school with still follow me, come to my shows, all that kind of thing.
- 17:50Stacey Sobers: So, yeah, yeah, it's them four.
- 17:51Stacey Sobers: So they had a.
- 17:54Corie Sheppard: I hope they don't come to this show clapping faces and tell them no so people don't let it go.
- 17:58Stacey Sobers: I will tell them no.
- 17:59Stacey Sobers: I will tell them no, but yeah, so primary school, secondary school, yeah.
- 18:08Corie Sheppard: In it by then.
- 18:09Stacey Sobers: Yeah.
- 18:09Corie Sheppard: And when you're starting to take it as something you're going to do.
- 18:14Stacey Sobers: I guess In, not Swaka particularly, but Not Calypso or Swaka, particularly when I started doing the Dub.
- 18:23Corie Sheppard: Right.
- 18:23Stacey Sobers: And entered Party Time, I said yeah, music is it, music is it?
- 18:24Stacey Sobers: When I started doing the dub and entered party time, I said yeah, music is it, music is it.
- 18:29Stacey Sobers: Forget the listen and the air hostess thing.
- 18:31Stacey Sobers: What you wanted to do yeah.
- 18:35Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 18:36Stacey Sobers: So Caribbean.
- 18:36Corie Sheppard: Airlines and the missiles and you boy imagined that.
- 18:38Corie Sheppard: Yeah, absolutely.
- 18:39Stacey Sobers: I could be doing the ads and all kind of thing, Life could have been different.
- 18:43Stacey Sobers: Yeah, but from party time, because you get a sense of self and know that this is something that could make you.
- 18:55Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 18:55Stacey Sobers: Yeah, and I've since then pursued the music wholeheartedly, I mean managing yourself trying to get in this door, that door, this door, that door, and I mean, yeah, not easy, this door, that door.
- 19:05Corie Sheppard: And I mean yeah, not easy right.
- 19:06Stacey Sobers: Yeah.
- 19:07Corie Sheppard: Yeah, Ozzy Merrick was here and was talking about Party Time For younger people.
- 19:10Corie Sheppard: Now I wonder if you could talk about what importance Party Time was in that generation.
- 19:15Stacey Sobers: Listen.
- 19:15Stacey Sobers: For us, then, party Time was the biggest show.
- 19:18Stacey Sobers: I mean not just for the artists but for people at home, people running inside to watch pastime Saturday morning.
- 19:25Stacey Sobers: But it was a release for most.
- 19:29Stacey Sobers: It was a stepping stone for a lot and it was that platform that gave you a voice, that platform that showed case the talent and not just showcase the talent.
- 19:44Stacey Sobers: But where the support came from?
- 19:46Stacey Sobers: Because the people on our show they supported you they pushed you Brian Haynes, linus Pitt behind the camera.
- 19:55Stacey Sobers: You got the support and it was.
- 19:56Stacey Sobers: I think it was a stepping stone for a lot of performers from that era and a lot of.
- 20:02Corie Sheppard: We're still in the music now, so that just tells you the grounding that we got from that that particular series yeah, it was that era, you know, because even and I'm not sure what is I always look for like what is there now, like what is the equivalent when you watch Party Time 12 and under, what was Teen Talent?
- 20:20Stacey Sobers: Teen Talent, mastana Bahar.
- 20:22Stacey Sobers: I don't even know where they are now.
- 20:24Corie Sheppard: I mean they did.
- 20:25Stacey Sobers: They did the Rising Star and that's gonna be B-Mobile something.
- 20:30Corie Sheppard: B-Mobile had sponsored Synergy's Soca Star, I believe.
- 20:33Corie Sheppard: Soca Star, yeah, and even now, when you talk to the youth, you know who in Soca, like so much of them, passionate.
- 20:37Corie Sheppard: I wonder if they're still.
- 20:39Stacey Sobers: I remember doing background vocals for Second Star.
- 20:42Corie Sheppard: Seriously yeah, yeah.
- 20:44Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, how'd that connection come about?
- 20:47Corie Sheppard: His mother, Ah, I see, I see, I got you His mother, she calling me pros, she knows she had a plan Come from good stuff.
- 20:54Stacey Sobers: His mother, his mother.
- 20:56Corie Sheppard: So going through?
- 20:57Corie Sheppard: You're not going through the usual Trinbago thing where parents telling you go and do a counting and thing they're glad to see you in the arts.
- 21:05Stacey Sobers: My father is self-taught.
- 21:07Stacey Sobers: He's had what three, four pan sides.
- 21:10Stacey Sobers: He's co-founder of Tropical Angel Apps.
- 21:13Stacey Sobers: My late brother, kevin Glenford Sobers Pan.
- 21:18Stacey Sobers: My other brother, marlon Asher oh, you know Marlon Asher the reggae singer.
- 21:24Corie Sheppard: David, we're not researching this.
- 21:25Corie Sheppard: We're figuring out this as we go along.
- 21:27Stacey Sobers: Malan Asha, that's my pick up.
- 21:29Stacey Sobers: He's two years older than me.
- 21:32Corie Sheppard: Listen.
- 21:32Corie Sheppard: I just want to say that this is not pretend.
- 21:35Corie Sheppard: Now, right, you guys pretend to be surprised.
- 21:37Corie Sheppard: This is not nowhere here.
- 21:38Stacey Sobers: People know this, a lot of people know, but it's not something that, like I said, not the bossy type, not the that's why we're here.
- 21:46Stacey Sobers: Yeah, humble is the word.
- 21:50Stacey Sobers: I don't know no other way.
- 21:52Stacey Sobers: I don't know no other way.
- 21:54Stacey Sobers: This is the only way people know about Stacey and things like that Good Interviews and stuff like that because as a homebody I have home, but the others tell people I always home.
- 22:03Stacey Sobers: I like to be in my place, Love to be in my place.
- 22:08Corie Sheppard: That's a good sign.
- 22:09Corie Sheppard: Can I any same?
- 22:09Stacey Sobers: boat and if I, if I have shows, I, if I, I would do the show and leave Right, yeah, cause I, I just want to head home.
- 22:18Stacey Sobers: No, but back to back to the to.
- 22:21Stacey Sobers: Back to the question.
- 22:22Stacey Sobers: Yeah, so I grew up in the panyard.
- 22:25Stacey Sobers: My father did calypso.
- 22:26Stacey Sobers: He sang in the south end Jokul under Subike Jokul, so it's always been embedded in me.
- 22:31Stacey Sobers: So my parents had no issues with me wanting to pursue music and my other brother.
- 22:37Stacey Sobers: He used to play with Chantal Esdell and Moyen.
- 22:40Corie Sheppard: He's co-founder of Moyen Got it.
- 22:42Stacey Sobers: Yeah, they must be proud yeah, so the music has always, it's always been it yeah, no issue there.
- 22:50Corie Sheppard: Yeah, so you're going from that, you're going from those stages, you're going from church, you're going to school and so on.
- 22:55Corie Sheppard: When, what do you say, is the first time you see yourself as a professional musician?
- 22:59Corie Sheppard: Now you're getting paid to play or you're entering competitions.
- 23:02Stacey Sobers: Yeah.
- 23:02Stacey Sobers: So competition.
- 23:03Stacey Sobers: I started entering the NMAC National Calypso Queen competition.
- 23:07Stacey Sobers: I did some soccer competitions.
- 23:11Stacey Sobers: I did part soccer monarch.
- 23:15Stacey Sobers: I made semifinals twice.
- 23:20Corie Sheppard: Soccer monarch is soccer monarch, right?
- 23:22Corie Sheppard: Oh it was.
- 23:23Corie Sheppard: It was, I don't know more.
- 23:25Stacey Sobers: I made sem mistakes twice, but it wasn't doing the calypso tent.
- 23:33Stacey Sobers: That solidified it for me and that came about with let me know when you're coming, dr Rudolph Utley.
- 23:39Stacey Sobers: Yeah, so me.
- 23:42Stacey Sobers: And he told my agents at that time to bring me to the audition.
- 23:45Stacey Sobers: We went to the audition and we were successful and started performing in the tents and from that year I knew that was it this year so dub and thing you go.
- 23:55Corie Sheppard: Dub to soaker.
- 23:55Corie Sheppard: Your intention is to stay in a genre at that time.
- 23:58Corie Sheppard: Have you a genre lesser one of them?
- 23:59Corie Sheppard: Have you a genre less Obvious?
- 24:01Stacey Sobers: genre-less, boundary-less Music has been my life, and music is the one thing that moves me from a down place to an up place.
- 24:11Stacey Sobers: It doesn't matter what type of music, what genre of music, there's always something that speaks to me in a moment, in a particular moment I could be going through something, some particular kind of music.
- 24:22Stacey Sobers: So you're fine, I gravitate to any kind of music, but singing the different genres.
- 24:27Stacey Sobers: I went to Custat and I was a voice major and I had to do the different genres.
- 24:33Corie Sheppard: It explains a lot.
- 24:34Stacey Sobers: Yes, so you're fine with that.
- 24:38Stacey Sobers: Now I had a better appreciation for the different genres.
- 24:41Stacey Sobers: I mean, I like music, but after that course I like music like what he, but after that, um, that course I really um fell into my own little liking the different genres or performing the different genres.
- 24:53Corie Sheppard: Got you.
- 24:53Corie Sheppard: I don't know I'll come back to that right but when you do, when you're a voice major, what are the classes you're listening all day?
- 24:58Corie Sheppard: What were you working on?
- 25:01Stacey Sobers: Um working on everything, everything vocal.
- 25:02Stacey Sobers: Um, working on a technique, working on everything, everything vocal.
- 25:04Stacey Sobers: You're working on a technique.
- 25:04Stacey Sobers: You're working on Different registers, Working on keys, working on harmonies, working on Different Genres of music Classical yeah, classical was the most challenging, but I love classical.
- 25:17Stacey Sobers: Classical is the most challenging To death, love it to death, yeah, but yeah, I mean Everything, performance, all that falls into the, into the, into the amics.
- 25:30Corie Sheppard: I understand Now.
- 25:30Corie Sheppard: I understand why you could go on stage for three, four hours, with a play, three nights a week, and you could survive this thing.
- 25:35Corie Sheppard: It's starting to make some sense.
- 25:37Stacey Sobers: And the training, the training really helped.
- 25:38Stacey Sobers: It really, it really helped.
- 25:40Corie Sheppard: I can imagine Avi Adonga is one of the most unique voices in Calypso.
- 25:42Corie Sheppard: I can imagine Avi Adonga is one of the most unique voices in Calypso, really yeah.
- 25:45Corie Sheppard: So when again, just listening to the song, and I was saying, because I do any research before I contact people, I start to look up, right, yeah, and it's let me know when they come and keep coming up, and I was like, nah, not that Stacey's so buzzed, you know what I'm saying.
- 25:57Corie Sheppard: But when you, it took me back immediately to that Calypso Rose play.
- 26:03Stacey Sobers: Hear the voice, the tone, it really can't hide and I think a lot of people commented that if you close your eye you won't know the difference.
- 26:10Stacey Sobers: But I don't know yeah, no, because.
- 26:14Stacey Sobers: I'm not really hearing it, hearing myself in the, but I mean I did my best with it.
- 26:20Corie Sheppard: I did my best with it yeah, before we move forward from that right One of the things I find unique saying don't any audiences and I wonder if I'm making it up in my head or not.
- 26:29Corie Sheppard: I felt like if your voice was changing from her earliest years to when she started getting established as queen.
- 26:38Stacey Sobers: So I think what happened with that is the first center of the play that was done in Canada, the premiere that was done in Canada.
- 26:47Stacey Sobers: I played Young Rules, I see, so you find I had to.
- 26:53Corie Sheppard: I had to grow up I understand.
- 26:55Stacey Sobers: I had to grow up, change your voice from age nine to 16 to 20.
- 26:59Stacey Sobers: So I think I think that process kind of um made me aware of the different voice tones and that kind of thing.
- 27:10Corie Sheppard: So it's deliberate.
- 27:11Stacey Sobers: Yeah, okay, it has to be.
