Streetlight Cadence looks to ‘hack their way through music industry’

Ask Jonathon Franklin about the future of Streetlight Cadence and his smile grows as big as his dreams for the band.

“We want people to believe they can do it, and we hope to be the example of people who will and have made it,” the violinist said.

Streetlight Cadence is back home in Hawaii for its “Golden Ticket” tour this month, and the band members have a few surprises up their sleeves.

The two-time Na Hoku Hanohano Award-winning band, which relocated to L.A. last August, has come a long way from its humble beginnings playing on the streets of Waikiki and Chinatown.

The four friends — Franklin, guitarist Chaz Umamoto, cellist Brian Webb and Jesse Shiroma, who plays the accordion and foot percussion — describe themselves as a “whimsical, fun-fessional (fun but professional) bunch of musicians.”

They left Hawaii in August with some half-finished music that they’ve since finished and are releasing exclusively through their website and at tour events, Franklin said.

“We had a well-established music career here in Hawaii … but moving to L.A. we started back from scratch again,” Shiroma said. “And you know the tried-and-true method of where if you believe in what you do, you practice at it and you work at it and you keep doing it, people will take notice, and so we’re fortunate enough to have picked up a few wedding gigs, corporate gigs, and the ball is rolling again. We’re getting our name out.”

Streetlight Cadence is making its Hoku Award-winning album “Beyond Paradise” and an exclusive new “Rarities” album available for free download at its website, www.streetlightcadence.com.

Meanwhile the band is working on trying to “hack our way through the music industry” via an app contest, Umamoto said.

The South Korean-based AireLive app, a live-streaming platform similar to Periscope, features live videos that are saved to the band’s profile. Users can then watch and “like” a video, and every “like” counts for a point in a global music contest that ends June 30.

“For a while we were in first place. We’re in third now, and we think we can come back,” Franklin said. “Especially with our fans in Hawaii, because we haven’t mass-publicized anything about this right now, and so hopefully we get about 5,000 or 10,000 to hear about it and maybe 1 or 2 percent of that go to our page and ‘like’ them.”

At the end of the month, the contestant with the most points wins $300,000. For Streetlight Cadence, which has kept the rights to its music for six years, a win would allow the band to remain independent.

“We’ve all turned down regular full-time jobs for this with the goal of trying to succeed in the music industry,” Franklin said. “So if we have a steady income, which this would cover, we can invest back into the band, and we can create content. … Those costs we’ll be able to cover ourselves rather than going to a label and they give us that money in exchange for owning 95 percent of everything.”

The band says fans would benefit from its win, in the form of getting more music to enjoy.

“We’ve agreed this all funnels back into Streetlight Cadence,” Shiroma said. “And through that we’re gonna create better songs, higher-quality material, more music videos for our fans.”

Each band member handles multiple responsibilities. Webb, 26, handles the booking; Umamoto, 27, handles the press; and Shiroma, 26, manages social media, in addition to writing songs and performing.

“If we can pay our rent and do this as friends for the rest of our lives, and maybe one day win a Grammy and maybe get on the Billboard Top 10, those are ideal goals,” said Franklin, 26.

Streetlight Cadence started when Franklin’s neighbor put out a Craigslist ad looking for “interesting musicians.” Franklin had moved to Hawaii to attend Hawaii Pacific University but was robbed while performing on the street in Waikiki. Shiroma responded to the ad, and the pair met Umamoto at their first open mic. Webb was in the orchestra at HPU with Franklin when he was asked to join.

The band’s first album, “Kalakaua Avenue,” was written about the band’s original performance venue, but the group also became a fixture in Chinatown during First Fridays. It gained a following with catchy, offbeat tunes like “Roger’s Song,” a song about a friend of Franklin’s — not named Roger — who would call him drunk at 2 a.m. every day.

The band members, who Shiroma says strive to be “agents of positive change” and “ambassadors of aloha,” also hope to cultivate more of a community for Hawaii artists in the future.

“I believe we carry the hopes of many, whether you’re a child in orchestra or band, or you’re the parent that paid for your child to study from the time they were very young, or there’s other young musicians that want to do the exact same thing, or there’s even artists that have moved away and might’ve not had the same opportunities,” Umamoto said. “And we feel like being where we are, what we do affects a lot of people, and we have to do it right.

“We have to represent Hawaii and those people very well, not just for our own reasons.”