Hawai'i performers tell their wedding stories

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

And it was called "Yellow."

Mark DeMello sings during the wedding service of Ryuichi and Yuka Yamamoto as Father Shimizu listens at Central Union Church. DeMello says couples need to pick music that is meaningful to them and not listen to overeager wedding planners. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

"I had never heard the song," said Smith, more accustomed to plucking classical, Celtic, folk and the occasional Shania Twain ballad than a tune off of modern rock radio. "And the song's tablature ... didn't look easy."

But Smith liked the couple. So she agreed to do it, and sprung for a copy of Coldplay's "Parachutes" CD.

"I played it for my husband," recalled Smith, smiling. "And after listening to it, he basically said, 'You're screwed!'"

Smith's was just one of the stories from behind the veil we gathered from a handful of musicians working Hawai'i's busy wedding scene. Asked simply to offer advice for soon-to-be-wed couples selecting their wedding entertainment, the musicians couldn't help but share stories of their own lives in the business as well. More often than not, their tales wound up far more interesting than the few snippets of advice each would give in between. But back to our troubled harpist.

With 22 years of playing behind her, Smith knew when someone was dropping a challenge before her. She began to search for a key ... any key, to play the song in.

"It was like that feeling you have in college where it's three days until the term paper is due," said Smith. "It was about finding a way ... somehow, to do this song." Listening to Smith run through "Yellow" on her harp the evening before the wedding, even her husband had to admit, "You know, I think they're going to like that."

Understandably lost in a blissed-out little world of their own, the couple barely noticed the harpist's flawless rendition of "Yellow" that accompanied their first dance the following day. And, truthfully, neither did Smith.

Rebecca Smith has been playing for 22 years.

Getting the musical details exactly right on their end was important to all of the musicians we spoke to. But so were a few details just a tad beyond their control.

"To be honest, I like air-conditioned reception rooms," said Steven Cardenas, who plays viola with the aptly named wedding combo Heartstrings. Just look at the suits on Cardenas and guitarist Jason Uesato in the picture here and you'll understand why.

Weddings are 90 percent of Heartstrings' business and the principal market to which it advertises its graceful blend of viola and accompanying guitar or piano stylings. "But we'll do anything," said Cardenas. "We've done funerals, birthday parties and retirement parties ... anything where music adds a nice touch."

Cardenas couldn't cull any scintillating tales from Heartstrings decade of playing wedding ceremonies and receptions, but he was full of advice for couples choosing music.

"My belief, as far as music, is that it binds all the details together," said Cardenas, soulfully. "The music is the added seasoning ... that makes everything more flavorful." More specifically: Give the same amount of attention to the selection of music and musicians that you do to choosing venues, catering, flowers or the color of your bridesmaids' dresses.

Harrumph!

Waikiki Parc Hotel general manager Mark DeMello doesn't exactly market himself as a wedding singer. But the former lead vocalist for '80s Waikiki showband The Kasuals (Come on, you remember slow dancing to "Songs About Love" and "Ebony Eyes," at the prom right?) said he enjoys the ample vocal workout he gets from the weekend wedding ceremonies Central Union Church has scheduled him to solo at over the past five years.

"I'm one of those people where it could be my fifth or sixth wedding of the day on a Saturday ... with the same music ... and I still enjoy every single one," insisted DeMello, who avoids doing receptions, mostly because of the time involved. "There's a certain magic that always happens when people put rings on other people's fingers. You can see it in their eyes. You can tell it in their actions."

Barry Blum, far right, and his wife, Gloria, second from left, play weddings and other gatherings as part of Kona's Traveling Jewish Wedding Band.

"The bride decided that she wasn't going to marry him ... that she wasn't going to go through with the ceremony," said DeMello. "And so the poor minister is there trying to hold this thing together. All the guests are waiting. The media is getting in these little skirmishes, pushing people around and all that. And we're sitting there going, 'Come on, this thing has got to go off. We've got another one to do next hour.'"

As with Cardenas, DeMello's advice for engaged couples desperately seeking musical soothing — whether live or from a mobile DJ — was to choose wisely.

"You're only going to do this once, so pick the music that you really want and what's meaningful to you," said DeMello. Most importantly, "Don't listen to somebody else." He added a warning to especially avoid musical advice from meddling wedding coordinators. Apparently, they just love doing that.

When Dr. Barry Blum missed our two scheduled interview times to dash off to his day job as an orthopedic surgeon, I had to ask how his full time medical practice affected his ability to play balalaikas (it's that triangular looking Russian guitar) and lead Kona's Traveling Jewish Wedding Band.

Guitarist Jason Uesato and violist Steven Cardenas are part of Heartstrings, which mostly plays weddings, but also birthday and retirement parties and other gigs.

Currently claiming a core of eight members, the Big Island-based band was originally formed by Blum, his educator wife Gloria and a few of their friends (psychologists, neurosurgeons and even a former Russian railroad engineer, among them) in the funky late '70s hot-tub haze of Marin County, Calif. The band's joyful and mostly uptempo folk beat proved too irresistible even for former neighbor and then-Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart to ignore.

"Mickey is an ethnomusicologist who goes around the world recording a lot of very far-out music," Blum explained. "So he's very interested in far-out music."

Hart recorded the band in 1980 as The Golden Gate Gypsy Orchestra of America and California. You can order a copy of "Traveling Jewish Wedding Band," part of Hart's "The World" music series from Rykodisc on Amazon.com for $11.98. Its sales rank last Friday was a far-out 70,476.

Since moving to the Big Island in 1986, Blum and and his wife have been keeping the band's flame alive with a loose line-up of Kona-area friends from musical and professional backgrounds. Besides weddings, the band gigs at bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs, anniversaries and holiday celebrations for Kona's Jewish community.

"A lot of our music is danceable," said Blum, of the band's fairly impressive musical canon, which ranges from traditional Jewish and Hebrew tunes to Broadway showtunes and big band jazz. "We don't do a lot of slam dancing or anything like that, but we'll do waltzes, tangos and foxtrots. We also do circle dancing and folk dancing."

Blum confessed that on average, the band only gets two to three wedding jobs a year ("I gotta keep my day job, let's put it that way," he said). Still, weddings were a favorite with the band if for no other reason than the musical respect the band is typically shown at the happy events.

"Respect for me means that the band gets fed," Blum said seriously. "And here in Hawai'i, we haven't faced the issue of not getting respect. We always get fed."