Maikai Gents
Napa Valley’s ukulele-playing winemaker, Judd Finkelstein and his band, The Maikai Gents Featuring The Mysterious Miss Mauna Loa, have just released their first CD, "The Wiki Wiki Grog Shop". The album consists of 16 vintage Hawaiian songs, runs for 53 minutes and is sold here on the Judd's Hill website.
The songs are Hawaiian classics, mainly written between 1930 and 1960, in the style known as ‘hapa haole,’ a reference to their popularity with mainlanders. Some of the songs are slow and sentimental, some zippy and danceable---all evoke the romantic ideal of Hawaii in its golden age of tourism in the mid-twentieth century. “‘Wiki wiki’ is a Hawaiian term for ‘quickly,’ Finkelstein explains, “and ‘grog shop’ a lighthearted acknowledgment of what I do all day in the vineyard and the cellar.”
Why Hawaiian music? “Hawaii is pure magic to me,” Judd explains. “I went on vacation there throughout my childhood and was always so struck by the lush beauty and sensuality of everything there, the black lava rock, the intense green, the blue waves and white seafoam, the flowers perfuming the air, the ever present music: I wanted to play this music as a way of bringing me back to my happy times there, to re-create a feeling of well being and happiness,” he adds.
My Little Grass Shack - Listen Now
Under a Tropical Moon - Listen Now
See Maikai Gents Art here:
