Ray Funk and An­drew Mar­tin

On No­vem­ber 9, Tra­cy Thorn­ton will lead a col­lec­tion of near­ly a dozen steel­bands in a con­cert fea­tur­ing arrange­ments of clas­sic hard-rock an­thems. Billed as Pan Rocks, the con­cert is to be at the Akron Civic Cen­ter in Akron, Ohio, at 7 pm.

This unique con­cert is fo­cused on the ver­sa­til­i­ty and ex­cite­ment pan can gen­er­ate when play­ing rock, punk and heavy met­al mu­sic.

Pan Rocks is the cre­ation of Thorn­ton who start­ed his ca­reer as a drum­mer for var­i­ous heavy met­al bands be­fore he was bit­ten by the pan jumbie, changed his life, and went to Trinidad to play Panora­ma.

With Pan Rocks, Thorn­ton is at­tempt­ing to du­pli­cate the in­fec­tious en­er­gy of large Panora­ma steel­bands by putting to­geth­er a mass steel­band play­ing rock clas­sics by The Who, Led Zep­pelin, Queen, Jane's Ad­dic­tion, Nir­vana, the Ra­mones, and a few of Thorn­ton's orig­i­nal "rockin" com­po­si­tions.

Pan Rocks will fea­ture a va­ri­ety of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school lev­el steel­bands from the Akron area as well as the In­di­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty steel­band and steel­bands from Cincin­nati (Di­vine Steel), Bing­ham­ton, New York, and cen­tral Ohio (Heav­en­ly Met­al).

The Pan Rocks mass steel­band will al­so be joined by not­ed pan play­ers the likes of Dave Longfel­low, Dar­ren Dyke and Trinidad's own mas­ter mu­si­cian Liam Teague. The bands have been prac­tis­ing Thorn­ton's rock arrange­ments for the past few months and all will come to­geth­er to per­form this Sat­ur­day.

An an­i­mat­ed Thorn­ton has a hard time con­tain­ing his ex­cite­ment as the date of Pan Rocks draws near: "We have peo­ple fly­ing in from as far away as Al­ber­ta, Cana­da, Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut, Chica­go and North Car­oli­na to par­tic­i­pate."

Tra­cy Thorn­ton is unique in the Unit­ed States as he is a full-time pan play­er who has been per­form­ing non-stop on pan since 1995. From the time he was a teenag­er, Thorn­ton drummed in rock bands and his lat­est fo­cus in pan al­lows him to merge two dif­fer­ent loves.

Thorn­ton start­ed out in pan, odd­ly enough, af­ter hear­ing the in­stru­ment in a rock group.

"I was turned on to pan by the alt/rock band Jane's Ad­dic­tion. They had steel drums on their clas­sic song, Jane Says. I thought that would be a cool in­stru­ment to have and tin­ker with, nev­er know­ing it would con­sume my life," he said.

"Then Mark Ford's steel­band when he was at East Car­oli­na Uni­ver­si­ty opened a show for (my band at the time) and I fi­nal­ly saw a (steel) band in per­son, I was sold."

His jour­ney in pan con­tin­ued when he at­tend the El­lie Man­nette Fes­ti­val of Steel sum­mer camp in 1994.

Thorn­ton fell un­der the spell of Ken "Pro­fes­sor" Philmore who was guest artiste that year and was im­pressed with Thorn­ton's in­ter­est and in­vit­ed him to play in his band Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny for Panora­ma. "Af­ter my first Panora­ma in 1995, the pan jumbies had com­plet­ed their work and I was done!"

Thorn­ton played with Pro­fes­sor in Po­ten­tial Sym­pho­ny for the next three years and his trav­els to Trinidad have con­tin­ued ever since.

In the sum­mers of 2011 and 2012 he took school steel­bands down to Trinidad to see where pan orig­i­nat­ed and he con­sid­ers it his sec­ond home. He is now mar­ried to a Tri­ni and re­turns of­ten to vis­it friends and his ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly.