- 27:13Corie Sheppard: I was already making it up in my mind it has to be deliberate dude.
- 27:16Corie Sheppard: It has to be deliberate.
- 27:19Corie Sheppard: It's your intention.
- 27:20Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I mean to make it believable, you have to put that effort.
- 27:24Stacey Sobers: I guess that's my thing.
- 27:25Stacey Sobers: I think so.
- 27:25Stacey Sobers: I mean to make it believable, you have to put that effort.
- 27:26Stacey Sobers: I guess that's my thing I think so I'm with you.
- 27:28Corie Sheppard: So you're in the tent now, but you're doing what would be.
- 27:31Corie Sheppard: I'm too little generalist.
- 27:33Corie Sheppard: So kaisa and soka, all the things are the same thing to me, but let me know when you're coming, people already see that as a soka.
- 27:37Corie Sheppard: So what are you doing?
- 27:38Corie Sheppard: What tent are you at?
- 27:40Stacey Sobers: at.
- 27:40Stacey Sobers: I was at Classic Russo.
- 27:42Corie Sheppard: Classic Russo.
- 27:43Stacey Sobers: Classic Russo.
- 27:44Stacey Sobers: I did Classic Russo for two seasons singing Sokka, and then Dr Hattie opened Divas Calypso Cabaret International in 2004.
- 27:55Stacey Sobers: And when I went over there still doing Sokka.
- 27:58Corie Sheppard: Yeah, really.
- 27:59Stacey Sobers: Still doing Sokka.
- 27:59Stacey Sobers: I started doing Calypso probably in 2014.
- 28:08Stacey Sobers: Oh, really.
- 28:09Stacey Sobers: Like official calypso.
- 28:12Corie Sheppard: So what's?
- 28:12Stacey Sobers: doing soccer all the time.
- 28:13Corie Sheppard: Something making you make that switch or what caused you to head to that direction.
- 28:20Stacey Sobers: I just gravitated.
- 28:21Stacey Sobers: It was a natural switch.
- 28:22Stacey Sobers: I just gravitated.
- 28:23Stacey Sobers: It was a natural switch.
- 28:24Stacey Sobers: In 2014, there was an incident at my house in Enterprise where my sister, my nephew, two nephews and my father were shot.
- 28:36Stacey Sobers: Yeah, and I stopped writing.
- 28:38Stacey Sobers: I would have been writing soca.
- 28:41Stacey Sobers: I stopped writing.
- 28:42Stacey Sobers: I had a block, a stupid block that just wasn't going out.
- 28:45Stacey Sobers: And in 2015, my girlfriend, tamiko Inesha Moore, spicy, she said I told her.
- 28:54Stacey Sobers: I said I don't have anything to sing, you know.
- 28:55Stacey Sobers: And she said I have a song.
- 28:57Stacey Sobers: And she gave me a song and I entered Queen's competition with the song and placed fourth and I decided that Calypso had to be it.
- 29:10Stacey Sobers: This had to be it because, one, I'm not writing for myself.
- 29:16Stacey Sobers: Two, I'm not going around nobody to write no song that everybody will.
- 29:19Stacey Sobers: I want to sing Calypso.
- 29:21Corie Sheppard: Okay.
- 29:25Stacey Sobers: I want to sing Calypso.
- 29:26Stacey Sobers: I want to sing Calypso.
- 29:27Stacey Sobers: Okay, I want to sing.
- 29:30Corie Sheppard: Calypso.
- 29:31Corie Sheppard: So I decided then that Calypso was the genre that I'm going to make most important Mm-hmm.
- 29:36Stacey Sobers: Yeah, so from then you're going to the center Calypso.
- 29:40Stacey Sobers: That's all Mm-hmm, apart from doing the jazz shows and the other.
- 29:46Stacey Sobers: It got me into a space after the incident, got me into a space of self-searching.
- 30:09Corie Sheppard: And I think a lot of people are searching for self and Calypso has so much messages to put across and put out that I felt that I could use this platform to touch.
- 30:15Corie Sheppard: Soca might be a little limited Well, I don't know if it's limited, necessarily but Calypso, whatever kind of message you want to send.
- 30:19Stacey Sobers: Calypso can do it, and I tend to gravitate more to female stuff.
- 30:23Stacey Sobers: I don't know if it's because of the incident, but I feel that sharing information with women about self and awareness and that kind of thing is important.
- 30:38Stacey Sobers: It's important especially in these times.
- 30:41Corie Sheppard: Of course, of course, of course.
- 30:42Corie Sheppard: The time's changing right In these times.
- 30:44Corie Sheppard: It's not the Trinidad and Tobago we once knew and we had a change.
- 30:47Corie Sheppard: We're the grown-ups now.
- 30:48Corie Sheppard: Somebody said we're the big people now.
- 30:50Corie Sheppard: We're the big people now, yeah, imagine that I was.
- 30:53Corie Sheppard: No, noah Turin.
- 30:54Corie Sheppard: No, noah Turin, it's a lot of adults.
- 30:56Stacey Sobers: Yeah, in Calypso is more forceful.
- 31:03Stacey Sobers: I mean, I can tell you, hey, you're doing real shippiness without telling you you're doing real shippiness.
- 31:08Stacey Sobers: You will understand that you're doing shippiness when I don't tell you what I'm telling you.
- 31:12Corie Sheppard: Yeah, especially with a voice like yours, it's cut through the noise when you say things it's rich places.
- 31:17Corie Sheppard: So you went on to win that NWA competition.
- 31:20Stacey Sobers: Yes, in 2018.
- 31:21Stacey Sobers: Also won the Calypso Queen of Queens of the Caribbean in St Kitts Nevis in that same year.
- 31:29Corie Sheppard: Gotcha, what was the song?
- 31:30Stacey Sobers: Queens and Kings, queens and Kings.
- 31:34Stacey Sobers: That song was written by Kurt Allen.
- 31:38Corie Sheppard: Good, good good Produced by what's the man's name?
- 31:45Stacey Sobers: What's his name named?
- 31:46Stacey Sobers: What's his name?
- 31:47Stacey Sobers: What's his name?
- 31:47Stacey Sobers: Kenny?
- 31:49Stacey Sobers: Oh this Kenny, oh that fellow that dude oh man if you, if you ever watch this interview.
- 31:56Corie Sheppard: You will call me.
- 31:57Corie Sheppard: You will call.
- 31:58Corie Sheppard: I should send it to him first.
- 32:00Stacey Sobers: Yeah, hey, kenny, kenny, kenny, like nothing better.
- 32:04Corie Sheppard: But yeah, what's your feeling then, when you same person yeah, hey, kenny, kenny, kenny like nothing better, yeah, but yeah, what's your feeling then when you actually win?
- 32:11Stacey Sobers: I've been knocking for a while.
- 32:13Stacey Sobers: I've been knocking for a while, entering the competition.
- 32:16Stacey Sobers: Sometimes I make the semis, sometimes I make it to the final.
- 32:20Corie Sheppard: Right.
- 32:22Stacey Sobers: It was time and I remember the night of the competition too.
- 32:25Stacey Sobers: So many things went wrong.
- 32:26Stacey Sobers: Our wardrobe malfunctioned, my husband had to put me in a corner and pep talk me.
- 32:34Stacey Sobers: He's pep talking me on one side and the makeup artist is pep talking me as she's doing the makeup.
- 32:39Stacey Sobers: Because I want to cry, because my pants have a hole and my pants not fitting properly and my jacket is tight, I cannot raise my hand.
- 32:46Stacey Sobers: If you ever look at our videos me raising my hand, I cannot Because of the clothes Funny kind of way because that night, too many things where I had to win yeah, man, I had to win.
- 33:01Corie Sheppard: Well, congrats, you catched up, yeah, man.
- 33:04Stacey Sobers: And then we was good about the night too.
- 33:06Stacey Sobers: When I finished singing I went out to the back of Queen's Hall and singer Sandra came out of the back.
- 33:16Corie Sheppard: She said if, you win tonight, I'm going to lock some big stone in this place.
- 33:19Stacey Sobers: What she is?
- 33:19Stacey Sobers: She in the competition or she just checking out?
- 33:20Stacey Sobers: No, she just came to the end.
- 33:22Stacey Sobers: She said I'm going to lock some big stones in this place.
- 33:25Stacey Sobers: You remind me of myself on that stage tonight, daughter.
- 33:28Stacey Sobers: If you win a pelting stone, I'll tell you.
- 33:32Corie Sheppard: Yeah that's heavy weight, heavy weight, heavy weight.
- 33:36Stacey Sobers: And when you get them kind of endorsements, what?
- 33:40Corie Sheppard: are you going to do boy?
- 33:40Stacey Sobers: Yeah, you have to hold on to that.
- 33:42Stacey Sobers: What are you going to do?
- 33:42Stacey Sobers: What are you going to do about it?
- 33:43Stacey Sobers: Yeah, you have to hold on to that.
- 33:44Stacey Sobers: What are you going to do?
- 33:45Stacey Sobers: What are you going to do?
- 33:46Corie Sheppard: I think it says something for you, especially because of your your stance on advancing women.
- 33:50Corie Sheppard: Yeah, you know.
- 33:51Corie Sheppard: So who are some of those influences for you in women in Calypso?
- 33:54Stacey Sobers: Oh, Calypso Rose Singing Sandra Tig.
- 33:59Stacey Sobers: I'm singing Francine Karen Eccles, Karen Eccles, Karen Eccles, I call her name.
- 34:08Stacey Sobers: She's tiny, it's strange, but I like Destra.
- 34:13Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, I like Destra.
- 34:15Stacey Sobers: I like Destra's style because she also does a different genre.
- 34:19Corie Sheppard: Yeah, I don't find it so strange.
- 34:21Corie Sheppard: It's very similar.
- 34:22Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, destra's my girl.
- 34:24Corie Sheppard: Destra's my real girl.
- 34:26Stacey Sobers: Yeah, that's why she used to go to my grandfather's church, her and her family More people grew up singing in church.
- 34:33Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, but a lot of Marva's Marva, a lot of those people would have influenced me and the type of music I wanted to do.
- 34:45Corie Sheppard: So I guess people would have influenced me and the type of music I wanted to do.
- 34:46Corie Sheppard: So I guess you would have always gravitated to a diva's tent Whoever created that.
- 34:48Corie Sheppard: You was always heading the kind of way.
- 34:50Stacey Sobers: Well, it pulled me.
- 34:51Corie Sheppard: I see, come on, let's hear it.
- 34:52Stacey Sobers: Yeah, it pulled me, but it has been a really good journey working with the women at the tent, because you get to see the growth and you get to be a part of that and they come for advice.
- 35:04Stacey Sobers: They ask you for advice and it's so refreshing and humbling to be able to say hey, no, this isn't working, so try this way, or I feel I should do this and when it works for them, they come and they say thanks for this and thanks, it's beautiful.
- 35:21Corie Sheppard: It's a strange thing in life.
- 35:22Corie Sheppard: See you talking about tigers and marvelous and all of them and you know when they see, people sort of watch you.
- 35:28Corie Sheppard: So now is that weird that is the thing.
- 35:32Stacey Sobers: Because I am, I'm good with tigers.
- 35:34Stacey Sobers: Tigers will call me, I could call tigers and talk to that kind of thing.
- 35:37Stacey Sobers: Marvelous people like Marilyn Williams, people that you never thought you would have that kind of relationship, closeness with.
- 35:46Stacey Sobers: And there's people you're watching and admire from afar, but like being in the calypso industry and knowing these people the word comes again.
- 35:55Stacey Sobers: It is humbling.
- 35:57Corie Sheppard: I with you it is humbling is it as difficult a business as they say?
- 36:01Corie Sheppard: Because what you portray on stage there so well, people watching it.
- 36:05Corie Sheppard: Now we don't know what that era is.
- 36:06Corie Sheppard: Or rose went through, but in your era now is it so difficult for women?
- 36:11Stacey Sobers: is the same issues you're facing, or um, there's a lot of the same thing, it's just done differently.
