My name is Joey Ng Wai and I have a new band called Jimi Flipp.

I’ve been in a total of about eight bands. Second Imij. Frantic. Russia. Atlantik. About four or five Imij and Companies. And Joey and Friends.

I have a 16-year-old daughter, Mia. Her mother Janelle and I are separated but we are good friends.

I grew up in Woodbrook surrounded by music in many ways, my father George being the first. After him, you had (guitarist, singer, composer) Andre Tanker who was like family. And then the area had Phase II, Starlift, Invaders. I live in Maraval now. My Woodbrook life was from two to ten years old but it definitely shaped everything that I am today, from my love of music to my love of snacks. I come from Woodbrook.

My first home was at 5 Pole Carew Street. Maria’s Bakery is there now. I left school after O’Levels at St Anthony’s College. As stupid as it sounds now, I didn’t have time for homework. I was in Frantic, one of the top four bands in the country.

I was very good at art but I failed my art O’Level. Because I played at Genesis the night before. I got home at 3.30am. At the exam, I was hungover bad. I chose to paint a person, a priest, kneeling at an altar. I got the outline done and fell asleep. My principal, Paul Borely, told me, “I really hope music works out all right for you!”

I never regretted leaving school. I think I felt so comforted in my thoughts and movements because of my father. My dad was my manager basically from age 14 until he died. We shared a room when we travelled. He was a real buddy.

My whole life, I dabbled with music, more playful, not serious, until I was 12, when I got a guitar from my older brother and that was that! I got into my first band with Michael Saloum, Zoom and the Band, and started gigging. We started big. Our first gig was in Chinese Association, with Taxi and Touchdown. We opened the whole show, probably 5K people packed into Chinese. We got two bookings for big shows that same night. I was 13.

Zoom got an invite to talk to Johnny Gonsalves, who was looking for a guitarist and a singer. Zoom said, “If you’re talking to me, you have to talk to Joey, ‘cause we move together.” Johnny’s new band, Frantic, went from 1985 to 1989. We were definitely a love band and played a little bit of everything but not soca. We moved to soca when Dad joined the band and made that mandatory.

Between Johnny Gonsalves and my dad, they put together Second Imij. Dad said we needed four months of rehearsal, everybody, every day, Monday to Friday and we would be the most popular band in Trinidad. The name Second Imij actually came from a shirt I borrowed from Johnny. I looked at the brand name and it was Second Imij. And that was how the band name was born.

Second Imij spent six to eight months a year out of Trinidad. St Barb’s, St Maarten, Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, St Vincent, Grenada, St Lucia, Antigua, Jamaica probably 200 times in four years. Of course Miami and New York. By the end of 1994, with the song Jump on the Count of Four, we had won 27 Road Marches around