How I Got Started Playing Slack Key Guitar Part 1

There were many factors that made me want to start playing slack key guitar. Of course, it was something I'd always heard growing up in Hawaii but it was just one of those things you take for granted - I remember Jon Odo playing "Ku'u Home O Kahalu'u" slack key style in the talent show in high school and found that impressive. And around 1990 (I think) I started attending the slack key festival on Oahu when it used to be held at the McCoy Pavilion at Ala Moana Park. Ah, those were the days, just hanging out, eating ono plate lunch with your friends, listening to great music.....

When I entered college and started studying classical guitar techniques, that really opened the door to learning other fingerpicking styles. Went to my professor's recital at Atherton studios and 2 things really stuck with me. She played a Sevillanas with a couple of flamenco dancers - which I loved - and then since she forgot to announce that that was supposed to be the last piece in her program, she did one more: a slack key rendition of "Hawaii Aloha". It was very impressive to me that she would include those styles amongst all the other highbrow classical pieces she performed so beautifully that night. A night that would, sadly, be her last performance before suffering wrist and hand problems.

So at one point she turned me on to playing flamenco guitar accompaniment for flamenco dancers as well as a solo instrument, which I ended up LOVING and was the real reason I moved from Hawaii to California. Then, still in college, my friend asked me if I wanted to play in this talent show thingee at his church that I'd also started attending and I said sure! So that night I did a flamenco piece that I'd been practicing and people loved it. But that night there was also a guy who played a slack key guitar piece which I really liked, though I have no idea what it was. We talked afterwards and as he said man I'd love to learn how you do that, I said the same to him.

So I was really starting to feel it. And then, me and my little flamenco group (with dancers) performed at the Make Music Festival in Honolulu one year in like, 1995 or something, and the next year they invited us to perform on opening night of the festival. That's where I saw John Keawe for the first time. I got there early to the Honolulu Academy of Arts theatre and he was the only one there so I thought he was like, custodial staff or something so I was asking him where the changing rooms and stuff were (had heard his name before but didn't know what he looked like). Not that I was rude to him or anything (I hope). But it was embarrassing when they announced his name to come up on stage to perform and I was like "Eh! Dat's da guy!". He still remembered me almost ten years later when I went up to talk to him after his performance at the Whittier College Aloha Series.

He later told me, when we were hanging out at my Southern California Slack Key Festival that was when he was first getting started on recording and I think he'd just won a Hoku award for his music. Anyway, that night, he played such a beautiful rendition of "Amazing Grace" that inspired me so much that I went home that night, tuned my guitar to open G (just guessed at it) and started trying to figure it out on my own, trying to emulate all the little slack key licks that I'd heard over the years that had, unbeknownst to me, subconsciously seeped into my brain. And now, it's one of my favorite things to play and was planning to play it at this last slack key festival until I painfully ripped off my nail on my middle finger. Probably could have still done it if it had been my ring finger, but the middle finger is too important!

More to come....