Vacations Blog

Grammy-nominated Makana plays...loudly. (Hint, hint)

Fact: Coming home from a vacation and talking about the local live music makes you cool. Seriously. And you can work it into more dinner-party conversations than you can that unbelievably boring wine tour you keep convincing yourself is interesting (wine-tours recaps are the slide-shows of the 21st century).

Anyway.

Music. Yes. Hawaiian music, to be precise. Award-winning, Grammy-nominated organic local music to be very, very precise. The famed ‘Makana‘ to be just amazingly anal about the details of this entire paragraph.

He’s good. Very good. People smarter than you and I who know music say so. Like, Esquire, for example, who called him the “greatest living player” of Hawaiian slack key guitar

Now, you can go about getting this one of two ways.

The first, being the obvious, make your way to the Sheraton Waikiki’s Rum Fire on Oahu anytime around 8pm, pay good money for beautiful drinks surrounded by sunburnt Brits with loud shirts. Wait, I take all that back. Said hotel threw us a great welcoming party and I’m going to try and score a few more free pints off of their publicist before this trip is over.

In fact, here’s part of his show he did when we were there, filmed by my friend Christine.

Let’s try that again:

Now, you can go about getting this one of two ways.

The first, being the obvious, treat yourself to one of the nicest hotels in Honolulu, grab an adult beverage and make your way to the table that sits not 4 feet in front of him on the deck.

Or…

You can slum it.

See, this hotel is so nice, it’s on the main strip that divides the stage from the crashing waves of the oceanfront Diamond Head Point.

Did I mention he plays loud? Famous people tend to do that.

You getting me here?

Fine, I’ll spell it out, but if this costs me my pints I’m sending you my PayPal info, okay?

Sit on the public lawn and listen. You don’t get to see him straight-on, but saving $50 on drinks might make that okay.

But buy a CD from the guy, he’s an absolute sweetheart.

Plus, let’s be honest – listening to a dreadlocked hippie from Michigan strum ‘Redemption Song’ on a cheap ukulele under a banyan tree isn’t exactly immersion…

And you’re better than that.