The local alt-band scene struggles to catch a break
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Little Moments, from left, John Davis, Michael Jankowski, Jonathan Marchan and Shannon Ogura, practice in their rented Wai'alae Avenue rehearsal space.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser |
Yet in spite of all the obstacles, kids keep forming bands. Post-collegiate rockers like Little Moments pray that self-financed rental van tours of the Mainland pay off in record contracts and recognition.
Club owners and promoters like Tom "Piranha" Gierman and David Giomi, Russ Inouye and Jason and Marina Miller give the music an outlet.
Treading the middle ground, people like Josh Hancock, a barrista at a tiny coffee cafe, imagines his place of employment as the perfect place for him and his friends to play gigs.
Here are some street-level snapshots of life in our city's sleepy alternative music scene.
• • •
The players
They might be giants: The guys of Little Moments are probably going to make great rock stars someday.
They're already somewhat elitist when it comes to their music ("I think there's a scene for it here, but not nearly as extensively as on the Mainland. Some people here kind of like cheesy music, you know?") and confident of bigger and better things ahead ("Honolulu is just kind of behind, you know? We want to go to the world ... not just Honolulu.")
The band has even mastered the art of avoiding serious answers to music scribe questions, batting around and playing with queries like a house cat toying with a mouse.
"Like, indie rock, I guess," said the band's lackadaisically cocky drummer John Davis, asked what he calls the sometimes loud and crunchy, sometimes sweetly melodic music of Little Moments. (Davis, by the way, is also responsible for the quoted pearls of wisdom above.)
He turned his gaze toward guitarist/backing vocalist Michael Jankowski. "What would you call it?"
"Indie rock," Jankowski agreed. "Straight-up indie rock."
End of conversation.
Little Moments — besides Davis and Jankowski, guitarist/lead vocalist Jonathan Marchan and bassist/backing vocalist Shannon Ogura — has been together for about seven months. The band's first and second live performances were at Pipeline Café's Battle of the Rock Bands competition in May.
"We got second place overall," said Ogura, glumly. "But that was a fluke," piped in Davis, sitting on the floor of the Wai'alae Avenue rehearsal space the band shares with Ooklah The Moc. "I think we should've come in first." Davis smiled half-convincingly, insisting he was joking.
The band changed its original name — Turn Off the Stars — shortly after the battle. The reason wasn't the shame of coming in second as much as a little problem with a boy band from the Great White North.
"Actually a boy 'rock' band — because they play their own instruments — called Turn Off the Stars, from Canada," Davis said. "They owned the domain name turnoffthestars.com, so we were, like, we can't do this."
Little Moments has played gigs at Anna Bannanas and set up its own shows at venues such as Coffee Talk.
The band is recording a self-financed CD it hopes to have ready for a tour of upstate New York clubs later this year.
"As far as leaving the whole Honolulu thing behind ... Hawai'i is a wonderful place," said Davis, who was born and raised here. "But Michael is from New York. And the feedback that we're getting from the people he knows over there is, like, seriously, some people have said we're amazing. And it's people that are really into this kind of music.
"The people here are just kind of, like, 'Oh, what is this?' "
Jimmy's a no-go on radio: Despite being one of the most popular live bands in town, Go Jimmy Go still can't get its music played on mainstream corporate radio.
"I work at Star (101.9 FM), but at the same time, Star won't play Go Jimmy Go," said Fernando (first name only, please), a trombonist with the local ska faves. "I've handed our CD around Star several times to make sure everyone has a copy of it, but at corporate radio, it's really hard to break. It's pretty much the most difficult part for Go Jimmy Go right now."
No kidding.
Last year saw the band release a well-received second CD, "Soul Arrival," in June, play five weeks of the Vans Warped Tour soon after, and open No Doubt's sold-out August Blaisdell Arena show for a wildly enthusiastic audience that was just as thrilled to see the band as it was to see Stefani & Co.
