Legendary In The Media

One Ship, 1,800 Blues Fans, and a Week at Sea
BY MARTIN EDLUND
February 4, 2005

The "Virgin Party" for first timers like myself on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise is held at the stern of the boat at 11 a.m. on our first full day at sea. There are about 400 of us there, and I have to squeeze between a married couple and two "Desperate Housewives" looking women along the edge of a pool that's been converted into a dance floor for the many concerts in the coming week. A lady places a garland of plastic flowers around my neck as a burly MC with a scruffy beard and a tie-dyed shirt explains: "This is so everybody gets lei'd at least once this week." Men and women - most in their 50s - titter at the joke, one that will be repeated many times in the next few days by crew and passengers alike.

Mimosas and Bloody Marys are being served to help people to shake off - and in some cases stave off - hangovers from the first night of partying, which I'm told continued until dawn. Somehow, the Desperate Housewives were overlooked in the distribution of leis, and now they're frantically waving their arms at the Lei Lady, as if signaling a passing ship. She eventually notices, and leis them twice for their effort. They look placated, but still a little miffed.

The Blues Cruise is the most established of a new wave of music-themed travel packages (there are others for light jazz and jam bands) that entice nontraditional cruisers to the high seas with the promise of incessant concerts and unfettered access to their favorite performers. Our lineup includes 16 top contemporary blues acts and six "surprise guests."
The fares are steep: $2,000 on average, about twice what you'd pay for a comparable Caribbean cruise package. But what you're buying - in addition to the chance to see the likes of Taj Mahal, Susan Tedeschi, Dr. John, Derek Trucks, and Bernard Allison perform three and four times in the space of a week - is the company of like-minded travelers. In this case, that means hard-living boomers wearing blues-society T-shirts and biker do-rags that say, "If you can read this, my bitch fell off" on the back.

With everyone acting half their age or younger, it takes me a while to notice that there are no actual young people onboard. They're so scarce, in fact, that I begin keeping a tally of them, the way a birdwatcher might rare birds. So far: three children, and seven or eight teenagers.

It's about even-money odds that anyone you see under the age of 20 is a blues-playing prodigy of some sort. Zack, a lanky 17-year-old from Pittsburgh, Pa., with puppy dog eyes and Stevie Ray Vaughanesque guitar skills, quickly becomes an onboard celebrity with his searing performances in the nightly pro/am jams. There's an entire four-piece band from Oxford, Mich., under the age of 18, and an 11-year-old kid named Jesse, who I first meet playing basketball onboard, and who will spend the week showing-up musicians five and six times his age.

Our ship is the Zuiderdam: an enormous, classic-looking Holland America vessel with 10 public decks for 1,800 guests and several more that house a crew of 800. Everything's nicely appointed in a vintage glamour kind of way that makes me think of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Noel Coward, until I stumble upon a group of beer-suckling sunbathers who look like a live-action cast of "King of the Hill" on the pool deck.

Even on a boat this size, you end up rubbing elbows with the talent. Despite her alert-orange lifejacket, I fail to see four-time W.C. Handy Award-winner Shemekia Copeland standing next to me during the emergency evacuation drill, and step all over her feet when the boat rocks. She's impossibly short and stout, as if distorted by a funhouse mirror. My attempts at nautical-safety chit-chat don't appear to win me back into her good graces.

As advertised, the music on the Blues Cruise is constant and, depending upon how you feel about contemporary blues, either abundant or inescapable. The two primary venues on the Zuiderdam are a big indoor theater in the bow with a backdrop that sways sea-sickeningly to the waves, and the open-air stage in the stern. But at any time, day or night, as many as five or six shows may be going in the various bars and nightclubs that dot the ship.

