The Elevations debut at Hawaiian Brian’s

After 20 years with Go Jimmy Go, including three years of nonstop touring, saxophonist Eric White thought he was ready to retire from music. However, White wasn’t out of the business very long before he changed his mind.

“Being retired wasn’t fun anymore. I missed playing music,” White said, during an early morning phone call last week.

He had another motivation too: “I’d always told my wife that I’d make a band with her,” White revealed.

Hawaii will experience the official debut of the band White formed with his wife, vocalist Kehaulani White, when The Elevations take the stage tonight at Hawaiian Brian’s.

Kehaulani White is backed on vocals by Cheyenne Leong and Aiddy Weisbecker. The instrumental side of the line-up is White (tenor sax), Bernie Soriano (trumpet), John LeBlanc (guitar), Keli‘i Wong (drums) and Wil Tafolo (bass).

“We are an eight-piece soul band, doing it in the original style — before Motown,” White explained, getting into the details. “It was at the cusp of the original rhythm and blues from the ’40s and ’50s, mixed with the blues that soul was born from; that’s the era that we are focusing on.”

People seriously knowledgeable about the various styles of music that were hitting on Billboard’s R&B singles charts in the early 1960s know that Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. achieved his greatest commercial success with acts that leaned toward the pop end of the R&B spectrum — most notably the Supremes.

In the buildup to this Motown explosion, other record labels, such as Atlantic, Stax and Volt, along with many smaller production companies, were the home of artists who were rawer and more “down home.” It’s these horn-backed soul and R&B artists who intrigue The Elevations.

“To me it’s a more driving sound (than Motown), more raw and gritty, and with more rock ’n’ roll than I hear in Motown,” White explained, naming lesser-known artists such as Bettye Lavette, Jean Wells, Ricky Allen and Freddie Scott as examples.

“We’re also looking to modern bands that play in that vintage soul style, as well,” White said. “Like Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Lee Fields & the Expressions and Saun & Starr. They provide the bridge from the original artists to the modern-day world. It is from here that we hope to make a difference and make our own original music to share with the rest of the world.”

WHITE SAID he always thought Kehaulani had a beautiful voice. He’d first heard her singing at a party before they met and thought “She’s got a beautiful voice, like an angel.”

After they became a couple, White took her with him to sing with Go Jimmy Go, and she did some recording with the group, “but it was nothing serious, always for fun, or as a guest.”

Things remained that way until White decided the time had come to build a new band around his wife. The next step was deciding what type of band it would be. Would it play the same mix of ska, rock steady and reggae that had propelled Go Jimmy Go? Or would it be something else?

“At the tail end of Go Jimmy Go we weren’t playing all together that much, and I started playing in different bands and playing different types of music,” White said. “I had been playing the same style of music, ska/rock steady/reggae, for 20 years, only in Go Jimmy Go — I’d been monogamous — so playing with other bands really broadened my musical horizons. It made me interested in music like I hadn’t been interested in a long time, because I’d been playing the same style for so long. That got the wheels turning in my head.”

Would they do the classic R&B music of the 1940 and early 1950s? Maybe the “hot jazz” style popularized by the Squirrel Nut Zippers during the swing dance revival of the mid-1990s?

After much consideration, the idea of playing the funk and soul music of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s seemed the most interesting.

“Then I started thinking about all the people I’ve met throughout my career that I’d like to play music with,” White said.

After having a lot of fun listening to old-time soul and blues records the Whites put together a list of songs that would be the foundation of the repertoire.

White said that as time goes by, he expects to “go the Go Jimmy Go route, which is to create original music and then put out records and then start touring and traveling.”

White also hopes to recreate the excitement he experienced in the early days of Go Jimmy Go — “creating original music with friends and loving it.”

”I missed the friend element and family element of playing music, because when you can combine that with playing music it’s a very strong bond.” White said. “When you’re playing a show, it’s a big party — and me and my wife host parties all the time.