FRIDAY
Rising country star has ties to isles
Country music has branched out beyond horses and pickup trucks to hip-hop and EDM, but now surfboards? Up-and-coming star Kip Moore might be making it possible.
Moore, who plays The Republik today, spent some time in Hawaii after college. It shows in his latest video, “More Girls Like You,” which, although shot in Costa Rica, has plenty of beach and surfing scenes.
Moore hails from the Deep South, the heartland of country music, but his background is pretty unusual for a country musician. He’s the son of a golfer and a painter and attended college in his native Georgia on a golf scholarship. After his time in Hawaii, he went to Nashville in 2004 and started writing music.
His first tune to get some notice was his song “Mary Was the Marrying Kind,” which made Billboard’s Country chart, but his star took off with the single “Something’ ‘Bout a Truck,” which reached No. 1 one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and went double-platinum certification. Moore then released in 2012 debut album, “Up All Night,” which had two top 10 country hits: “Beer Money” and “Hey Pretty Girl.”
Moore was originally considered part of the “bro country” movement, a style that contains elements of hip-hop, rock and electronic music, but his second album “Wild Ones” separated him from that pack. The album, which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, earned praise from AllMusic.com for evoking “the feel and aesthetic of mid-’80s heartland rock.”
Where: The Republik, 1349 Kapiolani Blvd., 3rd floor, Honolulu, HI 96814
When: 8 p.m. today
Cost: $44
Info: jointherepublik.com or 941-7469
SATURDAY
Comedian seen on ‘Conan’ lets the laugh bombs fly
Check out comedian Ron Funches at The Republik on Saturday to ease through your weekend.
For a stand-up artist, Funches has an unusually easy-going stage presence, taking his time telling stories, letting them sink in, then whipping out a surprise zinger. If he was a baseball pitcher, he’d be a knuckle ball pitcher who throws a fastball every once in a while and then apologizes for striking you out.
Funches got his start in comedy in Portland after moving to Oregon from Chicago as a teenager trying to escape a school that “had metal detectors,” he told The Oregonian newspaper. In Portland, he got enough laughs to be named one of Esquire magazine’s best young comics and earn an appearance on “Conan.”
Now a resident of Los Angeles, he’s had several more appearances on “Conan” since then, most recently in January, where he extolled the virtue of manicures and pedicures and poked fun at host Conan O’Brien for trimming his own fingernails. He’s also been a regular on the NBC sitcom “Powerless.”
Where: The Republik, 1349 Kapiolani Blvd., third floor
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Cost: $19.50-$29.50
Info: jointherepublik.com or 941-7469
SUNDAY
Local musicians will pay tribute to Eric Clapton
Celebrate the great guitarist Eric Clapton, pictured at right, on Sunday at Hawaiian Brian’s with some cool blues.
Clapton, who turns 72 on March 30, is considered one of the seminal figures in modern blues rock guitar, dating back to his early days playing with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and the Yardbirds. Local blues enthusiast John “Dr. J” Hart has gathered some local musicians together to pay tribute to Clapton, whose nickname was Slow Hand.
“He was the first of that generation of musicians to be relatively a purist, to take it very seriously, and approach it from a technician’s point of view, similar to what someone a jazz or classical background might do,” said Hart. “That’s where the nickname Slow Hand comes from. He wasn’t a shredder. He was just very meticulous about hitting the right note at the right time.
“Someone can hit a flurry of notes and if someone hits just that one right note in response, that’s what you need.”
Hart has gathered seven bands to perform at Hawaiian Brian’s, with guitarists Larry Dupio and Marc Pearlman among the featured artists. (In previous years, Yvonne Elliman, pictured, the Hawaii singer who performed with Clapton throughout the ’70s, has appeared, but there are no promises.)
Hart, who has thrown birthday parties for Clapton and other rockers, said performers are usually good at divvying up an artist’s oeuvre among themselves. The evening concludes with a long jam session of one of the artist’s hit tunes; in this case, it will be “Crossroads”: “You get a rhythm section and you just line up the guitars, and you sing the verse and then everyone gets a solo. And you just keep going round and round.”
Where: Hawaiian Brian’s, 1680 Kapiolani Blvd.
When: 6 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Free
Info: hawaiianbrians.com
THURSDAY – MARCH 24
Guitarist Steve Kimock brings his improv artistry and rock band
Guitarist Steve Kimock, known for his improvisational skills as well as pioneering different sounds on the guitar, plays the Blue Note for two nights starting on Thursday.
Kimock grew up in Pennsylvania and “bailed out” for the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, allowing his burgeoning skills to flourish. “It was a culture shock of the best possible kind,” he said. “I had plenty of chops by the time I showed up into California, but not a whole lot of experience.”
Part of his acculturation to the Bay Area scene was living behind a school of Indian music. Hearing the guitar-like instruments of India like sarods and sitars inspired him to experiment with the guitar. One of his favorite guitars is an acoustic resonator guitar (it looks like a shiny metal guitar). “Out of frustration I removed the frets and started sliding around it as if it was a sarod,” he said. “One of the few honest regrets in my life was to not get rid of my guitar and just buy the sarod and play Indian music. I would have been fine with that, but I was also starving.”
Kimock played with members of the Grateful Dead (Jerry Garcia called him his “favorite unknown guitar player” and he toured with Bob Weir for two years) and other artists of the psychedelic rock era. He founded his own band, Voodoo Dead, and the jazz/rock band Zero, and became respected as a great improvisational artist. That talent wasn’t so much due to technique or even musicianship, but to his ability to “put yourself in the headspace to where you’re sensitive to the overall harmony of the gathering and proceedings,” he said.
A band well versed in the California psychedelic rock sound comes to Hawaii with Kimock: keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, who also played with Weir; Wally Ingram, who played drums for David Lindley and Sheryl Crow; and bassist Bobby Vega.
Where: Blue Note Hawaii, 2335 Kalakaua Ave.
When: 6:30 and 9 p.m. Thursday and March 24
Cost: $21.50-$50
Info: bluenotehawaii.com or 777-4890
Also: Kimock performs at 7 p.m. March 25 at the Honoka‘a People’s Theatre on Hawaii; $40-$55, lazarbear.com or 808-896-4845
Correction: There is no cover charge for the Eric Clapton birthday celebration at Hawaiian Brian’s on Sunday. A story in Friday’s TGIF listed the cost of admission as $5.