- 36:20Stacey Sobers: For instance, I was talking to my husband this morning.
- 36:25Stacey Sobers: I said, afi, let's go come up.
- 36:26Stacey Sobers: And I'd come up.
- 36:26Stacey Sobers: So I remember singing in a band and I thought I was doing a fabulous job.
- 36:34Stacey Sobers: I mean my voice, good, body banging, because I wasn't 2 to 50 yet and I was told it's a black girl with a nose ring and a rash and no sex appeal.
- 36:49Corie Sheppard: As women, as a man, tell you that, of course.
- 36:53Stacey Sobers: It didn't break me.
- 36:54Stacey Sobers: It broke me in the moment.
- 36:55Stacey Sobers: I cry in the moment but I think that propelled me to push harder.
- 36:59Stacey Sobers: That propelled me to push harder and I see the individual that made the comment and I was like I perform on stage but you know I share stages with all of you and.
- 37:14Stacey Sobers: I am doing well, I'm doing this thing my way.
- 37:19Stacey Sobers: So, wherever that was, then thank you very much, because dude that breaking anybody but this is the thing, huh, the words from certain.
- 37:30Corie Sheppard: Like you bring up kenny, right, kenny, when he was here, tell me he said you're going to build a studio home and less than paul say you're going mad.
- 37:37Corie Sheppard: Then once people like that say words like that, I mean it might be meant to hurt, but in your case it's something like it meant to hurt but it might be meant to hurt you.
- 37:43Corie Sheppard: Just people doubts.
- 37:43Corie Sheppard: Yeah it, it's not meant to hurt you.
- 37:44Corie Sheppard: It might not be meant to hurt you, it's just people's doubts yeah.
- 37:46Corie Sheppard: It's like that could break you as you say Of course.
- 37:48Corie Sheppard: So what do you think is happening to you that's making that turn you into who you are?
- 37:51Corie Sheppard: Me?
- 37:53Stacey Sobers: I am.
- 37:53Stacey Sobers: I'm kind of hard-headed, I kind of I like to leave things up to God.
- 38:05Stacey Sobers: My husband asked me the other day nothing, no matter you, he should be glad.
- 38:10Stacey Sobers: I was like he shouldn't bring that up.
- 38:11Stacey Sobers: I wish I was like I said why happen it?
- 38:14Stacey Sobers: Why happen it?
- 38:16Stacey Sobers: If it had a change, it will change.
- 38:19Stacey Sobers: Whatever is to be will be.
- 38:22Stacey Sobers: I mean, you do what you can if you can to change the situation, but if water more than flour, they get Jesus.
- 38:29Stacey Sobers: Yeah, this is yours.
- 38:32Corie Sheppard: You're no longer yours to carry.
- 38:36Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I am.
- 38:36Stacey Sobers: I deal with that kind of thing quickly.
- 38:42Corie Sheppard: It has to be a quick turnaround for me.
- 38:44Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to move on to it.
- 38:45Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I have to.
- 38:47Stacey Sobers: I put a lot of things in the back of my mind, a lot of things of course because these things I fight yeah yeah.
- 38:54Stacey Sobers: I know I'm not doing that kind of fight gotcha, I'm not doing that kind of fight.
- 38:59Stacey Sobers: So yeah, hold on to that, jesus.
- 39:02Corie Sheppard: Let me know when I'm done with it when, let me know and I'll take it back then and I'll show you how many many stories like that.
- 39:09Stacey Sobers: So I guess the divas stands important to you from that standpoint as well and it's good to see the women thriving and doing the best and reaching the semi-finals and reaching the finals and following their dreams and achieving we're talking about this in the midst of two very popular soccer artists Calypso, whatever you want to call them now fighting.
- 39:28Corie Sheppard: What I don't understand is the greatest fight I ever see.
- 39:30Corie Sheppard: I see out of the blue J Angel and J Dale Stato.
- 39:36Stacey Sobers: I don't follow.
- 39:36Stacey Sobers: I do not follow.
- 39:37Stacey Sobers: Oh, you stay out of the whole thing.
- 39:39Stacey Sobers: I do not follow, I just hear.
- 39:40Corie Sheppard: By the way, yeah, we had to get into the details of it.
- 39:46Corie Sheppard: I have a little social media spat between two of them.
- 39:48Corie Sheppard: I wonder sometimes, because the average person who see a tent or a business or anything where they say it's only women, the first thing people go ask is hey, where's this scene backstage, everybody getting along?
- 39:58Corie Sheppard: Is that a nice space?
- 39:59Stacey Sobers: I mean, I mean the Everybody different.
- 40:03Stacey Sobers: You have to learn people One.
- 40:07Stacey Sobers: Sometimes you could be having a bad day and you act a certain way, but that's not really how you intend to act.
- 40:16Stacey Sobers: Things just bother you.
- 40:17Stacey Sobers: All you need is somebody to come and say, whatever it is, it'll pass.
- 40:22Stacey Sobers: Okay, and over the years, divas has been a support system for each woman.
- 40:29Stacey Sobers: Okay, okay, and I've.
- 40:29Stacey Sobers: Over the years, divas has been a support system for each woman.
- 40:30Stacey Sobers: Mm-hmm, every woman that come into Divas could tell you that it's a family unit.
- 40:38Stacey Sobers: You don't have to back and all that thing here.
- 40:41Stacey Sobers: Okay, where woman is that back?
- 40:43Corie Sheppard: Mm-hmm.
- 40:44Stacey Sobers: You don't have that.
- 40:45Corie Sheppard: Yeah, that's by design too.
- 40:46Corie Sheppard: You don't have that.
- 40:47Corie Sheppard: Yeah, that's by design too.
- 40:48Stacey Sobers: It don't have that.
- 40:48Stacey Sobers: It don't have that.
- 40:49Stacey Sobers: But when you're falling and you get the kind of support from management and the ladies who have been in the tent over the years, you don't want to go nowhere.
- 41:00Stacey Sobers: You don't want to go nowhere because I mean you could go other places, you might even sing, you could get benched, but divorce is a family.
- 41:10Stacey Sobers: It's a family and I think that is one of the things that Dr Utley meant it to be A safe space for women to hone their craft, and that's what they have.
- 41:21Corie Sheppard: Yeah, the stories from women in the tent era, when the tent was in the heyday, when it's um, it's kaisa house and hideaway and spectacular, and the stories from women in that era right here, with some of the names we know now, you know, I mean some of the biggest names in calypso and things.
- 41:37Stacey Sobers: now, when you hear it, it shocked, only being in the circuit now, that after doing the Calypso Roadshow you hear so much different things.
- 41:48Corie Sheppard: Oh, I would imagine it would be very good to tell stories.
- 41:51Stacey Sobers: Oh yeah, so I don't have any stories to tell.
- 41:53Stacey Sobers: I don't want to ask someone.
- 41:54Stacey Sobers: Okay, good, good, okay, but I'm just saying you learn so much.
- 41:58Stacey Sobers: Of course you learn so much.
- 42:00Corie Sheppard: So there people should document them.
- 42:03Corie Sheppard: I mean, we just hide and talk and turn that out.
- 42:05Stacey Sobers: And we don't do that, and that's one of our downfalls.
- 42:07Stacey Sobers: We need to talk to the people who have the information, archive it so that we have generations coming up.
- 42:14Corie Sheppard: Like you like now.
- 42:15Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, that's the idea.
- 42:16Corie Sheppard: That's the general idea.
- 42:17Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 42:18Corie Sheppard: So you're coming out as competition winner, home and abroad because that was and you at that time, you already in eucalyptus on our competition.
- 42:29Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I've been entering.
- 42:29Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, I've been entering.
- 42:30Corie Sheppard: I would have made my first semi-final in 2016 to an attribute to um black stallion yeah, yeah, we already on one song.
- 42:39Stacey Sobers: Uh, finals by that, yeah yeah, so I do attribute to black stallion called one Love.
- 42:45Stacey Sobers: It was written by GB and produced by Wayne Bruno.
- 42:50Stacey Sobers: Oh, nice, nice.
- 42:51Stacey Sobers: Later in, that was my first semifinals.
- 42:55Stacey Sobers: It was as good as getting to the finals.
- 42:57Stacey Sobers: I didn't make the finals, it was as good as you just want to touch that semifinals.
- 43:03Corie Sheppard: You say Skinner Park is a benchmark.
- 43:04Corie Sheppard: Absolutely it is Special place it is.
- 43:05Corie Sheppard: I mean getting to the finals, to touch that semifinals.
- 43:06Corie Sheppard: You say Skinner Park is a benchmark, so semifinals.
- 43:08Stacey Sobers: It is special place, it is, I mean, getting to the finals.
- 43:09Stacey Sobers: You're done there, you're done in the top 12 or wherever.
- 43:12Stacey Sobers: But to make it out of 100 and how much ever?
- 43:16Stacey Sobers: People and get that testing going in San Fernando there and be accepted crowd make noise.
- 43:23Stacey Sobers: So you, you ain't got no toilet paper.
- 43:25Stacey Sobers: Yeah, did you escape that?
- 43:27Stacey Sobers: Oh yeah, I've been escaping it.
- 43:29Stacey Sobers: No, jinx it.
- 43:30Stacey Sobers: Oh, you ain't got none yet.
- 43:31Corie Sheppard: No, jinx it alright, let me no jinx it here, no let me.
- 43:35Stacey Sobers: No jinx it, but it's.
- 43:37Stacey Sobers: The Skinner Park stage has been good to me.
- 43:39Stacey Sobers: I mean, I made the final three times, but I love the Skinner Park what was your experience that first time?
- 43:43Corie Sheppard: How were you holding it together to go out of them time?
- 43:45Corie Sheppard: Because you went Skinner Park, skinner Park nothing new built Skinner Park.
- 43:48Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, skinner Park, Skinner Park, skinner Park, skinner Park.
- 43:51Stacey Sobers: It was nerve wracking and I just wanted to go out there and leave everything on the stage and the song.
- 44:02Stacey Sobers: The song meant a lot.
- 44:05Stacey Sobers: It meant a lot because Dr Kelly should have been sick at that time.
- 44:10Stacey Sobers: So, and he had been a support system when I was, when I started with divorce, we were at mass camp, the house at mass camp, and he would be there night or ten, only night or ten, on the night or ten, when he had nothing else.
- 44:29Stacey Sobers: I guess to do.
- 44:31Stacey Sobers: Come down and he's standing by that back door in Mass Camp I don't know if you're familiar and you're going out and he taps you on the shoulder and says get him.
- 44:37Stacey Sobers: And when you come out he says great job.
- 44:39Stacey Sobers: And then in between, you know he would have little tips, little things to tell you and I appreciated them so much.
- 44:45Stacey Sobers: I appreciated him especially and doing that song, doing that song, I felt like, yeah, he felt, he felt it as well, you know.
- 44:58Corie Sheppard: And imagine I hear many people talk about that because people don't know he live in one block from Skinner Park.
- 45:02Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, that's the thing on your mind when you go in there.
- 45:05Corie Sheppard: For me, the thing that you hear when that breeze blows.
- 45:08Stacey Sobers: You may be listening and then too, in front of the stage was Aunty Patsy in front of the stage, eh well, and Joni, but yeah and yeah, once you get ahead now, you're good, yeah, yeah he would.
- 45:23Corie Sheppard: He seemed to be.
- 45:23Corie Sheppard: All these stories about him tend to be along those lines yeah, you hear a lot of people talk about.
- 45:28Corie Sheppard: You know he called them for the first time.
- 45:29Corie Sheppard: I had one experience with him.
- 45:31Corie Sheppard: We were following about the band we play all the time, kaiso, and we get started to perform for something, for press boys.
- 45:37Corie Sheppard: So now I had a pickup start.
- 45:38Corie Sheppard: Everything went wrong like what you're talking about.
- 45:39Corie Sheppard: Right, I picked this man up.
- 45:40Corie Sheppard: Am I frightened because this is bun them and think this man my car now I am worried and boy with me driving across Superior Street.
- 45:48Corie Sheppard: Now a lady like she lose control of her car, reverse and hit somebody.
