Music Scene
Sister Keahi's back home, singing the blues

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Keahi Conjugacion, with Miles Jackson on bass and Aaron Aranita on keyboards, performs at Kincaid's Fish Chop & Steak House. Conjugacion will be onstage Sunday at the Atherton Performing Arts Studio. Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser Keahi Conjugacion 5 p.m. Sunday Hawai'i Public Radio Atherton Performing Arts Studio, 738 Kaheka St. $15 ($12 Hawai'i Public Radio members, $10 students) 955-8821

"All three of us just took to it, but I actually started singing first," laughs Keahi, older sister to still more locally well-known musician brothers Tony and Noland Conjugacion, the latter of whom is also known as Brother Noland.

Keahi, now 45, and relatively fresh from a nine-year residency in Seattle's fertile jazz and blues club circuit, has recently been displaying her ample vocal chops in a series of steady gigs in a handful of Honolulu clubs and restaurants.

After wowing audiences at last February's Great Hawaiian Jazz Blowout — her enviable vocal prowess injecting new energy into time-tested jazz and blues standards — Keahi will cart a larger portfolio of faves (including Latin jazz, gospel and swing) to a solo performance at Hawai'i Public Radio's Atherton Performing Arts Studio on Sunday.

Keahi began singing at age 12, mostly to records, in the comfort of her bedroom. Like many teenage girls in 1972, Keahi found herself listening intently to every track of Carole King's landmark album "Tapestry." Keahi's impressive and powerful takes of tracks like "So Far Away" and "I Feel the Earth Move" attracted the attention of a group of musicians visiting her neighbors.

Before she knew it, the 16-year-old was the lead female vocalist of the high school dance band Uncle Eagle's Sky Farm. She eventually married the band's lead guitarist.

Three sons, a series of steady gigs at local clubs, private parties and conventions, and the occasional day job (whenever it was necessary) kept Keahi's hands full through her 20s.

"I began getting laryngitis from too much singing," says Keahi, who had never learned to train her voice professionally. "Tony was taking (voice lessons) from Neva Rego before going to Broadway to perform ... and wanted me to start." Keahi studied with Rego for about a year, learning the vocal exercises she now religiously completes each day and before every performance to protect her voice.

"She really helped me develop and find that I could do much more with my voice," says Keahi. As did family friend Melveen Leed, who encouraged Keahi to dump the Top 40 and contemporary hits she was singing, and practice singing the jazz and blues standards she was quickly becoming enamored of.

After separating from her husband, Keahi moved to Seattle in 1992 with a goal of strengthening her jazz education. With help from brother Noland — then living in Seattle — and bassist and second husband Owen Matsui, Keahi was slowly guided into the city's jazz scene and her first playing gigs at noted area clubs such as Jazz Alley.

She studied and played with the city's resident jazz masters, including pianist Billy Wallace, who had backed Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Dizzy Gillespie. In addition to jazz, Keahi even began studying and playing blues, getting stage time in Seattle's "Chitlin' Circuit" of small, smoky blues clubs. She took lessons in traditional and improvisational scat singing, as well.

"There was so much opportunity up there," says Keahi. "And I was like a sponge."

Even so, Keahi moved back to O'ahu in May 1999 to take care of her terminally ill father, who died nine months later. Choosing to remain in Honolulu, Keahi slowly began finding enough work to allow her to be a full-time musician. She'll even return — albeit temporarily — to Seattle later this year for a handful of engagements at her favorite jazz and blues haunts.

"I'm finally getting the kind of gigs I want here," says Keahi, now both newly single and a grandmother. "I'm determined to keep doing this full time."