Sometimes you have to go away to rediscover your roots.

So says singer-actress Tia Carrere, who has recorded her first-ever Hawaiian music collection, "Hawaiiana," on her school chum Daniel Ho's label, Daniel Ho Creations. Both found the essence of Island music after moving to Los Angeles years ago.

They knew each other when Carrere was attending Sacred Hearts Academy in Kaimuki and Ho was into music at Saint Louis School down the way on Wai'alae Avenue.

"It's really funny; Daniel and I had been talking for years and years to do something, to share our love of Hawai'i, and it took me this long — and living in California, where he also now lives — to see the dream come true," Carrere said from her Los Angeles home.

"I don't want to ever lose touch with Hawai'i; I long to come home often, to share things that have been important for me."

Carrere is in the Islands this week to promote the CD, with a round of appearances, including the Flavors of Honolulu (formerly Taste of Honolulu) event on the civic center grounds.

She and Ho have written songs together for more than 10 years, but their partnership was akin to a dormant volcano.

"You know how it is, as time moves on — you do different projects, heading into a million directions," Ho said in a long-distance phone chat. "In the meantime, genres change, with movement from acoustic to electronic."

Last October, however, a for-real project emerged. Carrere was to perform at a Filipino-American library gala, where awards were to be presented; she tapped Ho to be her piano accompanist at the Los Angeles Bonaventure hotel. They clicked. "Hawaiiana" is the result of that venture.

"We played the same two songs we've been doing together for years — 'Someone to Watch Over Me' and 'I've Got a Crush on You' — with the same arrangements from high school days," said Ho.

But that set the magma flowing. "We got to talking; I felt like I needed to do this record for mothers and kids," said Carrere, referring to Bianca, her year-old daughter with husband Simon Wakelin, a photographer. "I felt like, 'This is Nani, from 'Lilo & Stitch,' and this is what Hawaiian music sounds like. Soothing; Hawaiian lullabies."

As for the project, she knew what she wanted to perform — "all the songs I've loved over the years, stuff I first heard when I was little and during 'Brown Bags to Stardom' (which she won)," said Carrere.

As a producer-composer, Ho also had his take: "It was something I felt very comfortable doing. Tia always has been a fantastic vocalist — amazing, really, with an incredible voice. She's not just a singer; she has technique, can sing high, has a vibrato, and she communicates emotion ... A lot of that comes with experience being an actor."

He weighed his perimeters: "Keep instrumentation intense and sparse. I always recall Nelson Riddle (the maestro linked with Frank Sinatra for decades), who let his vocalists express themselves with simple arrangements that spotlight the voice. On Tia's album, you can hear her every breath; that draws the listener further."

Ho is a two-time Hawaiian Music Grammy Award-winning ki ho'alu and 'ukulele performer, whose record label has embraced many locals in the acoustic genre.

His manner was just the elixir Carrere needed to finally launch the project of her dreams.

Ho did the arrangements and performed on guitar and uke.

"He had the harder job," she said. "I've always had the utmost respect for his musicality."

Ho knew that the less-is-more formula would work with Carrere. "Drums and bass ... would distract and hide or mask who she is," said Ho.

The song Carrere just had to record was "Sing," the sunny ballad immortalized by The Carpenters. It had been a Carrere favorite for years. As Carrere tells it, "I told Daniel, tell me if I'm crazy, but what do you think if we did Karen Carpenter's 'Sing, sing a song, sing it loud, sing it strong' (she sings it on the phone) because that's always been one of my favorites, and I had the biggest crush on her?"

He had no qualms, she said. "When I was growing up ... I was a huge Karen Carpenter fan, and it was really cool to put something a little different on the album."

Reach Wayne Harada at wharada@honoluluadvertiser.com.