In the Pacific hideouts of southern Nicaragua, there are beach dogs who chase birds but never catch them. There’s a sloth who lives in a tree and only comes down when nobody’s watching. There’s a howler monkey who, instead of eating one mango and saving the rest for later, takes only a bite of each mango and then throws them to the ground, wasting the whole tree. There’s also a crocodile named Paco who used to eat the neighborhood pets in the mangrove near Playa Marsella, and who once bit the skull of a drunk gringo, until a village lady started feeding him chickens.
There’s also wildlife in the music scene of San Juan del Sur, a fishing village that has grown into a tourist town of between 5,000 and 50,000 people (depending on the time of year). While some call it “San Juan del Sewer” for the polluted water in the bay, it’s one of the safest places in Latin America to enjoy music at night, because (as one Nicaraguan put it) “people are too lazy to rob foreigners.”
It’s also a popular place to learn Spanish or surfing. Many foreigners own homes there and operate bars, restaurants and yoga businesses. It’s perhaps the most international party town in Central America, where surfers, digital nomads and pensioners in tank-tops and flip-flops support local bands such as Kalibre, Prodigy, Luna, the Intruders, X-tranos and Pirate Radio in thatch-covered restaurants with no doors or windows.
These bands, like the flora and fauna, have exotic quirks of their own.
Pirate Radio’s singer and guitarist, a Montreal Jew who goes by the stage names Jacob Saint James and Jacobo Santiago, used to play gigs with “Jah bird” on his shoulder until his beloved green parrot died from suspected bird flu. While he never did actually ride his horse into a gig, he did once come to a show on a fishing boat, wading ashore with guitar in hand.
Phil Pesenti, a Francophone and guitarist from Montreal, has more expensive gear than Jacob thanks to his job selling construction gear in Quebec. But Phil is left-handed. So Jacob, who is right-handed, sometimes strums Phil’s guitar on stage with his left hand.
Jacob says he used to sneak under a hockey arena in the dark to listen to bands like Muse and Radiohead playing above him. A gifted vocalist, he worked hard to hone his chops on guitar, bass, keyboards and melodica. When he started Pirate Radio about 20 years ago in Montreal, he didn’t have many friends. But his girlfriend had 100 friends, so he brought her into the band as a back-up singer, and she brought her friends to the gigs.
In Nicaragua, he moved into the home of another girlfriend, an astrologer and non-musician who does backing vocals and tambourine shaking while seemingly fronting the band in videos.
After years in Nicaragua, Pirate Radio have become fixtures in the San Juan music scene for a variety of reasons.
First, variety. They have built up a repertoire of at least 500 songs, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Stevie Wonder to Bob Marley to Talking Heads to U2 to Red Hot Chili Peppers to Stone Temple Pilots to Blink 182, to name a few. For years, they never had rehearsals or a setlist, because “we already know how to play every song”. If you wanted to jam with Pirate Radio, you either had to be Jake’s GF, or you had to figure out how to play the song live on stage with them, without warning. You often had to figure it out in a different key, since Jacob has a higher vocal range than Stevie Wonder, Bono and Tom Petty.
Second, Pirate Radio’s fans are more likely to die from debauchery than the actual band members (who are experts in that subject). It’s not only because many fans are retirees from ages 50 to 80. At least two have died after hearing Pirate Radio’s gigs, which can sometimes sprawl for three, four or even five hours in sweltering heat bending time and guitar strings. One beloved fan from western Canada apparently died of “heart stoppage” in early 2026 not longer after requesting Jumping Jack Flash.
Third, the band is somewhat unique in the music business for having no ambition to advance in the music business. Though Jacob has about 20 original songs scattered like buried treasures across the internet, Pirate Radio are not seeking any recording contracts or industry support. They have nothing on Spotify or Bandcamp. They don’t even bother to apply for Quebec grants funded by hard-working Albertans. They might play 100 live shows in tropical Nicaragua between November and April during the brutal Canadian winter. But they have recently had more traffic accidents than shows in North America. They have also survived the perils of driving from San Juan on dirt roads in a broken down SUV called “the Pirate Ship” to play at Playa Gigante and Dogtown in Popoyo.