- 45:51Corie Sheppard: It's just chaos.
- 45:52Corie Sheppard: I told you yeah, yeah, and he in the car there and I think, can I cause all this?
- 45:55Corie Sheppard: I was like what the hell is going on here and I always remember being, you know, shaken up by the incident, perform and thing, and I don't know if you see it in my young anything.
- 46:07Corie Sheppard: He said boy, just hold it.
- 46:08Corie Sheppard: He said, you know what you're doing.
- 46:09Corie Sheppard: You hold it.
- 46:09Corie Sheppard: He let me play it in life.
- 46:10Corie Sheppard: He said just hold it, you know no rush, no rush in that message cool as ever.
- 46:13Corie Sheppard: Cool as ever and what's right, as important to us, that, um, you know the bowl could be dark, young stage, you can't see the crowd, you can't see backstage.
- 46:21Corie Sheppard: So we kind of between little curtain and he sang his part and he come off and the choir had a long thing to play to sing after, and then they came off and he was standing up right there waiting to shake everybody's heart.
- 46:31Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 46:32Stacey Sobers: So he was just that kind of support in the contenting.
- 46:34Stacey Sobers: That was the man.
- 46:36Corie Sheppard: Yeah, so it feels as though some of the things that you're conscious of, some of them for women and divas now, Absolutely, and it is important Not just for me but for them to do the same, going forward, right, you know?
- 46:52Stacey Sobers: that kind of way.
- 46:54Stacey Sobers: So you want them to have a good experience, you want them to do good, you want them to succeed.
- 47:01Stacey Sobers: You know it's important.
- 47:02Corie Sheppard: It's important, it's important, it's important.
- 47:04Corie Sheppard: So when is the first time on the final stage now?
- 47:08Stacey Sobers: It's important the support.
- 47:10Corie Sheppard: The support is important.
- 47:10Corie Sheppard: I with you.
- 47:11Corie Sheppard: So when is the first?
- 47:11Stacey Sobers: time on the final stage now, um whoo, it's so custom.
- 47:13Stacey Sobers: I can't remember.
- 47:13Stacey Sobers: I can't remember Too good.
- 47:15Corie Sheppard: That is when life going good.
- 47:18Stacey Sobers: Listen.
- 47:18Corie Sheppard: According to him, you're doing the thing.
- 47:21Stacey Sobers: Calypso Capital.
- 47:22Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 47:24Stacey Sobers: Calypso Capital.
- 47:26Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 47:26Corie Sheppard: Calypso Capital, yeah, yeah you're in there.
- 47:28Corie Sheppard: Yeah, you remember my experience on the big stage.
- 47:29Corie Sheppard: You feel the same.
- 47:30Corie Sheppard: Listen for final.
- 47:32Stacey Sobers: I was crying through the song and the song is not no song is not no is not no social comment.
- 47:38Stacey Sobers: She's like what it's Calypso Capital it's gonna and you're singing and tears.
- 47:43Stacey Sobers: It was a beautiful experience.
- 47:47Corie Sheppard: That was Skinner Park or Savannah.
- 47:48Corie Sheppard: Savannah Also your tears yeah.
- 47:51Stacey Sobers: I cried through this song.
- 47:52Stacey Sobers: I cried through this song.
- 47:54Stacey Sobers: I cried through this song.
- 47:55Stacey Sobers: I cried through this song.
- 47:57Stacey Sobers: It's surreal, at that moment I hear you make it.
- 48:00Stacey Sobers: I know I say just now Skinner Park is it?
- 48:03Stacey Sobers: But that accomplishment is an is an accomplishment.
- 48:08Stacey Sobers: I mean, you want to, you want to to have that under your belt, you know.
- 48:12Corie Sheppard: so yeah, yeah how big is the difference between the two for people to do the two stages?
- 48:17Corie Sheppard: Because Skinner Park seems to me to be.
- 48:19Corie Sheppard: I find Skinner Park to be difficult and intimidating.
- 48:21Stacey Sobers: Skinner Park is intimidating.
- 48:23Stacey Sobers: I mean you're closer to the people.
- 48:26Corie Sheppard: one oh yeah, I suppose.
- 48:27Stacey Sobers: And it's not.
- 48:28Stacey Sobers: It's not people sitting on the front of the car in the stands, it's people who drink all day and eat, and their opinions will come out on toilet paper or a plaque.
- 48:43Corie Sheppard: And it happens slow enough.
- 48:45Stacey Sobers: It is Listen.
- 48:46Corie Sheppard: It happens slow and then all at once see people get it it is.
- 48:49Stacey Sobers: It is nerve wracking, it is intimidating, but, like I said, you're closer to the crowd, so you have that kind of because the adrenaline is.
- 48:58Stacey Sobers: But on the other stage, you know, I mean you have the opportunity to come out calm and people far from you you ain't really seeing no body face, you ain't know who drinking stag, who drinking kai, who drinking who have an orange peel in their hand.
- 49:13Stacey Sobers: It's more relaxing.
- 49:14Stacey Sobers: I mean, it's the same stress because you have to perform and you're competing or whatever, but it's a different stage.
- 49:21Corie Sheppard: It's a different stage.
- 49:22Corie Sheppard: Yeah, and it's something you intend to keep doing.
- 49:24Corie Sheppard: You like the competition.
- 49:25Corie Sheppard: It's important to you.
- 49:26Stacey Sobers: So I've been saying like I tell you it's 2 to 50.
- 49:28Stacey Sobers: And I've decided that at age 50, I'm not going to enter no competition.
- 49:33Corie Sheppard: You're going to 2 to 50?
- 49:34Corie Sheppard: .
- 49:34Corie Sheppard: Every time you say it, my mind thinking what's 2 to 50?
- 49:40Stacey Sobers: I am not.
- 49:41Stacey Sobers: I don't want to be in competition after age 50 at age 50, that is my last year.
- 49:48Corie Sheppard: God willing, god bless me to do it.
- 49:51Stacey Sobers: That will be my last year singing competition.
- 49:54Stacey Sobers: Right, I will continue to do the tent, I will continue to make music.
- 49:58Corie Sheppard: But yeah, serious yeah oh man, I want to see everyone win, you know well, I mean win you win, yeah you're done.
- 50:05Corie Sheppard: Yeah, I mean win you win, yeah you're done.
- 50:06Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I mean I accomplished a lot.
- 50:08Stacey Sobers: It's good to to have the monarch under you.
- 50:12Stacey Sobers: Like to win the monarch?
- 50:13Stacey Sobers: I think my year, I think my year to win the monarch was was over here.
- 50:21Corie Sheppard: Let me see if we are lying.
- 50:22Stacey Sobers: No, no no, I'm done.
- 50:22Stacey Sobers: I'm done.
- 50:24Stacey Sobers: Yeah, but I'm, I'm given it.
- 50:27Stacey Sobers: You didn't tell me it was the year 2021, 2024?
- 50:31Corie Sheppard: You didn't tell me.
- 50:31Stacey Sobers: What did?
- 50:31Corie Sheppard: you say I can't remember, I can't ask him.
- 50:37Corie Sheppard: So whatever happened, that is that.
- 50:40Corie Sheppard: But you're entering from now until the.
- 50:43Corie Sheppard: You said 2 to 50.
- 50:44Corie Sheppard: Are you sure it's 6 or 7 to 50, just in case no, 7 to 55 nah oh man.
- 50:49Corie Sheppard: So why is it to just make space for you?
- 50:51Corie Sheppard: What is it?
- 50:52Corie Sheppard: What is it?
- 50:52Stacey Sobers: and that has been it mmhmm yeah mmhmm leave it for the yeah and that age I relax oh man, I'm disappointed as a fan.
- 51:04Corie Sheppard: Why disappointed as?
- 51:05Stacey Sobers: a fan, why I don't understand.
- 51:07Stacey Sobers: But yeah, I understand because I like.
- 51:10Corie Sheppard: I hear the arguments about all music and the competition thing and does it hurt or does it help, or what will you take?
- 51:15Corie Sheppard: Let me ask your thoughts for me is not.
- 51:19Stacey Sobers: It's not a matter of not winning or not.
- 51:23Stacey Sobers: I mean, for a lot of people who have been doing the competition for years and never even make a semi-final, I'm assuming that it will hurt more than anything.
- 51:34Stacey Sobers: But for me it's not about winning or losing.
- 51:39Stacey Sobers: It's about doing good music and putting all the good music and positive music to uplift people and sharing a message.
- 51:45Stacey Sobers: So you're fine, I can do that without the competition.
- 51:48Stacey Sobers: I can do it without the competition no doubt about that.
- 51:53Corie Sheppard: That is true, and I wonder sometimes, you know, when you look at one of my things with the competition, I tell people is just as a fan.
- 51:59Corie Sheppard: I see I was saying this to Maximus when they won the road match with Fulix Street and he was out of the competition a long time ago Because, like you, I think he had a year where he couldn't loss but he lost.
- 52:15Corie Sheppard: You know what I mean.
- 52:16Corie Sheppard: Kick it away, right?
- 52:17Corie Sheppard: I see that oval.
- 52:19Corie Sheppard: I guess you can understand what judges want, right, who does?
- 52:22Corie Sheppard: And the thing is, I felt good to see him win the road match, not because the pressure him into joining he didn't want to enter, but the song was so big.
- 52:32Corie Sheppard: But I think a part of it for me is always the documentation.
- 52:35Corie Sheppard: We're not good at documentation and we said that in the earlys so one of my things right is I have 2024 as one of the greatest calypso mona competitions they had since 86.
- 52:45Corie Sheppard: It was was bad.
- 52:46Corie Sheppard: When you look at 86 and what it was, 86 is monumental.
- 52:50Corie Sheppard: But when you're talking about 1986 or 87, I think Stalin win 85.
- 52:55Corie Sheppard: If you want to do the research now, right, they go tell you who win, maybe second and third.
- 53:00Corie Sheppard: You cannot tell who come where else.
- 53:01Corie Sheppard: You can't tell who else was in the competition, like you you.
- 53:07Stacey Sobers: You can't tell who else was in the competition.
- 53:09Corie Sheppard: You talk about the competition.
- 53:10Stacey Sobers: Who went last year this year Hell on earth.
- 53:11Corie Sheppard: Who's last year?
- 53:12Corie Sheppard: Who are we in 2025?
- 53:13Corie Sheppard: Who went last year?
- 53:13Corie Sheppard: I don't know.
- 53:15Corie Sheppard: I can't remember who went the year before.
- 53:17Corie Sheppard: Tati Okono.
- 53:20Stacey Sobers: What is he asking?
- 53:21Corie Sheppard: Jesus Christ, I can't remember.
- 53:25Corie Sheppard: I'm supposed to know that then who?
- 53:28Corie Sheppard: Went the year before, what was the year before?
- 53:30Corie Sheppard: We didn't talk about bad memory before we started no, I remember because yeah you're in it, but a lot of people a lot of people don't know people wouldn't know they don't know, they don't, they can't say, they're lying from apocalypse.
- 53:45Stacey Sobers: Look at this one, google it.
- 53:46Stacey Sobers: Oh yeah, how about this?
- 53:47Stacey Sobers: No, they don't.
- 53:47Corie Sheppard: They're casting a line from Apocalypse.
- 53:48Corie Sheppard: Look at this one, google it.
- 53:49Corie Sheppard: Oh yeah, how about this?
- 53:50Corie Sheppard: How about this Also?
- 53:51Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's 2024.
- 53:52Corie Sheppard: Oh yeah, yeah, I remember.
- 53:53Corie Sheppard: No, no, no, I see you trying to.
- 53:55Corie Sheppard: Yes, this is very trappy.
- 53:57Corie Sheppard: I asked any questions.
- 53:58Corie Sheppard: I didn't commit to be interviewed.
- 54:01Stacey Sobers: Yeah.
- 54:05Corie Sheppard: I fall into this trap.
- 54:06Stacey Sobers: It's you it's you, I fall into the trap completely.
- 54:10Stacey Sobers: It's you, it's Nami.