Go Jimmy Go is also one of the few Honolulu bands not playing covers or island-style music that can wait for gigs to come to them, and then charge up to $1,500 a pop for 'em when they do.
Still, the only station playing the band's music with any regularity is KTUH-FM.
"If you ask a lot of people on the scene today about when it kicked ass or when it was the golden age, they'll probably say that was back in the Radio Free days ... a pretty successful radio station pushing local bands. To me, that was, like, the magic time."
And as large as the band is living locally, it still has to face a dearth of venues supporting non-Hawaiian music styles.
"I only know of a few places that will tolerate distortion," said Fernando, smiling. "And Go Jimmy Go has the luxury of slipping in everywhere where Jawaiian and reggae is acceptable."
Fernando doesn't expect the scene for alternative genres to improve any time soon. "With punk becoming more marketable commercially, it might get better," he said. "But I don't think (these types of music) will ever be as huge as Jawaiian."
• • •
In the middle
Love all, serve all, play all: All Josh Hancock wanted was a place where The 86 List — a punk band he sings and plays guitar in — could do shows with other bands it knew. Coffee Factory, the Ke'eaumoku Street coffee cafe he worked at, seemed perfect. It had a roomy rectangular interior and a large window facing King Street that seemed the ideal backdrop for a small stage. So he asked his manager, who agreed to the idea as long as the cafe could take a piece of the $5 cover charge.
Since last May, Coffee Factory's series of multi-band showcases has pulled in steady weekend crowds up to 200 to shows by local D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) bands with names like Pomo Homo, Three Is Company, Post-Modern and Diverse Unity, among others. The nonalcohol, all-ages shows — which generally begin at 8 p.m. and end at midnight — have been especially popular with teens.
Managing the scheduling of Coffee Factory's live events while pulling shifts behind the counter, the 20-year-old Hancock said he keeps the process for hiring bands intimidation-free.
"We tell every kid that comes down here who's in a band to just call us up or come talk to me after the show and we'll put you on something," Hancock said. "It's super-accessible here." Coffee Factory has included punk, ska, emo, indie rock and metal bands in its mix.
The shows are kept cheap (the price includes a cup of coffee) and always multi-act. Since the audience is largely made up of kids who are friends of one of the bands, more bands equal more kids. Bands split the door (on average, $50 or $60 per band) and help the staff clean the cafe after the show. The audience — always a well-behaved bunch — typically assists in clean-up, too. Unless Josh is performing with one of the three bands in which he claims membership, all he takes home in pay is his Coffee Factory wages.
"It's enough money to maybe put some new guitar strings on, pay for gas, or get something to eat after the show," Hancock said of the door split. "No one is making money on this. Right now, it's all about getting our message, our beliefs and words out there about unity, mutual respect, love, peace and freedom."
• • •
The promoters
Live at Anna's: Tom "Piranha" Gierman entered into a partnership to buy Mo'ili'ili alterno-music haven Anna Bannanas 16 months ago largely because of the club's long history of supporting diverse styles of live music.
"I liked what Gary and Peggy (Budlong) started with this place and what it represented," Gierman said, leaning back into one of the bar's snug downstairs booths."I think what makes Anna's Anna's is live music."
As with nearly all of its 32 years in business, the nightclub still hosts several nights of live performances, nowadays in genres ranging from ska and reggae to singer/songwriter folk, funk, indie and metal. Gierman's stable of fairly established regulars include Go Jimmy Go, Ooklah The Moc, Maacho & Cool Connection and The Hellbound Hounds, among others. The club remains one of Honolulu's few popular DJ-free nightspots.
"I've been a musician all my life," said Gierman, also a drummer/vocalist for Honolulu cover band the Piranha Brothers. "I think the DJ thing is fine, and a way of life, but I want to keep the live music scene alive. I want to give people work. I want to expose the community here to all different styles of music and not just what they hear on the radio."
Still, Gierman can hardly hand over his stage to just any band off the street if he wants to keep Anna's in business.
