Seeking Music, Adventure & a Uke on Big Island Hawai’i

Hello, my name is Sean Hunt and I recently had an interesting trip to Hawaii. In the future on this Channel, I would like to purposefully seek out musicians all over the world that play music inspired by their local cultures, ranging from extremely traditional music that aims to keep old styles alive as well as musicians that incorporated their regional styles into more modern musical styles.

Later in this video, I’ll find some musicians and buy a Ukulele but for the most part, this trip to Hawaii wasn’t as musical as I hope future trips will be, as it was more of a tag-a-long experience. My friend Spenny has now climbed and pruned trees in 24 U.S. states and I was able to weasel my way into his Hawaiian adventure. We met up with Arbor Jockey and followed him all over the Big Island known as Hawaii as he took care of many long time clients.

We had initially believed that we would be staying in a living room or maybe even a warehouse, but in the end we hopped around to different hotels and AirBnBs each night. With the exception of one AirBnB near a hippie commune in the jungle that we chose to stay at 3 times,
(though we hadn’t been aware of the hippie commune the first 2 times.)

In order to get to this area, you had to drive through destruction created by the very sad eruption in 2018. (This dude was lucky though.)

It rained sporadically throughout the trip, especially when at a higher elevation. At times it was a very nice light rain, but we did some of our tree work in pouring rain that completely soaked us within seconds. During the rainiest parts of the week, we were following ArborJockey around the island without knowing what address we were going to. He would often drive 20 miles over the limit even in the rain and we had to be on our toes to make sure we didn’t lose him.

@arborjockey

#hawaiiarborist #bigisland #petzel #treelife #monkeypod #kona #peterpan #arborist #pfanner #femalelumberjack #hawaii

♬ Keep Showing Up (Motivational Speech) – Fearless Motivation

And at the end of the work week, we followed ArborJockey to a place where I was able to jam with someone for a bit while we sucked sugar cane. 

We later met a guy at an AirBnB that primarily lived on another island and told us about the hippie community and the drum circle on a black sands beach. I picked up his Ukulele, looked up chord shapes and started playing my “Song for Mercedes.” After seeing it’s value as a travel instrument, I was determined to get a good Uke while I was on the island.

After checking out a lava tube and the active volcano Kilauea, we checked out the, hilarious to me, Furniture and Music store in Hilo. The owner of the store knew a fair amount about ukuleles but he didn’t play the instrument himself. I examined several instruments including the beautiful and expensive ukes made from Koa wood before deciding I should check out the store in the touristy area that I was scared would simply be gimmick instruments.

This ended up being the right move, as Uncle Uke designs and finishes his own instruments and was extremely helpful at teaching me about the different sizes of Ukulele and how they would be most comfortable to someone that enjoys playing Nylon stringed guitars.

During our weekend I jammed in a drum circle on the beach which eventually moved down the street to a place where vendors were set up. At a different outdoor market, I attempted to add percussion behind someone that turned on a looper that wasn’t in time. I bailed on the situation quickly. We swam at the beach and topped the massive volcanic mountain of Mauna Kea.

We also listened to the excellent debut album by Salt Lake City band, Beach Death. Besides the fact that we didn’t die or hope for death, the album was a great way to top off the adventure with multiple lyrics that breathed of some of the experiences we had over the week. I have followed the producer of this album since he was a teenager and I am beyond proud of this new album that he and his collaborator, (Ian) created. 

I’m sorry for not releasing as many new mini-docs on old rock bands lately though I hope to get plenty of time researching bands while I live with my buddy Brad in the Phillipines for a few months where I will hopefully get some more travel content.

If you enjoyed this video and would like to see what happens when I go to the Philippines, please introduce yourself with a comment below, click the “Like” button as well as the Subscribe button. Clicking on the Bell icon turns on Notifications so that you never miss one of my videos! Thank you very much for watching and until next time, have a happy listening session!