Hawaii first encountered Mark Jonathan Davis as his alter ego, Vegas-style lounge singer/comedian Richard Cheese, singing lounge music arrangements of rock and hip-hop hits like “Baby Got Back” and “Down With the Sickness,” at the Wave Waikiki in 2004. Davis/Cheese and his band, Lounge Against the Machine, played several successful return engagements here while the group’s national career included a series of full-length parody albums with tongue-in-cheek titles like “Tuxicity” and “Aperitif for Destruction.”
Davis came to Hawaii in 2011 with plans to introduce a new character, Johnny Aloha, who sings hapa haole/“tiki music” versions of songs like “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Paradise City.” Waikiki had zero interest in Johnny Aloha, but Honolulu’s vintage building signage — dating from the 1950s and ’60s — caught Davis’ eye. He began photographing his finds, and found so many that the result was his first book, “Fonts in Paradise: Signs of Mid-Century Hawaii,” which was published in June.
Davis, 53, returned to Hawaii for a book-signing earlier this month.
Your book is a welcome look at a slice of the midcentury modern era in Hawaii’s history. When did you decide to publish it?
It started as an effort to document and photographically preserve vintage signs that were on buildings that were likely to be demolished. Putting the photos together I started thinking about what I could do with 150 photos of signs. I had never written a book before, so that was an enormous undertaking, but it worked out.
One of the stories in your book reveals the fate of a neon sign that had been on the front of a building on Kapiolani Boulevard that was half-hidden by a newer building. I’d seen that half-hidden sign for years and wondered about it. Where is the sign now?
The sign was for Mid-Pacific Insurance. Then the Mid-Pacific Insurance company went out of business, the word “Mid” was removed, and then another building was built in front of it. I was doing all this research about the sign and its history, and then the people I had originally contacted about the sign called me and said the building was going to be demolished, and if I took the sign off the building I could have it. It’s on permanent loan to the Valley Relics Museum (in Los Angeles), but I’m hoping though that someone reads my book and lives in Honolulu who’s rich will want to bring it back and put it up here.
Waikiki had no aloha for Johnny Aloha as a showroom entertainer. Will there be another Johnny Aloha album?
We’re actually working on it, but it’s really hard to make an album these days.
How does it feel to have a female group in England — the Lounge Kittens — say that Richard Cheese was their inspiration as entertainers?
It’s weird. I don’t understand it, but it is very flattering and surreal.
What’s next for Richard Cheese — and for Mark Jonathan Davis?
I had decided I would retire in 2020. I would do my last show 20 years to the day of the very first show back in October 2000. Then a crazy thing happened — Kristen Wiig wrote Richard Cheese into her movie, “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar” and I got the call (to do the film) in April. The movie comes out in July of 2020 so my plans to retire have been postponed. I will do more shows. I’m working on two new Richard Cheese albums, and I’m putting together a Richard Cheese autobiography, “Atlas Lounged,” that will be out in October 2020.