- 54:13Corie Sheppard: I hear you loud and clear.
- 54:14Corie Sheppard: Yeah, but I think.
- 54:15Stacey Sobers: I honestly think that was it.
- 54:16Stacey Sobers: Yeah, and what place.
- 54:22Corie Sheppard: What place?
- 54:23Stacey Sobers: Place Five, six, sixth or fifth.
- 54:26Corie Sheppard: Yeah sixth.
- 54:27Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 54:29Stacey Sobers: If I place fifth, then I gain the big money.
- 54:31Corie Sheppard: Oh, you fall just short.
- 54:32Corie Sheppard: Yeah, you ain't gonna forget that Five is when the money stops.
- 54:38Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I come sixth, I come sixth.
- 54:40Corie Sheppard: Well, let me tell you something about that year, right, again, going back to 86, when you look at who was there in 86 86 I mean they were rather brothers, rather right, and them two songs was real hard to beat.
- 54:54Corie Sheppard: Stalin had two songs that come second, it was was was bad to have it here, you know.
- 54:55Corie Sheppard: Let me, let me tell you right, let me refresh the memory of people.
- 54:56Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, 86 was rather, of course it's two songs.
- 54:58Corie Sheppard: Stalin had no but no part-time lover, and more come right, more come gypsy.
- 55:03Corie Sheppard: Third action, high and Salil song by the name of Sinking Ship.
- 55:07Corie Sheppard: Remember that I love Sinking.
- 55:08Stacey Sobers: Ship.
- 55:08Corie Sheppard: Stalin say, stalin say too much quacks Big song again.
- 55:12Stacey Sobers: Too much quacks and invalid.
- 55:13Corie Sheppard: You see, she know all the songs that is it.
- 55:15Stacey Sobers: That is all I can't remember.
- 55:16Corie Sheppard: That is all I don't know.
- 55:17Corie Sheppard: Put this thing on and say it and Loyal Fall.
- 55:22Corie Sheppard: I love my country.
- 55:23Corie Sheppard: I'm too young to soak up.
- 55:24Corie Sheppard: Duke, treat women nice.
- 55:27Corie Sheppard: You remember that song.
- 55:28Corie Sheppard: Treat women nice.
- 55:29Corie Sheppard: You know how Duke used to sing right.
- 55:30Corie Sheppard: And how many more must die right?
- 55:32Corie Sheppard: Johnny King have pan over that and we had to try and try and try.
- 55:37Corie Sheppard: He dead almost last right, but only if Scranton wasn't there, because he dead last with cooperation.
- 55:43Stacey Sobers: And I see you, you remember anytime with cooperation and I see you you know what I mean Anytime you pass.
- 55:47Corie Sheppard: So I have a theory about Calypso finals where everybody done win.
- 55:52Corie Sheppard: Yeah, once you reach there, everybody done win, because when you hear somebody's plenty song in that thing is classic.
- 55:57Corie Sheppard: So let me talk about 2024 now, because when we see the 2024 lineup, I have some people there who care a lot.
- 56:03Corie Sheppard: Yeah up, I have some people there who care also?
- 56:08Stacey Sobers: yeah, I don't feel you could loss.
- 56:09Stacey Sobers: I don't feel kurt could loss.
- 56:10Corie Sheppard: I still have that song, first investigation as one of the greatest calypso.
- 56:13Corie Sheppard: It's too important for our country now for that song.
- 56:17Corie Sheppard: I mean, where have I come and come right?
- 56:19Corie Sheppard: Well, all it was this.
- 56:20Corie Sheppard: All you know who was best on the night and thing I can't remember.
- 56:22Corie Sheppard: I watch.
- 56:23Corie Sheppard: Watch it on TV.
- 56:24Stacey Sobers: You know what I mean.
- 56:27Stacey Sobers: That day was a tough day.
- 56:29Corie Sheppard: You're going in thinking you're competing, or you're going in thinking somebody win and you're fighting for whatever else it is.
- 56:35Stacey Sobers: Going in, thinking I'm going to do my best.
- 56:38Stacey Sobers: It is what it is.
- 56:40Stacey Sobers: Everybody coming to do the best on the night.
- 56:41Stacey Sobers: Yeah, my voice cannot croak.
- 56:44Stacey Sobers: I cannot croak through the song.
- 56:45Stacey Sobers: You never know.
- 56:46Stacey Sobers: So you're going to do your best.
- 56:49Corie Sheppard: Yeah, I guess your focus was, and I tell her.
- 56:50Stacey Sobers: I talk about the overconfidence.
- 56:51Stacey Sobers: I think, mm-mm.
- 56:53Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I'm going to perform to the best of my ability.
- 56:56Stacey Sobers: The rest is up to the judges.
- 56:58Stacey Sobers: Because it is up to the judges, yeah, the judges.
- 57:03Corie Sheppard: Tricky.
- 57:04Stacey Sobers: Correct.
- 57:04Corie Sheppard: I'm trying to get judges to come on the show.
- 57:06Corie Sheppard: You think I'll get through?
- 57:07Corie Sheppard: I don't know.
- 57:07Corie Sheppard: Boy, yeah, they tell me Ask them more boy, I want to ask them more Ho ho, ho, ho, ho.
- 57:12Corie Sheppard: I've heard some particular songs over the years.
- 57:15Corie Sheppard: I want to just ask them all right, Well, explain to me what or how much difference it have in points.
- 57:21Stacey Sobers: Just you something I was looking at the Barbados Monarch the other night and this gentleman doing the Dr Something I don't know his name, dr Something I can't remember doing the commentary and for some particular reason.
- 57:34Stacey Sobers: Well, he's a judge, he's doing the judging as well.
- 57:37Stacey Sobers: For some particular reason, one of the contestants he don't like this song.
- 57:44Stacey Sobers: Okay, why he don't like this song?
- 57:47Stacey Sobers: We're asking the judges what they want.
- 57:51Stacey Sobers: You can ask the judges.
- 57:53Stacey Sobers: The song can be whatever it is.
- 57:55Stacey Sobers: If my song is what you want, only want me to sing this, only want me to, that is the song.
- 57:59Stacey Sobers: That song ain't good.
- 58:00Stacey Sobers: He ain't gonna make nothing here.
- 58:02Stacey Sobers: Somebody else come after he and sing a song and boss in the end.
- 58:08Stacey Sobers: And this man that does judge people telling the other commentator that the person who boss couldn't do better than the next person because his song didn't make no sense.
- 58:17Stacey Sobers: That reminds me of the year when I sang Kaiso Capital, people trying to convince me that because I was singing about Skinner Park in the Savannah.
- 58:28Stacey Sobers: That is why I didn't come up high.
- 58:31Corie Sheppard: That is logic for your money.
- 58:32Stacey Sobers: Listen.
- 58:32Stacey Sobers: I could sing about this nice silver cup and it's sitting in a gold thing.
- 58:39Stacey Sobers: It doesn't matter where the cup is.
- 58:42Stacey Sobers: I sing about the cup.
- 58:43Stacey Sobers: The cup is a nice cup.
- 58:43Stacey Sobers: I need to talk about the cup.
- 58:45Stacey Sobers: Listen to what I tell you about the cup.
- 58:46Stacey Sobers: The cup is a nice cup.
- 58:46Stacey Sobers: I need to talk about the cup.
- 58:47Stacey Sobers: Listen to what I tell you about the cup.
- 58:48Stacey Sobers: Don't study the environment around the cup because it's the only silver cup amongst cool things.
- 58:52Stacey Sobers: I am telling you about this cup.
- 58:54Stacey Sobers: Listen to me tell you about that cup.
- 58:55Stacey Sobers: Do not tell me anything about that.
- 58:57Stacey Sobers: It's ridiculous and I did not understand the logic.
- 59:02Corie Sheppard: I understand the logic I did not understand.
- 59:04Corie Sheppard: By that logic, girl from Bahia care, when then that guy's not interested in that at all?
- 59:08Corie Sheppard: Come?
- 59:09Stacey Sobers: on.
- 59:11Corie Sheppard: Make, it make sense.
- 59:12Stacey Sobers: Make it make sense.
- 59:14Stacey Sobers: People trying to tell me I sing the wrong song, how I sing the wrong song.
- 59:19Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 59:20Corie Sheppard: How to spell it.
- 59:21Stacey Sobers: That girl is a humble girl, so okay, I sing the wrong song.
- 59:26Corie Sheppard: So 2024.
- 59:27Stacey Sobers: Let me see.
- 59:28Corie Sheppard: She sent me for archive.
- 59:29Stacey Sobers: I can't remember.
- 59:30Corie Sheppard: Google and chat, gpt and them thing is memory.
- 59:32Corie Sheppard: Now, first song Solar, calypso, marshall, montana, Karina, I shouldn't know.
- 59:36Corie Sheppard: Excuse, I've Karina's not lost in that year too.
- 59:39Corie Sheppard: That no excuse for crime is a big, big song.
- 59:41Corie Sheppard: And you know one of the things that I find different I don't know what is judge and calypso right.
- 59:44Corie Sheppard: So, as I really am chair judge, I like that judge you're talking about.
- 59:47Corie Sheppard: I like who I like and I like the song.
- 59:49Corie Sheppard: That's wrong, yeah, but it's hard for me to determine.
- 59:52Corie Sheppard: I don't know how to assess a performance.
- 59:53Corie Sheppard: You went to school and you do this for a long time, so you know what you're good, I like it.
- 1:00:06Stacey Sobers: Once you do that and you see if you make a little dip when you do it, yeah, but sometimes some people just hold their belly, but they didn't have nothing to do with the song you're holding.
- 1:00:12Corie Sheppard: No, because the judges was rewarding wailing and lamentation.
- 1:00:16Corie Sheppard: No man, but you cry.
- 1:00:17Corie Sheppard: You're supposed to win.
- 1:00:20Stacey Sobers: Once you cry, you're crying the wrong time I cry singing half of this song.
- 1:00:24Corie Sheppard: You're crying the wrong time, so let me keep going.
- 1:00:31Corie Sheppard: Who else here?
- 1:00:31Corie Sheppard: Chucky Charlesy good song to have.
- 1:00:34Corie Sheppard: Chucky has a great song.
- 1:00:35Corie Sheppard: Mikael Teja DNA Comment.
- 1:00:39Corie Sheppard: Moving further.
- 1:00:40Stacey Sobers: What did you say?
- 1:00:40Corie Sheppard: Helen Francis representing.
- 1:00:42Corie Sheppard: We Can't remember this song, but Helen always good 60-year-old boy right outside in money.
- 1:00:46Corie Sheppard: I thought that was 15.
- 1:00:47Corie Sheppard: Respect the tribe respect the tribe again.
- 1:00:50Corie Sheppard: Bad, bad, bad, bad song.
- 1:00:52Corie Sheppard: I'm obsessed with the opening of songs, right, because I think the first thing people hear is a especially when songs very powerful like the message in that song.
- 1:01:02Corie Sheppard: It sets the tone that you're going to hear something serious.
- 1:01:05Corie Sheppard: And the opening horns and that thing are talking about Pada.
- 1:01:09Corie Sheppard: Let me talk about the music first.
- 1:01:12Corie Sheppard: Now who?
- 1:01:13Stacey Sobers: do you know, junior Ibo Joseph, the dancing dress?
- 1:01:16Stacey Sobers: The magician, of course.
- 1:01:17Stacey Sobers: Magician, of course, yeah.
- 1:01:21Corie Sheppard: So from time to time it's your norm.
- 1:01:22Stacey Sobers: Yeah, I have to know.
- 1:01:24Stacey Sobers: How can you not know?
- 1:01:25Corie Sheppard: It's crazy what that song was doing.
- 1:01:29Stacey Sobers: And the thing is, when you're in a room with a producer, he know he think he do anything, but he say you hearing that?
- 1:01:40Stacey Sobers: I said that's exactly why I hear it.
- 1:01:43Stacey Sobers: You hearing this, that's exactly why I hear it.
- 1:01:46Stacey Sobers: You hearing this, that's exactly why I hear it Once.