In the past six months, Gierman said he's received about a dozen inquiries from bands wanting to play Anna's, and has given shots to six of them. All new bands play for the door cover, and usually on Friday or Saturday — the club's two busiest nights.
Gierman also tries to find bands that have enough original music to fill a 90-minute to two-hour set, and a willingness to promote their shows. The former can be a tall order at times, but Gierman requires it.
"It would be easy for me to go (the all-DJ route) as far as money or whatever. But 'no risk, no reward,' " said Gierman, who wants to increase Anna's live nights to six a week from the current five.
The risk-taking fan: Russ Inouye's interest in promoting concerts by local rock bands comes from living in a city that has produced some of the best.
"I was going to the Art Institute of Seattle ... when Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains were big and the live scene in the city was super cool," Inouye said. "You could go down to Pioneer Square and find all of these bars and cafés that had really good live music. That really stuck with me."
Inouye started dabbling in concert promotion immediately after returning to Hawai'i, focusing on doing shows with bands that could hardly hope for a shot at KINE-FM and KCCN-FM playlists. Local alternative artists were enjoying something of a heyday at the time, thanks to steady airplay from listener-supported Radio Free Hawaii.
"That really gave bands and promoters like us that were doing small live shows the plugs that we needed to get that vibe going," said Inouye, 28. "When (Radio Free Hawaii) went off the air, live (rock) music slowly died off, and it was just harder to get people out. I took a break, because it was more of a risk to do the shows."
Inouye turned the focus of his promotions to DJ events. That is, until a chance opportunity to promote Hawai'i-born singer/songwriter Jack Johnson's first hometown appearance after the release of his then largely unnoticed "Brushfire Fairytales" CD popped up in the fall of 2001.
"I was shocked that with no airplay at that time, how many people knew his music," Inouye said. "There were 500-plus people at Hard Rock Cafe singing along word for word with him."
Inouye jumped back into live promotion soon after. He's since enjoyed moderate success with shows headlined by Go Jimmy Go, Ooklah The Moc, Olivia, National Product and former Hawai'i-based pop/punk/reggae band Pepper at smaller clubs like Hard Rock.
Inouye's plans for this year include putting together what he's calling "The Other Hawaiian Music Festival," which would likely feature many of the above bands, and, possibly, a return performance by Johnson.
"At times you make some pretty good money. At times you basically break even," Inouye said.
Battling back at Pipeline: Having played guitar in a turn-of-the-'90s pop-metal "Motley Crüe meet Bon Jovi" band that played original music when not courting an off-stage life of woozy chemical excess and scrambling for gigs, David Giomi said he was "totally hip to the plight of the original musician."
A partner-owner at Pipeline Café, Giomi opened the Kaka'ako nightclub in late 1999 with big hopes of featuring as much live music as the club could bear. Live nights of rock 'n' roll on Friday and Hawaiian music on Wednesdays had popular launches, but both quickly fizzled as Pipeline patrons started turning out in droves for DJ-hosted hip-hop and dance music nights on Thursdays and Saturdays.
"We got to a point where (co-owner) Chip (Jewitt) and I looked at each other and said, 'If we played the kind of music we want to hear, it's going to be you and me here in lawn chairs listening to AC/DC while the place goes out of business.' "
After two years without live rock, Giomi and promotions manager T. Muserlian launched a five-week Battle of the Rock Bands series in May, hoping to generate enough audience interest and find talented local bands that could sustain another weekly evening of original rock. Pipeline got more than enough bands, but individual nights of the series managed only break-even figures, financially.
Pipeline has done only two rock events since: a Halloween gig with Battle of the Rock Bands winners Hellbound Hounds, and a September concert with Big Island rap-metal band and Battle finalists Living In Question. Both shows wound up losing money. Still, Giomi refuses to give up.
Scheduled to start up next month is a monthly Sunday evening of young Honolulu Christian rock and pop-punk bands called "Club Cornerstone" (Giomi already allows his church Mana'olana to use Pipeline for amped-up music-filled services Sunday mornings). Also in the planning stages: a weekly mix of live- and DJ'ed-rock that would lead into another Battle of the Rock Bands competition this summer.
