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“D-Tour”
John Keawe featuring Charles Recaido (Homestead Productions)
The discography of Big Island slack-key guitarist John Keawe goes back to 1978 when he was the leader of a group named Keawe’s Homestead Gang and won a spot on Ron “Whodaguy” Jacobs’ “Homegrown III” album. Keawe is also the only person to date who has received the Hawai‘i Academy of Recording Arts Ki Ho‘alu Award more than once (2003 and 2011). He writes in the liner notes that this collection of six original instrumental compositions is a “tour” through various forms of slack-key D-tunings and also a “detour from my usual slack-key compositions.”
Keawe’s years of playing are the foundation of these melodies inspired by his experiences on the Big Island, cruising the old cane haul roads, going to the beach and late-night jams with friends and family members. Modern studio technology allows Keawe to accompany himself on ukulele and ipu heke (a traditional Hawaiian percussion instrument). Charles Recaido, a member of Summer in the mid-’70s and more recently the instrumental trio Kohala, joins in on guitar, Fender bass and puili (split bamboo rattle). Their musical “detour” is relaxing listening from start to finish.
Melodies can convey emotions in ways that transcend language. The doleful shadings provided by cellist Herb Mahelona in the fifth song, “Guitar Lament,” suggest sorrowful feelings of some sort as surely as the title does.
Keawe and Recaido suggest the freedom of a back porch jam with “The Pu‘ili Blues.” Slack key is the foundation of Keawe’s music but with “The Pu‘ili Blues” he shows he is into other musical traditions as well.
Violin and clarinet are not often heard in island recordings. That fact makes this calling card from VIVO — Duane Padilla (violin, viola), Norm Foster (clarinet, bass clarinet) and Ruth Shiroma Foster (vocals, piano, ukulele) — an instant standout. VIVO has something unusual to share.
A bright and playful arrangement of Cole Porter’s 1928 hit, “Let’s Do It” (also known as “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love”), is instantly appealing. Cole was a great lyricist, and the instrumental exchanges between Padilla and Norm Foster accent the song’s whimsical humor.
VIVO also presents an unconventional arrangement of “Fly Me to the Moon” that suggests the singer has doubts the flight will take place. A dark treatment of “Danny Boy,” sung by Ruth Shiroma Foster, complete with the references to death and the promise that “my grave shall warm and sweeter be” if Danny visits her resting place when he returns and whispers that he still loves her. In short, with “Danny Boy,” VIVO effectively alludes to the vast and tragic history of Irish relations with England.
Ruth Shiroma Foster is the trio’s resident songwriter. “Habitually Late” opens the album with a lament about being late for an appointment and stuck in traffic (“The highway is a parking lot/And the clock is moving fast …”). “Gotta Make It My Own” celebrates liberation from a bad relationship. The interplay between the instruments — ukulele, violin and bass clarinet — puts a familiar message of newfound emotional empowerment in a fresh context.
Norm Foster shares the composer’s credit for “Bad Karma,” which calls out a long list of irksome people deserving of cosmic payback — jerks who cut you off in traffic, twits who break confidences, and those germ spreaders who “double dip in the salsa” when they’re ill, to name three.
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