- 1:01:48Stacey Sobers: Listen, the magic this man is making in our studio is ridiculous.
- 1:01:54Stacey Sobers: And he asks are you comfortable with this?
- 1:01:58Stacey Sobers: How do you feel about this?
- 1:01:59Stacey Sobers: Listen and tell me what you think.
- 1:02:01Stacey Sobers: This man is a genius, he is.
- 1:02:17Corie Sheppard: And he brought that song to life.
- 1:02:18Corie Sheppard: He brought it to life.
- 1:02:20Stacey Sobers: Yeah, one of them songs where before you hear a word, you know something, come in, say the tone for it.
- 1:02:24Stacey Sobers: So, in terms, bola Serious, rhea Bola, now the, the, the the theme of the song is brainchild of my husband.
- 1:02:33Stacey Sobers: Mm-hmm, it's cannibal done.
- 1:02:35Corie Sheppard: Right.
- 1:02:36Stacey Sobers: He done, ready to write.
- 1:02:37Stacey Sobers: He know where he want me to sing yeah, yeah, mm-hmm.
- 1:02:40Stacey Sobers: So he would map out his thing and who write in it.
- 1:02:45Stacey Sobers: He decide who writes in it.
- 1:02:50Stacey Sobers: You decide who writes in it, who produce in it.
- 1:02:52Stacey Sobers: You decide who produces in it, and he will give you a line by line.
- 1:02:53Stacey Sobers: This is what I want, this is what I want to experience.
- 1:02:55Stacey Sobers: This is what I want.
- 1:02:56Stacey Sobers: You call it the field, this is it.
- 1:02:58Stacey Sobers: And when we gave this, the, the, that information to maria, we didn't expect what she came back with.
- 1:03:05Stacey Sobers: Didn't expect that, but it was perfection.
- 1:03:10Stacey Sobers: I didn't have much work to do in the studio, I just had to make it my own, but the lyrics spoke for itself.
- 1:03:18Stacey Sobers: The music took it where it had to go.
- 1:03:20Stacey Sobers: I didn't have a lot of work to do.
- 1:03:23Corie Sheppard: Yeah, no, the humility is a hell of a thing.
- 1:03:25Corie Sheppard: You say the music and the lyrics, but you are.
- 1:03:29Stacey Sobers: I mean, yeah, I do my thing, but Mm-hmm.
- 1:03:31Stacey Sobers: Without them things, I mean, I could have sang the song in G and the band playing in.
- 1:03:36Stacey Sobers: F and, but the foundation set the tone for my performance.
- 1:03:45Corie Sheppard: Yeah, so people don't know the song really is about.
- 1:03:47Corie Sheppard: And I was wondering.
- 1:03:48Corie Sheppard: When I listened to this song, I was wondering, okay, is this a issue at all?
- 1:03:51Corie Sheppard: You know and but you're in this space and you know the world because it's really uh, some of the same things we're talking about today the youth versus people.
- 1:03:57Corie Sheppard: Who was here before your tribe?
- 1:03:59Corie Sheppard: Or respecting the fact that you're not alone yeah, yeah, and and, and.
- 1:04:03Stacey Sobers: I think what the youth don't get is that you don't do nothing by yourself.
- 1:04:12Stacey Sobers: You feel you're doing it on your own.
- 1:04:14Stacey Sobers: But what about the woman who prays for your grandmother, who prays for you to make it, or your mother who sacrifices, sitting down in the night waiting for you to finish your homework?
- 1:04:23Stacey Sobers: What about the teacher who roots in for you to finish your homework?
- 1:04:26Stacey Sobers: What about the teacher who's rooting for you?
- 1:04:27Stacey Sobers: You have people in the background that just pushes you and prays for you and hope that everything goes well for you.
- 1:04:36Stacey Sobers: That really wants you to succeed, of course, and if you don't recognize and understand that these people are in your space, you're making no sense.
- 1:04:45Stacey Sobers: That's selfishness.
- 1:04:47Corie Sheppard: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 1:04:48Corie Sheppard: And it's something that in work right In my other work business world I always watch.
- 1:04:54Corie Sheppard: I started work the first day somebody paid me to do something.
- 1:04:57Corie Sheppard: Thank God it was a good thing, you know, because if they had paid me to do the wrong thing, all hell break loose and I couldn't believe somebody paid.
- 1:05:02Corie Sheppard: I had a lady at a shop.
- 1:05:03Corie Sheppard: I go in the shop and sell I'm just glad to sell them and she gave me $10.
- 1:05:07Corie Sheppard: I don't think I ever stopped working from that day.
- 1:05:08Corie Sheppard: I said what I was shocked when she gave me the money.
- 1:05:11Corie Sheppard: I had to do that for free.
- 1:05:13Corie Sheppard: So I feel like our time was a time where and I ain't talking for everybody, it's just our experience at a time where you had a certain respect for the tribe, a certain respect for work and he had a certain you know, delayed gratification.
- 1:05:28Corie Sheppard: He could have put any effort now and with the trust that the results will come yeah, you know he wasn't alone.
- 1:05:30Corie Sheppard: Whereas youths now people use the word entitlement a lot with young people now because they feel they should be.
- 1:05:36Corie Sheppard: You talking about thing and you say two more years and you're out regardless because you're making space for youth.
- 1:05:40Corie Sheppard: I wonder sometimes with youths.
- 1:05:42Corie Sheppard: Now they expect to get paid top dollar like no graduate from school, as like boy you're not gonna learn and no experience you know.
- 1:05:50Corie Sheppard: So I wonder sometimes when you, when you sing a song like that, is that real issue but you map it out?
- 1:05:54Corie Sheppard: You'll say, map it out from before, it's something you want to touch it too.
- 1:05:58Stacey Sobers: Um, for me.
- 1:05:59Stacey Sobers: I think it was a time for me to express my gratitude to a lot of people who's been in my space.
- 1:06:09Stacey Sobers: One late thing in Sandra.
- 1:06:11Stacey Sobers: I remember my first, my first, the second year in Scalapa.
- 1:06:16Stacey Sobers: Some strange reason, I always tell the story.
- 1:06:19Stacey Sobers: I'm uneasy and I'm crying for some reason and I do not know what is going on with me.
- 1:06:25Stacey Sobers: That year, cara Nichols was in the not know what is going on with me.
- 1:06:27Stacey Sobers: That year, um, kara Nichols was in the competition and she's usually by my side.
- 1:06:31Stacey Sobers: She don't make sammies, she's by my side.
- 1:06:33Stacey Sobers: She's in my, in my dressing room we pray with whatever and she's in the competition.
- 1:06:39Stacey Sobers: So I don't have that support.
- 1:06:40Stacey Sobers: It's me and the husband alone this year.
- 1:06:43Stacey Sobers: Right, and um, something tell me, call mother.
- 1:06:51Stacey Sobers: And I pick up the phone and I call her and this time I am weeping for what I do not know, and she answers the phone.
- 1:07:00Stacey Sobers: She wasn't in competition, she was ill earlier and she's like Stacy.
- 1:07:04Stacey Sobers: So was you interfering with my spirit?
- 1:07:06Stacey Sobers: Why are you doing that?
- 1:07:07Stacey Sobers: I said, if you ask me, well, me even know what's going on with me, you know.
- 1:07:11Stacey Sobers: So, whoever your spirit telling you, I calling you to fix it and she said give your husband the phone.
- 1:07:19Stacey Sobers: And he deformed me don't know where them talk Because I busy crying and I don't know what's going on with me.
- 1:07:26Stacey Sobers: And then she take, she give, he gave me back the phone and she say I am there with you, she said what I am there with you she said what?
- 1:07:33Stacey Sobers: I am there with you.
- 1:07:33Stacey Sobers: Go out and do what you're supposed to do.
- 1:07:37Stacey Sobers: You're there already.
- 1:07:39Stacey Sobers: How was that, yeah, there are people that stand in the gap for you.
- 1:07:44Stacey Sobers: For me, those people are my parents, my siblings, my nieces.
- 1:07:52Stacey Sobers: Karen Eccles, I call this name, john Wayne Benoit.
- 1:07:58Stacey Sobers: There's so much people that just wants to see you succeed and they're in your corner and they genuinely pray for you and they genuinely call and check up on you and they genuinely want to know that everything is alright with you.
- 1:08:12Stacey Sobers: And if genuinely call and check up on you and they genuinely want to know that everything is alright with you, and if you don't acknowledge these people, I mean it make it like I said before it make it no sense in your existence, really, because it's never you alone.
- 1:08:24Stacey Sobers: But I do this and I this and I that and I and I and I and I like it's wrong, says yeah, and I like it so much, yeah.
- 1:08:31Stacey Sobers: But if you went on an interview and the man didn't like you or like where you're serious, let me give this person a chance and see what they can really do.
- 1:08:40Stacey Sobers: If you don't get a chance.
- 1:08:41Stacey Sobers: We're going to say, I feel and I, but as you have a little bit of success, it's I and I and I.
- 1:08:49Corie Sheppard: Yeah, no, it is powerful, especially because of the way I feel about youths and the way I feel about things now, because the song captured that perfectly perfect this idea that everybody is to blame somebody fighting, they don't somebody doing this.
- 1:09:03Corie Sheppard: When things go wrong, it's like this one and that one and that one, but when things go right it's I and I and I.
- 1:09:09Corie Sheppard: I'm sorry, I guess somebody didn't write that song for me yet, like I said, I and two.
- 1:09:13Stacey Sobers: Let me just plug this in this moment.
- 1:09:15Stacey Sobers: You see my husband.
- 1:09:16Corie Sheppard: Mm-hmm.
- 1:09:18Stacey Sobers: He's a king, mm-hmm.
- 1:09:20Stacey Sobers: Yeah, it has no support.
- 1:09:23Stacey Sobers: Like his support.
- 1:09:25Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 1:09:27Stacey Sobers: It has no support like his support, and I want him to know in this moment that I appreciate everything he has been doing, because he was supposed to stop managing me in 2020.
- 1:09:42Stacey Sobers: I think, and he's like I gave you five more years only like deadlines in the household yeah, meticulous like that, but he's everything From the song type to the dress code.
- 1:10:01Stacey Sobers: He does.
- 1:10:03Stacey Sobers: He has a gift and I appreciate, appreciate it that he, he wants, he wants the best for me in this music industry.
- 1:10:18Corie Sheppard: Yeah, that's something to work with.
- 1:10:19Stacey Sobers: My support, my husband.
- 1:10:22Corie Sheppard: Yeah, your husband.
- 1:10:23Stacey Sobers: Husband.
- 1:10:24Corie Sheppard: Husband.
- 1:10:25Corie Sheppard: There's a place for me.
- 1:10:26Corie Sheppard: It's called name and thing.
- 1:10:27Stacey Sobers: Names don't be left out there, mr Javon Abraham.
- 1:10:29Corie Sheppard: Mr Javon Abraham.
- 1:10:30Corie Sheppard: I want to tell him I appreciate him.
- 1:10:31Corie Sheppard: Where's my camera?
- 1:10:32Corie Sheppard: I appreciate him.
- 1:10:33Corie Sheppard: Until I talked to him, I couldn't get Stacey here.
- 1:10:35Corie Sheppard: I was talking to the wrong person.
- 1:10:36Corie Sheppard: I was trying to talk to Stacey Talk to my manager.
- 1:10:40Stacey Sobers: Call my manager Critical critical.
- 1:10:44Corie Sheppard: Like.
- 1:10:44Stacey Sobers: Corey, you just called me at the wrong time.
- 1:10:45Stacey Sobers: I tried to make it happen Nothing before it's time, like my mother used to say, of course, of course, god's timing.
- 1:10:53Corie Sheppard: So let me talk about that a little bit.
- 1:10:54Corie Sheppard: Nazia, it's all about manager, right?
- 1:10:56Corie Sheppard: You start off saying that you're managing yourself and that kind of thing?
- 1:10:59Corie Sheppard: What made you go that route?
- 1:11:01Corie Sheppard: You were just not looking to.
