Stories

Sometime in 2020, @djvinyldon got in touch with a man named Mitch Padeken, the bassist for a local group called Moondance. It was a cold call (like many of our efforts are when searching for artists), and a pleasant surprise for Mitch. Few people have reached out to him in decades about their back-in-the-day band from North Shore, Oahu. After making initial connection (Don currently lives in Los Angeles), me (@rogerbong) and #OliverSeguin drove to Waimea to meet Mitch in person. He invited us to hang out on his lanai out back, overlooked the open ocean just east of Waimea...

When recreating album artwork for reissue, we prefer to start from scratch, with Roger Bong rebuilding the jacket piece by piece by relying on a combination of photographing the original LP, touching up the images in Photoshop, and rebuilding the text and colors with InDesign. (Check out our Catching A Wave LP for a finished example!). In our experience, scanning original LPs rarely yields satisfactory results for modern day reproduction. Coincidentally, when tasked with selecting the jacket’s green, orange and blue colors, Leimomi Bong discovered the solution in Pantone’s most recent Fashion Color Trend Reports for New York and London Autumn/Winter...

It’s official: our 70th release is the vinyl reissue of Kalapana. Much like Mackey Feary Band’s debut, Kalapana’s first record (eponymously titled Kalapana and sometimes referred to as Kalapana I) has always left an indelible impression on us. From start to finish, this LP is a masterpiece. Kalapana’s breakout debut in 1975 forever shaped the sound of Hawaii. Comprised of four founding members — Mackey Feary, Malani Bilyeu, David John Pratt, Kirk Thompson — the band led the way for a new, contemporary sound of Hawaii with the highest caliber of songwriting. Tunes like “Nightbird”, “The Hurt”, and “Naturally” confirmed Kalapana’s place as legends in...

“Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself. Change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you.” Charles Bukowski’s poem, No Leaders, Please, is the driving ethos behind saxophonist Jason Gay. Never still, Gay relentlessly explores the depths and exhausts every possibility of each musical rabbit hole he dives down. Born in Washington D.C. and landing in Hawaii during his service in U.S. Navy band, Gay leapt into the world of Chinese folk songs and its mainstay instruments, including the er-hu, pipa and guzheng. In the mid-2010s, Gay spent four years transcribing, imitating, assimilating, and innovating these sounds....

The news arrived yesterday afternoon that DJ Pratt, the founding guitarist of Kalapana, passed away suddenly. Long-time Kalapana member Gaylord Holomalia posted a photo on his Facebook page with the caption, "I Love You DJ".  We're not sure what to say, and even if we did, we wouldn't know how to say it. Although I didn't get a chance to meet DJ in person, I've known him as the quiet, driving force behind Kalapana, a behind-the-scenes kind of guy who makes things happen and gets things done.   In recent months, we've been revisiting Kalapana's catalog following our reissue of Mackey Feary's...