Stories
How Meeting Howard Shapiro Led to Reissuing "Lead Me To The Garden" by Hawai‘i rock group ʻĀina
In 2014, four days before Howard Shapiro's birthday, I sent him an email through his website, Performing and Fine Artists for World Peace. I had no idea it was his birthday (unlike my encounter with Mike Lundy, where I knew before our interview that we shared the same birth day). I didn't receive a reply from Howard for several months. In February 2015, a month after the label's first release, I wrote back to check in. "Did you receive my note?" I wrote. Yes, he had — in fact he replied right away and was awaiting my response. Funny how...
How Jah Gumby's "Humility" Album Came To Be
It was in 2013 when I first met Jah Gumby, or Ryan Murakami, while organizing an all-vinyl party with friends. Our headliner was Woosey, who went by Papa Woowu at the time — and a number of names, really. I'd known Woosey for several years prior through music during high school. From Hilo, Woosey told me over the phone that "there's another guy who I want to co-headline with, Jah Gumby." Woosey told me about Gumby's record collection and how deep his knowledge of music goes. I looked him up on YouTube and found his Rarities for Sharities series. Serious...
Interviews with 1970s disco bands from Hawaii: Power Point, Odyssey, and Peter Rivera of Rare Earth
This has been a long time coming: audio interviews with local artists. I've been interviewing artists since this blog's inception, but never took the extra step to create podcast-like interviews for people to listen to. And as my pal Jon Kirby of Numero Group told me via email, "People love some dang podcasts." The idea sparked when Ted de Oliveira and I sat down in the Central Pacific Time studio to do an impromptu interview on the evening of his 7" release, July 10, 2018. That interview (which you can listen to here) was so much fun, I wanted to...
"It's not where you're from, it's where you're at" — Interview: Ted de Oliveira (FRNT BZNZZ)
We've got something special up for you. Today we dive into an enriching conversation with Ted de Oliveira, the multi-instrumentalist / producer behind the FRNT BZNZZ moniker. Oddly enough, this is probably the first interview of this kind for the blog: a radio-style discussion between myself and the artist. It felt really good to pick Ted's brain about his process, the music he's been making lately, and just talk story and get to know him better. Several years ago, Ted had the Honolulu music scene's attention not only with his improvisational acoustic guitar-slash-beatboxing performances, but with his "side project" called...
Going with the Flow in Tokyo (Gūzen, Part 2)
I started writing this post while Hideki Yamamoto was recording his show for Central Pacific Time, an online radio station that me and Lei started earlier this year. Hideki provided a vibe, as usual (I miss DJing with him and Oliver every month at Soul Time In Hawaii — in March, we decided to scale back the Soul Time parties from monthly to a few times per year) as I typed furiously at the keyboard. We didn't say much throughout that hour. He was focused on selection and mixing, I was focused on recounting our experiences in Japan in April...