| @ | Kawaihae Kawaihae's debut album "Kawaihae" is almost like a showcase of Hawaii's top artists and hit makers. Aside from the amazing performances of Jeff, Vance, Scott and Jimbo, you can hear a wealth of talent of the island's best. Guest artists include: former percussionist for Pure Heart and Colon - Lopaka Colon(on 9 tracks on the album!), Herb Ohta Jr(on Small Kid Days), and former Hapa lead vocalist - Keli'i Kaneali'i(on Falling In Love). Hawaii's top producers and hit makers mixed every song on the album. They include: Steve Kramer(Pure Heart and many others) - mixing "Volcano" and "Small Kid Days". Kenneth Makuakane(Na Leo and many others) - mixing "Just To Be With You", "One For The Bottle" and "Falling In Love". Tim Young (Cecelio and Kapono and many others) - mixing "Kona Skies" and "Sumo Man". Gaylord Holomalia(Kalapana, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole and many others) - mixing "Message In A Bottle" and "Million". The album went through many phases. Our first demos for the album was submitted in November of 2001. We recorded 16 rough demos for our producer George Cockle to hear. From the 16 we picked 9 songs to record on the album. The 10th song(Message In A Bottle) was decided later. The first song we recorded was Kona Skies. It was recorded in December 2001. It was supposed to be on the Island Roots 3 album, but because we couldn't make the deadline for turning in the song, it didn't make the compilation. However it turned out for the better, because we had plenty of time to remix the song to our liking. Tim Young added his magic to the tune and it turned out pretty cool. From there we concentrated our efforts to recording the other songs from Feb 2002 to April 2002. We spent almost every weekend for two months in the studio. A lot of hard work and long hours went into the recording, but we all enjoyed the process. Once all the tracks were recorded, we sent the data to Hawaii to be mixed, and to have the additional tracks added. We were definetly blessed to have Hawaii's best help us out on this album. Everyone was so cooperative and enthusiastic to help us out. They all showed us the true meaning of aloha. Mahalo Steve, Kenneth, Tim, Gaylord, Lopaka, Herb Jr., and Keli'i. While we waited for the finished tracks to come back from Hawaii, we had an incredible photo shoot at Izu, Japan. We picked this location because it looked almost identical to a white sandy beach in Hawaii. Plus, we knew that we could surf in between photo shoots, and we did! The photo session was scheduled for the afternoon, so we had the whole morning to surf. We scored with 2 - 3 ft waves, and had a good 3 hour surf session. Taisuke Yokoyama(a world famous surf photographer), George Cockle(our producer) and da boys all had a good time. Taisuke's pictures turned out incredible! Aside from being an excellent surfer, his photo's speak for themselves. Once the song came back from Hawaii, we mastered the album in Tokyo. We then got one of the hottest computer graphic artist in Japan to do the artwork on the album. Asou-san rocks. His choice of color and his layouts are simply amazing. His work on the official Kawaihae poster is also another masterpiece. From there it was just a matter of finding people to distribute the album and of course getting radio airplay. The first stations to play our music in Japan include InterFM and FM Yokohama. Mahalo nui loa, and thank you so much to all the other radio stations, producers, directors, and everyone elso who support our music. |