Some Clips from the Acoustic Guitar Showcase

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.

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

The Acoustic Guitar Showcase on Superbowl Sunday drew a nice crowd to the Mission City Coffee Company. It’s always a pleasure playing alongside Doug Young and his guests are always compelling players. Mark Goldenberg has such a command of his instrument that every note contributed to the story.

I had some slight technical difficulties that made me glad I’d brought two guitars. And once again I made a bad choice of settings on my audio recorder, but this time I turned the gain too low and cut off the input completely. What a klutz, take 2.

Happily the sound of the PA in the room was quite respectable thanks to our system operator and also due to the attentive audience. And the audio on the Panasonic Lumix GH2 is not entirely terrible, so I have a couple of clips to post. These are both songs I’ve posted before, but the versions are somewhat different.

I’ve been doing my “Honolulu Medley” combining He Aloha No O Honolulu and Honolulu, I’m Coming Back Again for a few years now, and occasionally I’ll do the second song as a vocal. In this clip I captured that vocal on video for the first time, so it’s something of a debut for me.

Maori Brown Eyes is a classic Hawaiian song and one that was made into a slack key standard by Leonard Kwan. It’s one of my favorites and its rollicking nature seems to go over well with audiences too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 at 4:14 am 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.