{"id":775,"date":"2015-11-13T13:35:55","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T20:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/?p=775"},"modified":"2018-06-09T15:44:10","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T22:44:10","slug":"loud-crowded-bar-but-john-keawe-made-it-sing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/loud-crowded-bar-but-john-keawe-made-it-sing","title":{"rendered":"Loud, crowded bar–but John Keawe made it sing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sigh…I’m still smiling after watching\/listening to John Keawe<\/strong><\/a> play last evening.<\/p>\n

–Yes, the bar at the Royal Kona Resort (Kailua Kona, Island of Hawai’i) was crowded.<\/p>\n

–Yes, I know John plays there once a month as well as several other locations on island regularly (and, darn, we won’t be able to be at any others of them before heading back home).<\/p>\n

–And, yes, I understand that more than half the folks there last night didn’t have any idea what they were hearing (note: not, “listening to”).<\/p>\n

But Mark and I did–and it was truly delightful. John shared talk story that was more than the typical “here’s the quick version of what this song’s about” blurb. His playing was so evidently heartfelt and his connection to the audience was sincere.<\/p>\n

John played a few covers but lots of his own compositions. Among others, he shared \u201cKi Ho\u2019alu Man,\u201d \u201cNo Ho Me\u2019I\u2019 Au,\u201d and \u201cPlay with Me, Papa,\u201d revealing the sentiments which led him to write these so-sweet Hawaiian tunes.\"UT_Keawe_n_me\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A special favorite of mine is \u201cBeautiful Hula Dancer\u201d and last night John played that one with such force and love that the crowded setting felt intimate and almost sacred as he closed his eyes and played his heart. I only wish his wife, Hope, could have been there to dance the feelings back to him.<\/p>\n

As Mark said afterwards, “He shared Hawai’i with us as well as sharing John Keawe.”<\/p>\n

And, adapting a line from John\u2019s self-penned \u201cBeautiful Hula Dancer\u201d lyrics: The music and the man were there for all who want to see.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

And the ukulele tie-in to this post? After returning back to our condo, I pulled up my Mark Nelson book on slack key ukulele, lowered my ukulele’s tuning to GCEG and worked on harmonics and fingerpicking, ki ho’alu-style, all evening long!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sigh…I’m still smiling after watching\/listening to John Keawe play last evening. –Yes, the bar at the Royal Kona Resort (Kailua Kona, Island of Hawai’i) was crowded. –Yes, I know John plays there once a month as well as several other locations on island regularly (and, darn, we won’t be able to be at any others […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hawaii_travels","category-performers","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/UT_Keawe.jpg?fit=3107%2C2071","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Wqkt-cv","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":979,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775\/revisions\/979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ukuleletonya.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}