From boardroom to band room

AS TOLD TO BC PIRES

My name is Derwin Howell and I am involved in the promotion of David Rudder’s last big concert, his 7.0 show at Sound Forge next Saturday.

I spent the first two years of my life in Belmont, but we moved down to Diamond Vale in 1964. So I consider myself a Vale man. I live in the West still.

Diamond Vale was a middle-class neighbourhood. Coast Guard and army people, public servants. My parents were both teachers. This was before the days when houses had fences and burglar-proof. You could run from yard to yard to yard.
The worst thing was if you trip and fall into picker bush.

I don’t know if it was the good fortune or misfortune to go to Richmond Street Boys’ Anglican, where my father was teaching the standard five class upstairs. You dared not get in trouble downstairs. There were consequences to that upstairs.
Everard “Gally” Cummings and Russel Latapy went there.

The worst torture was to send a child to the tamarind tree to pick they own whip! The Blind Institute just up the road, where they made canes, was another source of the rods of correction.

Remember that old TV show, My Three Sons? My mother really had to deal with that. I am the eldest. She just celebrated her 87th birthday and he will celebrate his 89th in June.
I’ve been with the same woman for 20 years.

Long ago, everybody wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. Now the opposite seems to be happening. Both our kids are creatives. One is into film writing and one is photography, design and journalism.

I am the chairman of Habitat for Humanity in Trinidad. I’m also the chairman of Filmco, which runs the TT Film Festival.

We really need to see how we can build opportunities for young creatives in the country.

I went to St Mary’s from 1974-’80 and I was in the cadet force, so I was always a kind of leader. I was a sergeant major by the time I left after six years. I think that training has been foundational for me.

It’s a shame that the cadet force, so crucial to youth development, is maybe not being used enough. It was really different in our time. People told me, “I not in that running around holding rifle over your head business.”
But it built character. It built discipline. I’ve seen cadets rise to leadership roles across Trinidad and Tobago.

I’ve enjoyed what I’ve done for sure, for sure.

I did electrical engineering at UWI and then joined the Telephone Company in 1983 and worked with the likes of Neilson Mackay, Richard Jackman and Neil Guiseppi for ten years. Yes, BC Pires, in the days of Telco Poops.
I left to set up Linx for the banks in 1994. It was a jump into financial services. It changed how we all did payments.
After three years there, I was attracted to Republic Bank.

After running IT in the bank for eight or nine years, the CEO asked me to run the branch network.
I kinda watched him. My head was going, “Are you mad or what?” But what came out of my mouth was, “Okay, I’m willing to make the change!” I ran the branch network for five years.
Then the bank bought the Barbados National Bank and they sent me to Barbados to run that for two years. I had the task of changing the name from Barbados National Bank to Republic Bank Ltd. Which didn’t make me very popular in Barbados.

I came back to Trinidad as executive director in 2013 and retired last November. So 25 years in the bank, ten at Telco and three in Linx.
Transitioning from electrical engineer to bank executive. Not your typical path. And, yes, BC Pires, the bank executive to culture-vulture thing was an even less typical path.

My first real dive into culture was in 1996, when I worked with David Rudder on No Restriction, his two-day concert in Jean Pierre Complex on September 6 and 7, 1996. I hadn’t known David for very long but he kinda trusted me.
And it was amazing. You’re talking about the whole of the netball court, the stands filled with people, a maybe 80-foot stage! There was no MC for the show, just as there won’t be one for 7.0. It was just song into song into song, no interruption.
That was my first dive into the culture-vulture thing. When you start, start big!

I did two other concerts with David, International Chantuelle and Shakedown Time. I actually have those three concerts on my resumé!
The late Tony Hall and I co-produced The Lucky Diamond Horseshoe Club at the Queen's Hall for two weeks. The Lucky Diamond Horseshoe Club was a song David wrote for an album, I think Zero. Tony Hall took that one song and created a whole play based on its characters and scenarios. It was bloody tiring, challenging but we could look at it and say, “Wow! We did this!”

I wasn’t involved in 6.0 or 6.5. I think David’s plan for 6.0 was to do 60 songs! 7.0 will not be doing 70 songs! It is a retrospective of his career, trying to present things in a different way. This one will be a version of No Restriction.
It’s a pretty long show. I think he called it a marathon, to be populated by the usual song suspects, but with “new” songs as well. It’s not a new song, you’re only now hearing it. There’s a lot of David Rudder’s music that people don’t hear.

I really want people to leave Sound Forge with a “Wow! That really just happened there, boy?”
People who are fortunate enough to go to 7.0 will have the experience of their life.

His announcement of his diagnosis (with Parkinson’s disease) was an integrity issue. It was important for him to come clean with his people. I think it was a weight lifted off his shoulders.
People have an image of 6.0 or No Restriction, David running across an 80-foot stage – that is not the show you’re going to see. We thought it was important to tell people of his physical limitations with the diagnosis. He’s heartened by the level of support.

The best thing about being involved in 7.0 is being part of a historical moment. And being part of this music.

The low point for me is just the worry of, “Will it go well?” There’s always the niggling, “Suppose this? Suppose that?” But if you don’t have that looking back, those “What ifs,” you don’t see where the potential weak points might be.
So it helps you to see, “Okay, we need to do this or that.”

I generally don’t think about failure. But the reality is, you can’t help but think about it, if you want to be successful.

I’ll plagiarise a little bit from Machel Montano to say a Trini is the happiest being alive. Not a care in the world.
Sometimes that’s a bad thing.
But you could always pick out a Trini in a crowd, not from the accent, just the mannerisms, the attitude.

Trinidad and Tobago to me means unlimited potential. When you see what comes out of TT, athletics, culture, music, art, poetry, whatever it is, we have unlimited potential. When you see the skill moko jumbies exhibit, when you see the energy in the panyards, it’s unlimited potential.
Whether the politicians will allow it to arise is a different story. What they do is dampen that ability. But the people have unlimited potential and you can’t keep it out of them.

Read the full version of this feature on Friday evening at www.BCPires.com