violinist & educator

Since this was my very first tour and I have nothing else to compare it to, I have to say that this was one of the best musical experiences of my life.  Sure there were challenges and some of them were extremely hard to take (I won’t mention any specifics here), but overall everything went as smoothly as it could go.

Our first and only rehearsal on Thursday night was productive.  We all got to meet our new drummer (and “tour saver”) Andrew Atkinson from NYC.  He came to us through Zaccai, who had met him a couple days before.  Get this: the only way Andrew could do the tour was only if Zaccai would help him move out of his apartment (long story…)!  We managed to get through most of the album’s tunes, especially L’ours (or, “lauw-ers”), we all soon realized that Andrew was a spectacular Latin jazz drummer and blended in with the rest of us like smooth butter.  We’re so glad he joined!

The next day, after scrambling to find percussion instruments for the tour (some people can be flaky!), we finally got on the road around noon.  Our first show was to be at OHANA “Luau at the Lake”, a tiki festival held at Lake George, NY.  The drive was a good 4 hours from Boston, but with conversations about art, music, languages, and film production with Jochen, the trip flew by quickly.  Jochen is a longtime Waitiki fan who flew in from Munich.  He wanted to be in touch with the tiki culture in the U.S. and also take this opportunity during our tour to film footage for his upcoming documentary “DVD of Tiki.”  We’re really excited to be a part of that project.  The show went as well as it usually does but we had to deal with the unbearable near-freezing temperatures that night.  Yikes!

Our next stop was to play for a pre-recorded air show for Jersey City’s WFMU radio station (wfmu.org) that was hosted by Gaylord Fields and Glenn Luttman.  Thanks to them for making our live broadcast performance possible.  A BIG challenge occurred right before we got to the studio: Jersey City traffic.  OMG, I will never ever set foot or wheel into that state again.  We sat in our cars for 2 hours for the last 0.3 miles we had left to travel to our destination.  It was ridiculous!

Thanks to our good friend Gina, she let us stay at her house that night and boy, did we need a good night’s rest.  In the morning, we had Tim’s delicious Portuguese coffee and some tasty bagels.  With our full tummies, we soon got on the road towards Washington DC.

(Haha… see that parking ticket there?  Apparently in NJ suburbs, one gets a ticket for parking too close to the crosswalks… Poor Tim and Randy)

CONTINUE TO PART DEUX

Ahhhh… we are finally back in Boston. This past weekend was the most rewarding and humbling experience WAITIKI has ever had, and it just so happened to be in Lawrence, KS. We had the privilege and honor to perform at the 500th radio show celebration of Kansas Public Radio. Big mahalos to Darrell and Jason for organizing the event and making everything happen so smoothly and happily. Our 4-hour performance of 3 sets of quality exotica music was graciously taken in by the audience at Liberty Hall, one of the coolest venues to perform in.

We played for a large group of exotica fans–close to 500– that filled both the ground level and the balcony. They even drank the bar that served WAITIKI cocktails completely dry. I managed to have a couple sips of the Wai Niu right before I played L’ours chinois, which was a bad idea because I literally could not feel my fingers. But the audience still loved it.

Check out other videos of the new All-Star Septet band on YouTube and pictures on my flickr.

I think the tiki gods were definitely smiling down upon us that night. Highlights to remember: Meeting up with everyone at the airport and experiencing the “spillage” curse, acting out the comic book and conjuring up more ideas for future issues, walking AT LEAST 2 miles to a random house party through the mist, cheering for the All-Star Berklee beer pong team (go Abe and Jim!!), learning how to do birdcalls with Lopaka, sitting with the rest of the lefties on one side of a table and scarfing down gumbo, sneaking a candy rat into Jim’s cymbal bag, and hugging my sweety after L’ours.

Downers but still great anyways: Spillage of orgeat (poor Tim!), broken ass’s jaw, Lopaka’s flight cancellation that transformed into a miracle, early morning flights to and from Kansas …grrr!

I LOVE WAITIKI!!! Can’t wait for our next big gig ;)