- 1:11:04Stacey Sobers: So when I started singing, it was me and Shelly Mendoza, like I say, and we would write these songs and we would go to a little party and sing.
- 1:11:17Stacey Sobers: And then that came to an end and I started doing my own thing and writing for myself and finding this producer and, you know, making little deals to get.
- 1:11:25Stacey Sobers: I had to do background vocals for the studio and produce my songs, them kind of thing, because I mean spending money as a young person and making a big spending money as a young person and making up extra money right so I batter my way through the majority of my things right.
- 1:11:40Stacey Sobers: When I did Lemon you know when you're coming I had an agent, julia Primus.
- 1:11:45Stacey Sobers: I was on her wife's team, julia Primus and Desmond Primus and they weren't fresh in the game.
- 1:11:50Stacey Sobers: Today they they get trained, just so you know.
- 1:11:53Stacey Sobers: So they weren't, they weren't really occur with everything that was supposed to happen and and and and stuff like that.
- 1:11:59Stacey Sobers: And you find that maybe, um, things that were supposed to propel me with that song.
- 1:12:10Stacey Sobers: Let me know when you're coming didn't happen.
- 1:12:12Corie Sheppard: I see, Right Um was supposed to propel me with that song.
- 1:12:13Corie Sheppard: Let me know when you're coming didn't happen.
- 1:12:14Stacey Sobers: I see right, um, so after let me know when you're coming, I started doing my own stuff again writing for myself, again doing going to the studios battering um, I pay half and I do background vocals, them kind of thing.
- 1:12:29Stacey Sobers: It was the way until I met everything changed, yeah and he wasn't managing me, but he in the, in the, in the little spaces, he would advise you know you should do this, you know you should do that.
- 1:12:43Stacey Sobers: He was the one that told me to go to costa to do my.
- 1:12:46Stacey Sobers: So since then he has been pushing and, yeah, because I wouldn't think to do that, I started to make the music and then and fall short here and fall short there again.
- 1:12:59Stacey Sobers: So come on up.
- 1:13:00Stacey Sobers: Somebody had to sing and perform in a next show.
- 1:13:04Stacey Sobers: I was supposed to sing 13th, I end up singing to two people in the car.
- 1:13:07Corie Sheppard: I would imagine, of course, you just move it brutal and I wanted to give up many times.
- 1:13:14Stacey Sobers: I wanted to give up many times, but since he started managing me, I guess Well, you see the success.
- 1:13:21Corie Sheppard: Of course.
- 1:13:22Stacey Sobers: And I'm appreciative of it.
- 1:13:23Corie Sheppard: Of course, David.
- 1:13:23Corie Sheppard: We had a guy husband, another guy husband.
- 1:13:25Corie Sheppard: We're going to do a volunteer for the role?
- 1:13:32Stacey Sobers: No, but yeah, he has done a lot.
- 1:13:35Stacey Sobers: He continues to do a lot.
- 1:13:37Corie Sheppard: Of course.
- 1:13:37Corie Sheppard: So let me talk about our business side now, as you talk about management and that kind of thing.
- 1:13:41Corie Sheppard: Crackers and Cheese.
- 1:13:42Stacey Sobers: Crackers and Cheese.
- 1:13:43Stacey Sobers: Again born out of Custard.
- 1:13:45Stacey Sobers: Yeah, out of Custard, yeah, so I was doing my associate degree in performing arts as a voice major, as I said, and for my final recital I had to do every genre and in talking to him I needed to come up with a name for the event, and Crackers and Cheese or Cricks and Cheese was what came up.
- 1:14:10Corie Sheppard: Right.
- 1:14:11Stacey Sobers: Because, richard Poe, everybody's the Cricks and Cheese.
- 1:14:12Stacey Sobers: Cheese or crocks and cheese was what came up, fair enough, um, because Richard Paul, everybody's the crocks and cheese.
- 1:14:16Stacey Sobers: I don't know.
- 1:14:17Stacey Sobers: You know, good times, party wine and cheese, it's true, it's true, right.
- 1:14:27Stacey Sobers: So so we went to it crackers and cheese and, um, the first event was it was it was a beautiful event and passed my exam and all that kind of thing.
- 1:14:36Stacey Sobers: And then, yeah, we wanted to start doing shows and we just kept the name.
- 1:14:42Stacey Sobers: We kept the name and steeped in Calypso.
- 1:14:47Stacey Sobers: So what we would do, we made it a 21st century Calypso experience, calypso tent experience, and what we would do every year is change the theme.
- 1:14:56Stacey Sobers: Last year we did the Audacity, this year we are doing Rhythm of Our People.
- 1:15:02Stacey Sobers: So I mean, it has been working.
- 1:15:06Stacey Sobers: The brand has been going.
- 1:15:10Stacey Sobers: The support is tremendous because all the shows we've done have been sold out.
- 1:15:14Stacey Sobers: Nice, the support, and you see the same people supporting over and over.
- 1:15:19Stacey Sobers: And if I start to call names now, it's just but the amount of people that when is the next show?
- 1:15:27Stacey Sobers: When is the next show, when is the next show?
- 1:15:29Stacey Sobers: That that that's why I could come up with a competition, because people want to hear what they want to hear.
- 1:15:34Stacey Sobers: I don't need to be in the competition.
- 1:15:36Stacey Sobers: So, crackers and cheese, it is this brand, and I want to thank everyone who has been supporting the brand.
- 1:15:42Stacey Sobers: It's been growing, it's been thriving and, yeah, let me talk about audacity now.
- 1:15:49Corie Sheppard: Like I like the theme, the audacity, and, just to be clear, there's an in-person show.
- 1:15:53Corie Sheppard: People come in and see you perform, yeah.
- 1:15:56Stacey Sobers: I mean, we have guest artists and the theme is built.
- 1:16:00Stacey Sobers: The audacity theme was built around people who dare to say certain things in Calypso, not just the double lantern, but like the soul fish and them, that kind of music.
- 1:16:14Stacey Sobers: People who, like Drupati, who was the East India woman she had that audacity.
- 1:16:21Stacey Sobers: I don't care what they say it's taking a chance.
- 1:16:24Stacey Sobers: Denise Plummer, we did your final.
- 1:16:25Stacey Sobers: We would have chosen songs from these people to represent the audacity of these people, right, yeah, so basically, yeah, and continuing to grow and people to do so.
- 1:16:31Stacey Sobers: We represent the audacity of these people, right, yeah, so basically yeah, and continuing to grow.
- 1:16:36Corie Sheppard: And when you go to those shows, is you, among other people, are guest artists performing some of people's songs?
- 1:16:41Stacey Sobers: yeah, the guests will do their songs and depending on again the theme with acts like last year, we had Rashati, his son Isaac, and he did his father's song and he did his songs Because I mean the songs would have been lending to the theme right.
- 1:17:01Stacey Sobers: But guest artists is important.
- 1:17:04Stacey Sobers: I can't do the.
- 1:17:06Stacey Sobers: I mean I'm not saying that I can't but, to make a good show, you had to have guests.
- 1:17:10Corie Sheppard: Right.
- 1:17:11Corie Sheppard: Absolutely you have to have guests.
- 1:17:14Stacey Sobers: This year we have Free Tongue Collective Tazia O'Connor.
- 1:17:19Stacey Sobers: Tazia is my darling.
- 1:17:20Stacey Sobers: Tazia is my darling.
- 1:17:22Stacey Sobers: I love to hear him sing.
- 1:17:23Stacey Sobers: I love to see him perform.
- 1:17:25Corie Sheppard: We have.
- 1:17:25Stacey Sobers: Lady Adana, who has this unusual vocal ability.
- 1:17:29Corie Sheppard: She's unusual.
- 1:17:30Corie Sheppard: A lot of times she's a mouse boy Upstage present wishes.
- 1:17:34Corie Sheppard: It's different, it's different, it is different.
- 1:17:39Stacey Sobers: It is different.
- 1:17:39Stacey Sobers: Yeah, this show should be a wonderful show.
- 1:17:44Stacey Sobers: I hope people come out and really support it.
- 1:17:47Corie Sheppard: And it's only sold out, so people will come Tamba.
- 1:17:50Stacey Sobers: Gwendy Tamba.
- 1:17:51Stacey Sobers: Gwendy, I mean sold out, so people will come you know, when they tamba when I mean like right, yeah, um, duvon stewart oh, duvon is my dude for a long time yeah he said he was abroad and he's going back here but I saw him perform at cafe blue a couple of weeks ago
- 1:18:14Stacey Sobers: trouble, trouble, bad, bad, bad man do you want us to play three songs?
- 1:18:19Stacey Sobers: Bad, and he called us in our friends.
- 1:18:24Stacey Sobers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's not vocals, it's one national instrument and this, this, this, this, um, yes, theme too, is around the national instrument.
- 1:18:34Corie Sheppard: That's why I see, I got you, I got you, I got you.
- 1:18:36Corie Sheppard: No, I was talking, I was talking business.
- 1:18:38Corie Sheppard: Uh, more and more people is seeing doing that like I admire.
- 1:18:42Corie Sheppard: Vonna just recently had a show, did well, she has shows, she's been doing it and, uh, I had you nearly here, the, and him as a young fellow, 20-something years old, talking about the importance of investing your own money, maybe a partner with people who have put out shows.
- 1:18:54Corie Sheppard: So that's an important part of your journey now making sure you have your own brand and your own shows.
- 1:18:58Stacey Sobers: You have to.
- 1:18:59Stacey Sobers: I mean, we need the sponsors, but I'm just saying if you could dip into your pocket and do something else.
- 1:19:04Stacey Sobers: It doesn't have to be huge.
- 1:19:07Stacey Sobers: Small scale, start small.
- 1:19:09Stacey Sobers: Try a little karaoke here, think, think to the thing, to something else, just turn over, turn over, turn over, turn over.
- 1:19:17Stacey Sobers: But you have to be sustainable yeah you can't be just doing this thing for that 40 dollars I just seen 40 bucks on the people but 40 dollars here and by time tomorrow that done.
- 1:19:29Stacey Sobers: Yeah, you have to build the brand, you have to build the business.
- 1:19:33Stacey Sobers: So if partnering with somebody, is it partnering with somebody and do something, but you see, like two Calypso seasonal, which is not supposed to be of course this is our thing.
- 1:19:49Stacey Sobers: I want to sing Calypso all year yeah, call me, let me sing in a show in July.
- 1:19:56Stacey Sobers: Call me, let me sing a show, and not just Calypso History Month.
- 1:19:59Stacey Sobers: I want to sing.
- 1:20:01Corie Sheppard: Yeah, calypso History Month gets to be the only other time at one point, right, but I'm glad for Kaiso Blues places like those rockers doing a thing that is amazing bringing out some people who you're not going to get to see.
- 1:20:11Stacey Sobers: People are not realizing that this is the last opportunity to get some people to see, and the thing is that with that space it is always full.
- 1:20:20Corie Sheppard: It says something right.
- 1:20:22Stacey Sobers: People starve for this kind of thing.
- 1:20:23Stacey Sobers: People are hungry for this kind of thing.
- 1:20:26Corie Sheppard: Yeah, I think so.
- 1:20:28Corie Sheppard: One of the things I enjoyed talking to Omari about this very topic, because Omari was saying the very same thing Like, again, younger artists now where they fight down things.
- 1:20:38Corie Sheppard: I started to listen to myself, right, and I always trying to see okay, if something not getting done or if something in the way or something I want to achieve, right, I don't want to move from here because what they're going to say is that the say see, see, sobers come, and I I don't see sobers and ding, you know.
- 1:20:51Stacey Sobers: I ain't not taking that.
- 1:20:53Corie Sheppard: I know, but David and them going to turn around.
- 1:20:58Corie Sheppard: Know that, the importance of going to you know, doing your own shows, doing your own events, investing in yourself.
- 1:21:02Corie Sheppard: But I keep listening to myself to hear, I think your mind naturally says but this should be this, I should have done this, your parents should have done this.
- 1:21:13Corie Sheppard: And when I hear that I just get very quiet, I just get still.