For sev­er­al years, Thorn­ton has led a ca­lyp­so/jazz group called Been Caught Steel­in, toured the Unit­ed States with the youth steel­band Sons of Steel, and taught pan at every lev­el. He runs his own record com­pa­ny Steel Pan­dem­ic Records and has is­sued more than a dozen al­bums.

More re­cent­ly he was fo­cused on the Pan Rocks con­cept and has is­sued trib­ute al­bums on pan to artists like the Ra­mones, Jane's Ad­dic­tion, and Jack John­son. His lat­est al­bum Pan Rocks! came out in Sep­tem­ber and in­cludes many of the songs that will be fea­tured on the con­cert.

The idea of Pan Rocks came as a re­sult of a meet­ing last year be­tween Thorn­ton and co-or­gan­is­er An­gel Lawrie. An ac­com­plished pan play­er and steel­band leader, Lawrie has played pan for more than 25 years and is an alum­ni of the steel­band at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron. She is al­so the mu­sic in­struc­tor at a school for spe­cial needs chil­dren called the Sum­mit Acad­e­my lo­cat­ed in Akron.

Lawrie found­ed a steel­band pro­gramme at the acad­e­my that has tak­en off in the last few years.

As she told Mal­colm Abram of the Akron Bea­con Jour­nal: "When I first start­ed I had 15, last year we had 30 and this year we have over 70 that are just meet­ing our cri­te­ria for be­ing in the All-Star Band–good grades, good be­hav­iour and just be­ing an am­bas­sador for the school."

For all her years in pan, noth­ing has ex­cit­ed Lawrie's pas­sion like the work she is do­ing now on a dai­ly ba­sis with the spe­cial needs kids of Sum­mit Acad­e­my.

The kids are re­spond­ing so well to pan, and ac­cord­ing to Lawrie: "They are so ex­cit­ed and are do­ing so well. I don't think we'll be able to get them off the stage!"

Lawrie's pas­sion for pan has tak­en her all over the Unit­ed States, Flo­rence, Italy, and Trinidad where she lived and stud­ied for six months. She still, to this day, con­sid­ers Len "Boogsie" Sharpe her men­tor.

Lawrie's con­nec­tion to pan is deep and she is al­so mar­ried to lead­ing pan builder/tuner Steve Lawrie who moved to the Unit­ed States fol­low­ing years of build­ing and tun­ing in­stru­ments in South Africa.

Pan Rocks is not the first large-scale pan event for An­gel Lawrie as she was the pri­ma­ry or­gan­is­er for pan con­ven­tions in Akron in 2006. More re­cent­ly, she or­gan­ised a con­cert in No­vem­ber 2012 for the Sum­mit Acad­e­my that fea­tured spe­cial guests Tra­cy Thorn­ton and the leg­endary Har­ry Be­la­fonte.

The day af­ter last year's suc­cess­ful con­cert, Lawrie and Thorn­ton met to dis­cuss Thorn­ton's idea of con­cert that fea­tures a mass band that plays clas­sic rock in an ef­fort to bet­ter get kids en­gaged in pan in the Unit­ed States. Lawrie agreed and they set about plan­ning. Giv­en the vast num­ber of dif­fer­ent artistes and steel­bands in­volved, Pan Rocks has been a ma­jor act of co-or­di­na­tion.

Things are now com­ing to­geth­er and the vi­sion of Thorn­ton and Lawrie is a re­al­i­ty.

Pan is an in­stru­ment that can do al­most any­thing, but nev­er has so many pan play­ers worked to lit­er­al­ly rock the house in quite this fash­ion. If all goes as planned, Thorn­ton en­vi­sions tak­ing his Pan Rocks con­cept on the road and per­form­ing sim­i­lar pro­grammes in Eu­rope and else­where in the Unit­ed States.

Ray Funk is a re­tired Alaskan judge who is pas­sion­ate­ly de­vot­ed to ca­lyp­so, pan and mas. An­drew Mar­tin is an eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist, per­cus­sion­ist, pan play­er and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor of Mu­sic at In­ver Hills Col­lege in St Paul, Min­neso­ta.