Slack Key at the Beach!

Welcome to Kaleponi Records, my musical home on the web. My name is Fran Guidry, and I play kika ki hoʻalu or Hawaiian slack key guitar.

Kaleponi is the Hawaiian word for California, where I live. Ki hoʻalu, or slack key, has a direct link to California history. The guitar was carried to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi by vaqueros from California. You can read more about the history of slack key guitar on the Dancing Cat Records web site.

Slack key guitar is named for the retuning that characterizes the style. Most of these new tunings feature loosened, or slackened, strings which give a deep rich sound.

My personal slack key history goes back to 1999 and my first visit to Hawaiʻi. When we turned on the TV in our Waikiki hotel room I was captivated by the playing of Keola Beamer. I knew in an instant that I had to learn to play this beautiful music. Over the years I've learned from great players and teachers like Ozzie Kotani, Keola himself, Patrick Landeza, Kevin Brown, Cyril Pahinui, Kawika Kahiapo, Raymond Kane, Dennis Kamakahi, and Ledward Kaapana.

Saturday, June 21st, 2014

We’ve made a lot of great friends in Hawai`i and we get together regularly for garage-style parties. But for a special occasion the only place for a party is the beach! And not just any beach but the queen of soft surf and powdery sand, Kailua Beach. With tents and ironwood trees for shade, plenty of kids running around and every kind of delightful food, all we needed was a couple of guitars to get us through the day with some sweet slack key sounds.

Well wouldn’t you know, Ledward and I did just happen to bring a couple of guitars with us. You might even expect that I brought some cameras and audio gear, and you’d be right. As usual there were technical challenges and other problems cropping up here and there, but when I looked through the footage it was pretty obvious that the video to keep was a take of Ledward’s new composition, Lanikai Slack, which he created on the spot as we noodled around in taropatch tuning.

We were at the east end of Kailua Beach Park, you can see the Lanikai Boat Ramp and the climb into Lanikai when we pan the beach in the video. It was an ideal place to gather with friends and clearly Ledward was inspired by the place.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2014 at 7:43 pm and is filed under Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.