- 1:21:16Corie Sheppard: I say, brother, if you blame somebody else, it could be harder for you to change that than if you just look internally and say okay, what can I do?
- 1:21:24Stacey Sobers: What can I do?
- 1:21:25Stacey Sobers: What can I do?
- 1:21:27Stacey Sobers: What can I?
- 1:21:28Corie Sheppard: do you have to change it yourself If you you know I feel like it's a more powerful place.
- 1:21:32Stacey Sobers: The thing, too, is you see people come from different backgrounds and wanting to get out of certain situations, but you have a choice.
- 1:21:42Stacey Sobers: You always have a choice, so you need to choose what would make the space work for you.
- 1:21:51Stacey Sobers: You have to, because you can't leave it up to somebody and there comes the blame.
- 1:21:56Stacey Sobers: Leave it up to somebody to do it for you.
- 1:21:58Stacey Sobers: You have to do it, you have to push, you have to fight, you have to want the thing.
- 1:22:04Corie Sheppard: And I also feel like you have to know that you can, like I tell to my son about that all the time If you blame somebody else, you're going to feel you can't do it and you'll get stuck in a position.
- 1:22:12Corie Sheppard: So I admire the fact that you're putting on your own shows, doing your own thing.
- 1:22:16Stacey Sobers: I think a lot more people should start doing it.
- 1:22:18Stacey Sobers: And you know what is good to like with Cafe Blue the support of artists at Cafe Blue.
- 1:22:24Stacey Sobers: You find a lot of artists piling up in Cafe Blue.
- 1:22:26Stacey Sobers: You find a lot of here.
- 1:22:33Stacey Sobers: She have a show in cafe blue.
- 1:22:35Stacey Sobers: Yeah, come in a day, a day, a day, a supporting so that's something once I can make a supporting yeah, people will come.
- 1:22:43Corie Sheppard: People will come, as you said, full people partaking on the patronizing, and I do feel as if.
- 1:22:47Corie Sheppard: So you say skinner park right, skinner park is so important.
- 1:22:48Corie Sheppard: I remember, rather, here talking about green corner, which I didn't know at all.
- 1:22:50Corie Sheppard: He said that was the center kind of island, you know.
- 1:22:51Corie Sheppard: So you say Skinner Park right, skinner Park is so important.
- 1:22:52Corie Sheppard: I remember a brother here talking about Green Corner, which I didn't know at all.
- 1:22:54Corie Sheppard: He said that was the center of Cannavarland, you know.
- 1:22:56Corie Sheppard: But I feel like Cafe Blue is that, even when you see the murals on the wall going in and things, it's a special place.
- 1:23:02Stacey Sobers: It is a special place.
- 1:23:04Stacey Sobers: It's special because I'm on them walls too.
- 1:23:06Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 1:23:07Stacey Sobers: All right, I'm a first boss.
- 1:23:09Stacey Sobers: I'm a first boss, it took me nearly two hours To get out of the boat.
- 1:23:12Corie Sheppard: I'm a first boss.
- 1:23:14Stacey Sobers: Yeah, but when I was younger, carl and Carol Jacob Was my people Serious.
- 1:23:22Stacey Sobers: I want to hear that we go down the road and sit on my school and love up, love that song, love everything they ever put out, and I never thought in my wildest dreams that I could go on so long with Carl.
- 1:23:38Stacey Sobers: Carl is my partner.
- 1:23:43Corie Sheppard: Yeah, he's seen you as a pair.
- 1:23:44Stacey Sobers: Carl is my partner.
- 1:23:45Stacey Sobers: I perform at Cafe Blue more often than I ever show at Cafe Blue or the theater this month.
- 1:23:53Corie Sheppard: Yeah, let me take note of that too, right.
- 1:23:54Corie Sheppard: Take note yeah, yeah, yeah, with that.
- 1:23:56Stacey Sobers: I sing with a.
- 1:23:57Stacey Sobers: I sing with a was three-piece, now four-piece band for Music Connection, and we do shows at Cafe Blue.
- 1:24:03Stacey Sobers: Yeah, that is our home.
- 1:24:05Corie Sheppard: So the entrepreneurial side important to you Absolutely.
- 1:24:07Corie Sheppard: That's something you continue with.
- 1:24:08Corie Sheppard: I love it Absolutely.
- 1:24:09Stacey Sobers: You have to.
- 1:24:09Stacey Sobers: That's why I say competition is not, it's not it.
- 1:24:12Stacey Sobers: It has other ways for me to get the music out, get the messages out and still please the fans.
- 1:24:20Corie Sheppard: Yeah, that's what Songbaba Mwari was saying.
- 1:24:22Corie Sheppard: You know, in this era, especially even billing your own audience and curating your audience is why, hugo Porter, I see the response when you first post crackers and cheese for this year.
- 1:24:31Corie Sheppard: What's the date for it this year?
- 1:24:33Stacey Sobers: It is the 13th of September at Central Bank Auditorium.
- 1:24:36Corie Sheppard: Yeah, when you start posting this on your fan page, the comments come out.
- 1:24:39Corie Sheppard: They come out immediately.
- 1:24:40Corie Sheppard: It's any minute of the thing.
- 1:24:42Stacey Sobers: Yeah, and you start posting clips.
- 1:24:44Corie Sheppard: Same thing with Vornet.
- 1:24:45Stacey Sobers: I didn't even have tickets yet until.
- 1:24:48Stacey Sobers: And people don't pay for tickets.
- 1:24:50Corie Sheppard: Of course, what better than having your own audience In this world where today, especially through social media, you could go direct to consumer.
- 1:24:56Corie Sheppard: So this idea that a promoter fighting it down or other artists fighting it, down Now, in this time there's an excuse.
- 1:25:04Corie Sheppard: Yeah, maybe it always was, Because you don't have to do your own thing.
- 1:25:08Stacey Sobers: You don't have to.
- 1:25:08Stacey Sobers: It don't have to be that way.
- 1:25:10Corie Sheppard: Gotcha, gotcha.
- 1:25:10Stacey Sobers: You don't have to wait for somebody to call you for a show.
- 1:25:13Stacey Sobers: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, how important do you feel that is for a woman or a young?
- 1:25:21Stacey Sobers: woman coming into the industry, very One you'll find that shows are mostly male-dominated.
- 1:25:29Stacey Sobers: Still, still, now you have the Lady lovers and the jade elves and the what?
- 1:25:35Stacey Sobers: If you, as a woman, decide to put on a show, it doesn't matter the genre you're singing, social media and your immediate circle could fill a show.
- 1:25:52Stacey Sobers: It's important for you.
- 1:25:53Stacey Sobers: Media and your immediate circle could flash you.
- 1:25:55Stacey Sobers: It's important for you, if you are passionate about what you're doing and this is what you really want to see yourself doing for the rest of your life.
- 1:26:07Stacey Sobers: Make it happen.
- 1:26:10Stacey Sobers: Make it happen.
- 1:26:12Stacey Sobers: Open doors for yourself.
- 1:26:14Stacey Sobers: You cannot wait on people to open doors for you.
- 1:26:18Stacey Sobers: You have to do it for yourself.
- 1:26:20Stacey Sobers: And I mean it's a little tougher for women, but with all the things that like social media, people gravitate to certain things and just put that out.
- 1:26:31Stacey Sobers: You put your things, keep feeding it, feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding, and just put that out.
- 1:26:32Stacey Sobers: You put your things, keep feeding it, feeding, feeding, feeding, feeding.
- 1:26:35Stacey Sobers: Yeah, and you will see you will get to the audience.
- 1:26:37Stacey Sobers: You will see.
- 1:26:39Corie Sheppard: Mm-hmm Important work.
- 1:26:41Stacey Sobers: Yeah.
- 1:26:42Corie Sheppard: Are you ready to put Stacey on the spot now?
- 1:26:43Corie Sheppard: Who?
- 1:26:43Stacey Sobers: is that?
- 1:26:44Stacey Sobers: Hi, it have a segment or something.
- 1:26:46Stacey Sobers: It have a segment.
- 1:26:47Corie Sheppard: Where's that David?
- 1:26:48Corie Sheppard: Let me see that quadro, though, because people who could, when I sit down next to people who could randomly call back to Carl and Carl Jacobs and them kind of thing.
- 1:27:00Stacey Sobers: I can't play nothing.
- 1:27:01Corie Sheppard: You can't play nothing either?
- 1:27:02Corie Sheppard: Well, go break loose here.
- 1:27:04Corie Sheppard: This is where you have the power of editing.
- 1:27:06Corie Sheppard: If it work.
- 1:27:06Corie Sheppard: It work If it ain't work it go edit.
- 1:27:10Corie Sheppard: The simple reality, editing, let me find out.
- 1:27:12Corie Sheppard: Let me find out Because I see something live and I want to see if it is work.
- 1:27:17Corie Sheppard: So if I say something and you know lyrics like how you look, because I tell you how the theory I see when I go to a show in Central Bank, I say it's an earpiece.
- 1:27:27Corie Sheppard: I say nobody can remember all them certain lyrics at one point in time.
- 1:27:30Corie Sheppard: So if I say I heard her bawling like somebody crying, what do you say?
- 1:27:35Stacey Sobers: I just could imagine what was happening.
- 1:27:37Stacey Sobers: So the soul lady wanted bawling out to she neighbor Ramsey, neighbor neighbor.
- 1:27:44Stacey Sobers: Come on Lord, my house on fire.
- 1:27:46Corie Sheppard: And she bawling.
- 1:27:47Stacey Sobers: Fire, fire and she wire, wire, aye, aye, aye, aye.
- 1:27:54Stacey Sobers: That she could do.
- 1:27:55Stacey Sobers: It was a test.
- 1:27:57Stacey Sobers: You know, it was a test, that's it.
- 1:28:07Corie Sheppard: That's it, but me no, no more.
- 1:28:08Stacey Sobers: You should have learned more.
- 1:28:26Corie Sheppard: You're researching a joke.
- 1:28:28Corie Sheppard: I'm going to the store.
- 1:28:29Stacey Sobers: I can't take attention.
- 1:28:31Stacey Sobers: It's too much to mention what I spent too small For this cannibal.
- 1:28:36Stacey Sobers: I know what will happen.
- 1:28:38Stacey Sobers: It wasn't this happen.
- 1:28:40Stacey Sobers: It's people like random In front of Spain, alright.
- 1:28:44Corie Sheppard: She said alright, you know what the hell is going on here.
- 1:28:47Corie Sheppard: I thought I said it was a piece.
- 1:28:49Corie Sheppard: She happened to have a piece.
- 1:28:50Corie Sheppard: Conrad, I'll make a piece Before she come on.
- 1:28:52Corie Sheppard: It can't be that.
- 1:28:55Stacey Sobers: Thank you very much, ma'am.
- 1:28:58Corie Sheppard: I'm very, very grateful.
- 1:28:59Stacey Sobers: To have you here.
- 1:28:59Stacey Sobers: I hope to see you At Crackers and Cheers.
- 1:29:01Corie Sheppard: Well, and you're Taking on the two.
- 1:29:03Stacey Sobers: Well, you had to come To the two.
- 1:29:04Stacey Sobers: Where to come?
- 1:29:05Corie Sheppard: Kaizo Blues, david to go, yeah, come, we're coming to the two.
- 1:29:09Corie Sheppard: I think it's important.
- 1:29:10Corie Sheppard: I think it's important, as you say, to support we own shows.
- 1:29:12Stacey Sobers: Yeah, you have to Crucial, so we're there.
- 1:29:14Corie Sheppard: We're going to see you again then.
- 1:29:16Corie Sheppard: Yes, sir, thank you very much, man.
- 1:29:17Corie Sheppard: Continue doing everything you're doing.
- 1:29:19Stacey Sobers: Packers and cheese.
- 1:29:19Stacey Sobers: I'm going to plug my thing.
- 1:29:21Corie Sheppard: Yeah.
- 1:29:21Stacey Sobers: September 13th, Central Bank Auditorium.
- 1:29:23Stacey Sobers: Tickets are $.