A musical snapshot on CD: "Rock Album of the Year" wouldn't win any prizes for being one of the most sonically-pleasing compendiums of bands in Hawai'i's "other" music scene put out last year. It was, however, the only two-disc CD released featuring the music of more than 40 local bands experimenting in ska, punk, metal, emo, pop-punk, Christian pop-punk, roots reggae and a host of other sounds.
"There weren't any conditions we gave the bands, as long as we could hear them," said Marina Miller, who with husband, Jason, runs Hawaiian Express, a 7-year-old CD distribution and concert promotions company for local rock bands.
Hawaiian Express has released nearly 80 CDs of compilations, original tracks, and live recordings, including tapings of KTUH-FM's popular Monday Night Live band showcases.
"Rock Album," which took a year to compile, is probably most remarkable for being, arguably, the best sonic snapshot currently available of the state's alternative rock scene.
Jason Miller started the project in early 2002 by alerting bands at shows and via his much-visited www.808shows.com Web site that he was accepting submissions for a compilation CD that would include multiple genres of rock.
"People just kept bringing him more and more stuff to the point where we had to make it two CDs," said Marina. "We even got stuff from bands on the Big Island, Maui and Kaua'i." Jason finished and released the CD shortly before leaving for three months of Air Force Reserve training in November.
Each of the bands on "Rock Album" will receive 8 cents of every sale; the rest goes to Hawaiian Express for mastering, pressing and distribution in music stores and over the Internet. The CD lists for $13.
Even with just over 30 copies sold since its release, "Rock Album" is on track to recoup the $400 to $500 Hawaiian Express invested in blank CDs, CD trays and color print work at Kinko's.
"We've sold between six and 12 copies per store, which is really good for us because we're not a huge label," Marina said. "I'm also going to talk with Jason about doing a show for the album ... at least with the bands that are still together by the time he comes back."
• • •
Catch a rising band
- Anna Bannanas features the roots reggae of Maacho & Cool Connection, 9 p.m. today, 2440 S. Beretania St., $5. 946-5190.
- Ottocake Productions celebrates its 11th birthday with a concert featuring The 86 List, Ex-Superheroes and PostModern, 6 p.m. Saturday, The Ottocake Bakery, 2928 Ualena St., $5.
- An evening of punk, ska and rock from Mindless Rebellion, Woody, Pimpbot and Push The Pedal, 6 p.m. Saturday at Island Club & Cafe (formerly Pink Cadillac), 478 Ena Road, $5. 272-1858. The punk and rock thrashings of Tanner Boyle Quartet, Nun F.F., Daykillers and Flemface land at IC&C 6 p.m. Feb. 1. $5.
- Little Moments will be turning up at "Avant Pop" with Teradactyl, Life In The Iron Lung, Spare Batteries and Little Jeans, 8 p.m. Saturday, Club Pauahi, 80 S. Pauahi St., $5. 521-7252.
- Metal returns to Kings Crab Bar & Grill 10:30 p.m. Saturday with Obliterator, Magnum Carnage and Replica, 131 Ka'iulani Ave., $6. 923-9923.
- At Coffee Factory Jan. 31, Boy Band Jon, Neural Void, Tryst and Little Jeans in a tour fund-raising show for Buckshot Shorty, 8 p.m., 1372 S. King St., $5. 949-8858.
- Acid jazz with Quadraphonix at the "Hands Up" monthly, 9 p.m. Jan. 31, The Hawaiian Hut, Ala Moana Hotel, $10. www.mattyliu.com.
- Pipeline Cafe Battle of the Rock Bands winners and Red Hot Chili Pepper openers The Hellbound Hounds, with Extra Stout, 9 p.m. Feb. 28, JC's Bar, 2301 Kuhio Ave., second floor, $6. 923-5828.
