On June 27th (Saturday about two weeks ago), we played a Waitiki gig as a quartet in Somerville. Because Randy Wong (Bassist of Waitiki 7) was in Hawaii, and Abe Lagrimas Jr. (Drummer of Waitiki 7) was unavailable, we played with a quartet of Tim Mayer on Woodwinds, myself of vibes, Keala Kaumeheiwa on Bass, and Mark Walker on Drums. It was awesome!
Mark and Keala are both absolutely great musicians, and while they didn’t have the same experience playing Exotica music that Randy and Abe do (Abe and Randy grew up with the music in Hawaii), they really made the music their own and brought their own things to the table. Throughout the gig we played a lot of standard Waitiki tunes like Manilla and Flower Humming which were great, but some of the tunes that stuck out to me were others like Chief Mau-Mau and Plaming Flagoda. In both these tunes there was just a lot of incredible energy that was fun to be a part of. Tim just sent me a cleaned up version of the gig (I recorded it with my zoom), so I can’t wait to check it out.