Culture & Community | Music | Arts & Culture | Musicians | Toad's Place | The Shack
Jacqueline Buster, who most people know simply as Jackie. "Wherever he is it’s going to be ok," she said. Abiba Biao Photos.
To the gentle strum of a guitar, Jacqueline Buster eased into James Taylor’s 1971 “You Can Close Your Eyes,” letting herself feel the lyrics. Moments before, she had looked out into the audience, and asked who among them had lost a loved one. Hundreds of hands went up.
No one would have guessed that she hadn’t performed in 40 years; the sweetness of the melody wrapped the room in its sound. As she finished, she assured the audience that it was safe to rest, mourn those who have passed, and cherish the future memories with family and loved ones.
Joyful, mellow, and sometimes fiery sound filled Toad’s Place on a recent Sunday night, as musicians paid tribute to the late guitarist Rohn Lawrence, a pillar of New Haven jazz, R&B, and pop who also traveled the world with his craft. Three years after Lawrence was sent off in song from the Toad’s Place stage, artists returned to remember their friend and colleague, raising funds for the neighborhood hub The Shack in the process.
Located on 333 Valley St. in New Haven’s West Hills neighborhoods, The Shack is a community center that Ward 30 Alder Honda Smith founded in 2021. The space serves teenagers to elders and offers urban farming, music production and composition, media arts classes in journalism and media production, among other activities.
It is also in the process of building out a space for music production in West Hills, an initiative that Smith estimates will cost $200,000. In addition to ticket sales, the concert offered raffle tickets and custom t-shirts and sweatshirts from the New Haven-based brand Deadby5am, the brainchild of creator Brenton Shumaker. Shumaker, who began to sew as a kid, is currently based out of a space at NXTHVN.
“There's no better organization that I can think of that meshes so well with, you know, who we are,” Buster said of the Shack’s partnership with her organization, Still in the Ville. Around her, the performance featured artists such as Jay Rowe, saxophonist Marion Meadows, and vocalist Porter Carroll, Jr. among others. All of them played with Lawrence; some, like Buster, remained extremely close with him until his death.
Throughout the night, both performers and attendees fêted Lawrence, noting how much he would have loved the work that The Shack is doing for young people. During his life, the guitarist was a mentor to dozens, if not hundreds, of up-and-coming New Haven musicians, who have since gone on to forge artistic and educational careers of their own.
Community booster Veronica Douglas-Givan, who emceed the event, said she could envision Lawrence smiling down on the audience, “saying, ‘Well done. Well done you crazy people!’” For years now, she’s been working to spread the word about The Shack across and beyond New Haven, because she’s so excited about the mission.
It’s about “not just existing in New Haven, but really living in New Haven and putting your dollars in New Haven to let them understand that we care about our young people,” she said.
She explained that her own story fuels her dedication to the city’s youth. Growing up in Newhallville, Douglas-Givan had dreams of becoming a rapper. Then in high school—she attended the now-shuttered Richard C. Lee High—a guidance counselor and journalism teacher pulled her aside and suggested that her gift for writing could take her beyond poetry.
She took their advice, pursuing undergraduate and then graduate work at Northeastern University and Quinnipiac University respectively. Now, she’s an Emmy award winner, teaches in the Communication, Film and Media Studies Department at the University of New Haven, and is the CEO of her own media company, the Veronica Douglas Media Agency. It is exactly those same skills she seeks to pass onto the next generation.
“Keep a word in your head, positive words, and a song in your heart and that will get you through a lot of different things,” she said. “Because it was that music, that storytelling that got me through.”
On stage, music bloomed into an homage that was mellifluous and varied enough to reach the heavens. The bongos, cymbals and drums built the foundation before the piano keys sauntered in. It was pa peppy, grooving tune that got people bopping their heads.
As she listened, Buster noted that “there's something different about this year.”
“It's special. There's something different about the energy among the musicians … It's just a different kind of experience,” she said.
She said that the venue, where Lawrence played a Monday night jazz jam upstairs at Lilly’s Pad for over a decade, embodied the late musician’s carefree, easygoing energy. Her own performance was meant to tap into that spirit, as a warm nod to both Lawrence and to her mother, Jeannette A. Thomas, who passed away last year.
As Taylor’s lyrics filled the space —I don't know no love songs/And I can't sing the blues anymore/But I can sing this song/And you can sing this song when I'm gone—some attendees closed their eyes; others moved to the music.
“I heard this song a few weeks ago. It was in my spirit to do it, for him and for my mom because it just kind of gives you the permission to pass and that it’s going to be ok,” she said. “In Rohn’s case, it’s about carrying on the legacy and knowing that wherever he is it’s going to be ok.”