What are you reading?

Right now I'm reading David Mamet's "Bambi vs. Godzilla." It's just a fantastic book. I also just finished "Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro." She's a very soulful, unique songwriter and entertainer, huge in the day, who basically got larger through people covering her songs.

What do you like about them?

Mamet's book is just a very insightful, insider perspective from somebody I respect as a screenwriter and movie director. He's just a brilliant guy. It's about the agony and ecstasy of screenwriting, based on his personal experience.

... I have twin sons who are aspiring screenwriters, so it helps me know what they're going through. And I've always been a big fan of Nyro's music and interested to see her struggles in the music business, which is where I am now. So I'm reading about my sons' plight in screenwriting and my own in the music business.

Do you relate to the struggles of Mamet and Nyro, who not unlike tiki culture, operate outside the mainstream?

The music side is just for joy and following your passion—thus the birth of Don Tiki. In advertising, you're using your creative talents to help make other people's dreams come true. My partner is the one who writes the songs and has the struggles there, but it's all artistic expression and joy for him, too. I'm visual and contribute concepts and song titles, but he's the musical genius, and he's the composer. ... We're reinventing exotica. Our next album will feature rare Southeast Asian instruments meeting South American rhythms — that's all exotica in our mind, but that may not be how the tiki culture perceives it. We're willing to take the chance. All artists — you're either in it to express yourself or make money. ... That's what we're hoping to do with our little genre; it's a creative outlet to do the stuff we really love to do.