When asked what he would like Pirate Radio to be doing in 10 or 20 years, Phil said: “playing in San Juan and Popoyo while retired.” Jacob, meanwhile, says he’s not aiming for popularity or commercial success. “I’m searching for meaning.”
Fourth, Pirate Radio will perform almost anywhere: on a yacht or fishing boat; behind a cage in a sort of attic above a bar at The Hip; at a corner bar called “The Corner Bar”; and at Marsella for backpackers playing volleyball on sand blowing into their guitars and microphones.
Pirate Radio last year played a four-hour show at the ocean-side wedding of a Managua-born thrash guitarist named Ronny. While guests from Managua and Montreal lined up for food, Pirate Radio played a 15-minute version of Pink Floyd’s Shine on You Crazy Diamond until the humidity bent guitar strings out of tune more than David Gilmour ever could.
Fifth, the Pirates have a habit of “throwing musicians overboard” or making them “walk the plank” for little or no pay. In three years, they have gone through at least nine drummers (Hugo, Dorian, John, Peyton, Pal, Johnny, Gio, Tommy and Jake ) before recently settling on Gio, a jazz guitarist from Managua who plays bass in Kalibre and other bands.
Living up to their name, the Pirates expend more creative energy on robbing and pillaging than actually writing songs and banding them out. They sometimes call their concerts “practices” to justify keeping the loot from musicians who play the same show as they do. They’ve seen musicians “mutiny” in favour of other bands, or steal “Pirate Radio songs” such as Creep and Enter the Sandman (which PR stole from Radiohead and Metallica). They’ve also seen many venues go under after the plunder. In the past year, Cerveceria, Moonshine, The Palms, Big Wave Dave and San Juan’s have all gone out of business.
San Juan’s owner Marc, a blues guitarist and former miner from the interior of British Columbia, spent much of his life savings paying Pirate Radio, X-tranos, DJ Candice and others to play for expats, who often gathered for sunset concerts or the Saturday morning market. To his credit, Marc encouraged Pirate Radio to play big and loud to drown out bands next door. But PR had a tendency to captivate audiences with a blazing 80-minute first set, and then take a 40-minute break to smoke on the beach while customers scattered elsewhere.
Pirate Radio often played epic Monday night jam sessions at a corner bar called Hogtide run by an expat whose dog (among others) often guards musicians and gear. But one day, the NIcaraguan owner threw the instruments outside, padlocked the doors, painted white over Craig Mutch’s works of art, and turned it into a clothing store called “We Stay Lost”.
Tuanis, an upscale night club on the bay, usually only hires polished bands like Kalibre, Prodigy and X-tranos that uphold standards of consistency, reliability and professionalism. When they took a chance on Radio Pirata for a Sunday afternoon gig, Los Piratas were hung over or otherwise disconnected from time and reality. They say the venue’s soundman sabotaged them. The sax player (or was it the drummer?) fell asleep on stage. (Or was that another gig? Nobody can remember.) Either way, Tuanis and other places have learned to keep a wary eye for any Piratas coming ashore.
Undeterred, the Pirates have swashbuckled their way into other venues, including Bottom’s Up, which has become the coolest hang-out in town, and a couple of surfer resto-bars on Remanso Beach called Lainup and Bokana. Phil and Jake are determined to keep the Pirate Ship sailing to new shores, as the new Chinese-financed Costanera highway has turned two-hour trips into 40-minute drives on pavement instead of dirt and mud.
They might never be Soundgarden or the Chili Peppers, but many in San Juan don’t seem to care. They just want to get buzzed anyway, and Pirate Radio has the supply.
Christopher Johnson and his keyboard often “walked the plank” with Pirate Radio before being thrown overboard while researching and writing this story.
Unless otherwise stated, all words and images copyright Christopher Johnson, Globalite Media, all rights reserved