I spend my first few days just flitting around without referring to the schedule. The results are mixed. The biggest names, Dr. John and Taj Mahal, are the biggest disappointments. People keep saying they've both seen better days. Chubby Carrier's Zydeco band, however, is very much at the height of its powers. The women in attendance are pleasantly scandalized by a backup musician who begins the set in pink hot-pants and white fur boots and ends it wearing only a black G-string and afro wig. Corey Harris provides tamer entertainment, playing a lovely solo set that combines West African music and American blues. The haunting notes on his electric guitar sound a little like John Lee Hooker.

Witnessing the enthusiasm with which passengers take to partying in the first few days - think frat boys on spring break - I tell myself, "there's no way they'll keep this up." But as the suntans, sleep deprivation, and alcohol poisoning deepen, the revelry only seems to intensify. Even the seeming-squares get a wild hair after a few days at sea. Little old ladies, who on the first day were consumed with their knitting, are now wearing blinking devil horns and eyeing the jello shots.

There are some early casualties. A return cruiser complains to me of a repetitive-strain injury to her knee caused, she thinks, by a hitch move she over performs on the dance floor. I discover a plump guy on some kind of crazed peyote trip screaming to himself on the same upper deck he had been power-walking only the day before.

But as it turns out, a cruise ship is the ideal place for a weeklong bender, because you're constantly surrounded by an army of nonjudgmental chaperones. The staff on board the Zuiderdam is pleasant, efficient, and hyper-attentive. Especially the waitstaff, which is comprised exclusively of young Indonesians who speak pristine English and go to great lengths to disguise their foreignness.

Taking his cue from the performer John Johnson from Wisconsin, a popular greeter named Sahrul, from West Java, introduces himself as "Okey Dokey from Milwaukee," though he's never been there. "Hello Martin. Hello Bob, hello Donna," he says as he lays out trays for the buffet line. Midway through the cruise, he estimates he knows the names of 900 of the 1,800 guests, but says he's no match for the steel-trap brain of Hunkey Dorey, his counterpart working the opposite aisle.

By the fourth day, it's a relief to get off the boat for an afternoon in Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands. Our trip is supposed to include three ports of call - Grand Turk, Tortola, and St. Maarten - but we have to skip Grand Turk due to rough seas. Videos on constant loop in the cabins advertise enticing excursions of the swimming-with-manta-rays and four-by-fouring-on-beaches varieties at each stop, but they're not so enticing that many Blues Cruisers wouldn't rather use the time to catch up on their sleep.

Still, enough passengers disembark that the islands feel like an extension of the ship. Fellow cruisers are easily identified by their Blues Cruise tote bags, and they travel in little clutches of two and three. On Tortola, I attach myself to a salty old sailor-turned-bartender named Greg (who I at first mistake for David Johansen of the New York Dolls) and his pretty companion, Kris.

After a swim at the beach, a dozen or so of us arrive for the first few hours of the Full Moon Party at a place called Bomba's Shack. It is constructed entirely of driftwood, old electronics, and women's undergarments, and feels like the edge of the world. I buy Tito Jackson (yes, that Tito Jackson; he's one of the Blues Cruise surprise guests) a cup of Bomba's punch, but just as they break out the mushroom tea - which smells strongly of gym socks - we have to get back to the ship. It's just as well, as a sloshed Canadian in our group has already been fondled in the port-a-potty, and another woman has stripped naked (save for her hat) for a Bomba's T-shirt.

Back onboard the Zuiderdam, the party resumes with renewed fervor. Costume nights become increasingly outlandish - pajama night, pirate night, Mardi Gras - and the door decoration competition grows fierce, giving the waning days of the trip the feel of a really unruly sleep away camp.

Where the other Blues Cruisers' appetite for the music appears insatiable, I'm beginning to find it a little tiresome and repetitive. Without trying, or enjoying it even once, I've heard Shemekia Copeland sing "Married to the Blues" four times (three live, and once over the coffee shop speakers).

As we arrive back in Ft. Lauderdale and begin saying our goodbyes, I keep getting the question, "Will I see you next year?" and find myself answering, not disingenuously, "I hope so."