Virgin Islands native Rashawn Ross is still pinching himself. The trumpeter for the Dave Matthews Band, recently announced with the group as part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2024 inductees, said when the email confirming the honor finally came through, it was a surreal moment.
Currently on the last leg of a European tour, the band was having dinner and erupted in celebration.
“We weren’t expecting anything,” Ross said in a phone call with the Source from England. “I wasn’t even paying much attention to the voting — I don’t think any of us were. We’re just a group of bandmates that love music — we tour, we play, none of us are in it for the trophies or accolades or anything like that, so when we found out, it was really just a surreal moment. It really took us by surprise when we got the call.”
The award ceremony isn’t until Oct. 19, Ross added, and there’s still a lot to do until then. In just the past month, Ross was in the territory bringing his mother home, and then immediately turned around to leave for Amsterdam. The next two nights, the band is playing not only in England, but Ireland and Belgium before leaving for France and wrapping up in Portugal.
“But that’s just the nature of what we do,” Ross said when asked about what keeps him going, especially with such a packed itinerary. “This is what we signed up for, it’s part of the job.”
The Early Years
And it’s welcome, especially for Ross, who said he figured out as early as seventh or eighth grade at the Addelita Cancryn Junior High School, exactly what he wanted to do. He also credits his father, the late Randy Ross, a jazz aficionado, for stoking the fire.
“He wasn’t a musician, but he was a huge fan of jazz music,” Ross recalled fondly. “I split a lot of time between St. Thomas and St. Croix — my mom (Beverly Monsanto) was from St. Thomas, but I visited my dad on St. Croix — and I used to go through his record collection, and of course he had tons of jazz.”
Slowly, though, his dad began replacing his older vinyls with CDs and thought one day that his son had stolen one in particular — a favorite of Ross’, the Oscar Peterson Trio + One, with Clark Terry on trumpet.
“I was just enamored, and it really put me on the path toward playing music,” he said.
As with many musicians in the territory, a young Ross then crossed paths in junior high with former Charlotte Amalie High School band director Georgia Francis, who used to recruit from the younger grades.
“She allowed me to come up on the weekends to rehearse with the high school band,” Ross said. “It was one of the most valuable experiences for me, being in junior high and getting to be around the older players.” What really “lit a fire” under Ross to hone his craft was being in the same trumpet section as this year’s St. Thomas Carnival Village honoree Malvern Gumbs, but also playing with V.I. big-wigs like Louis Taylor — from whom Ross said he got his improvisational skills — and Roan Creque.
By high school, Ross was playing not only jazz but also calypso and reggae and also credits mentors like Sergio “Bolo” Feliciano and Reuben Rogers for honing his skills in arrangement and composition.
Following his passion, Ross attended Berklee College of Music.
“But the roots were always there — while I was in college trying to figure out how to make a living making music, I was always coming home,” he said, recalling time spent playing with Imagination Brass and Jam Band, with the likes of Nick “Daddy” Friday and Danny Derima.
The Dave Matthews Band
New York City became the next stop on his musical journey. Here, Ross honed his skills further, mentored by established jazz greats like Ron Blake, also from the Virgin Islands. And it was this connection that led to an unexpected opportunity, as Blake found him, at 23 years old, a spot with an Afro-Cuban hip-hop band called Yerba Buena.
Incidentally, the first band Ross opened for with the group was Dave Matthews.
“I remember us jumping in the car and heading to State College in Pennsylvania,” Ross recounted. “I’d never been to a venue that big — I’d never seen a venue that big, up to now, I had only been in jazz clubs.”
But while he was warming up, Dave Matthews’ saxophone player LeRoi Moore “poked his head in the door,” and introduced Ross to other members of the group, and that’s where the connection started.
They stayed in touch, and in 2005, Ross received a life-changing call.
“We just ended a run in Boston,” Ross explains. “LeRoi Moore called and said don’t move, and the tour manager calls 15 minutes later to say the band is playing for four nights in Colorado at Red Rocks and the guys want to know if I can play.” A member of Dave Matthews’ crew met him at the airport with a boombox and a CD of the first song in the set, which Ross then had to learn in an hour.
“It felt it was a little test to see what kind of musician I was,” Ross said. “But I had really good ears and good retention — at this point, music was all I was doing, so it was like a walk in the park. After we ended the first song, everyone in the band looked at me, and they kind of gave me the nod.”
By 2005, Ross was a full-fledged member of the Dave Matthews Band, with his first tour in 2006.
“It’s the most liberating band I’ve ever been in,” Ross says of his experience so far, adding that he remains inspired by the group’s ability to improvise and blend genres seamlessly. “It’s hard to define what our band is,” he admits. “That’s exactly the way we love it.”
And they don’t take themselves too seriously, Ross added.
“And that’s why, when the call came in about the Hall of Fame, we loved it, it was great, but we were also focused on the music we have to play and finishing the tour,” he said, underscoring the importance of the band’s entire crew, about 90 people that travel altogether, that have become like a family over the decades.
And, as October approaches, the plan is to finish Europe then head back to the U.S. mainland where a summer tour will kick off in Florida.
“I think the closer we get to the induction, the more it will sink in,” he added. “But I am beyond grateful, not only for this experience, but for the upbringing I had, my local roots that made me the chameleon that I like to call myself. Playing reggae, playing calypso, playing salsa, watching MTV and listening to the radio — it’s what made me able to join a band like Dave Matthews. The sound changes all the time, and I can be like — that’s not a problem for me, I’m from the islands.”
