BIG SHOWS:

STELLA BLUES CAFE’S

20TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Friday, Dec. 9; 8pm-12pm; Stella Blues Cafe (1279 S. Kihei Rd.); $5 cover

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Dr. Nat (of Rio Ritmo) – 8-8:30pm

Ahumanu (Liz, Joni & Jesse) – 8:30-9pm

Rand Coon & Randall Rospond (of the Haiku Hillbillys) – 9-9:30pm

Cyrus Clarke – 9:30-10pm

Tom Cherry – 10-10:30pm

Danyel Alana & Damon Parrillo – 10:30-11pm

Kathy Collins – 11-11:30pm

Randall Rospond w/ special guests David Choy, Danny Meola, Kerry Sofaly & Thomas Goodlunas –11:30pm-12:15am

Arts & Entertainment Feature

BarryFest 2011

Sunday (May 22), 12pm doors / 12:30pm show, Events Lawn, MACC, $20 advance/$26 day of show (+ applicable fees)

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Featuring SLAM with David Choy (12:30pm), Barry Flanagan (2:15pm), and Mana’o Radio Air Force Band (3:30pm; with Vince Esquire, Bob Jones, Gail Swanson, Dr. Nat, Randall Rospond and more)

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“Mana’o is a Hawaiian word which means thought, idea, opinion, theory, meaning, mind; to think, suppose, meditate, deem, consider. It is one of many non-English words used frequently in Hawai’i, often in the phrase sharing mana’o, or the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and expertise,” – manaoradio.com

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Memories—especially about loved ones lost—are like precious orbs, floating in our mind’s eye like bubbles that boast kaleidoscope colors different from every angle.

Through music and more, the late Barry Shannon touched countless Maui lives, bequeathing many such prismatic remembrances; and his legacy—particularly through Mana’o Radio—will continue to create and inspire.

But because I did not have the privilege of knowing Shannon personally—and have only recently had the chance to get to know his widow, the famed Kathy Collins—I don’t feel entitled to posthumously retell anything about a man who meant so much to so many.

That said, and with Shannon being the well-known Maui personality he was, I do feel some sense of having known him. As most know, nearly a decade ago, he and Collins co-founded the isle’s beloved Mana’o Radio (KEAO-LP 91.5 FM)–a noncommercial, entirely community-supported, low-power FM station that’s mission is “to inform, educate, and entertain the Maui community with radio broadcasts of multicultural and community-related programming.”

So even if you’re like me, and did not know Shannon himself, Mana’o has undoubtedly been a part of your Valley Isle life. This Sunday, the isle will celebrate Shannon’s memory with the fifth annual BarryFest, Mana’o Radio’s major fundraising event that (as coincidence would have it) celebrates both Shannon’s life, and the anniversary of the legacy he left behind.

And so this week, over an early morning breakfast of fried egg sandwiches (with crispy bacon) at Wailuku’s Tasty Crust, Collins was kind enough to share with me a little sacred anamnesis of her husband. As with any story, I’m grateful to be privy to such insight. And as with any story, I may not get it all exactly right—and I certainly cannot get it all—but of my peek at those precious memories, these are the colors I glimpsed.

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Here in Hawaii, Mother Nature’s topical benevolence masks the striking image of springtime renewal. Still, seasonal significance is not lost on us islanders, and Spring heralds the happiest, most hopeful crest of rejuvenating cycles.

“I like to say ‘re-birthday’ because it’s easier,” Kathy Collins says, of the anniversary of her late husband Barry Shannon’s passing. And coincidental timing notwithstanding, the couple’s story is wrapped in springtime re-vivication.

It was April 7, 2007 when Barry Shannon died–the day before Easter Sunday, and just weeks before he and his wife, Kathy Collins, were to host a huge fifth “Birthday Bash” fundraiser for Mana’o Radio; the delightfully eccentric, community-driven, low-power FM station that was the fruition of their lifelong dreams.

“I guess because we’d both been in radio since our teens, [for each of us] it had been a dream of ours to have our own station eventually,” says Collins.

In 1984, Shannon and Collins first met and began collaborating on KHEI KVIB (now a part of the KAOI Radio Group), management having paired them as on-air co-hosts because of their complimentary talents and longtime experience in radio.

“We became really good friends through this experience,” says Collins, her iconic rasp patient and wistful. “We had a lot in common… and spent a lot of time off the air together. About a year later, we began courting.” Collins says the word “courting” with a demure bounce and bat of her long lashes that is at once both giddily girlish and womanly wise.

“We spent hours and hours late at night writing and recording parody commercials and news,” she says. “We’d record every show and comb through it, picking out the best ten seconds and compiling it. We used to have so much fun together doing that.”

At the time, their mutual dream of owning their own radio station still seemed like a pipe dream, and their more immediate goal was to “make it big on the Mainland” with their radio show. So the couple moved to California’s Bay Area “with no job, no money, no family.” It was an experience that Collins calls “challenging”—especially because she had to temporarily leave behind her then eight-year-old son from a previous marriage.

“We were so disappointed when (the Mainland) didn’t receive us the way we’d hoped,” Collins laughs, opening her arms in a way that seems to self-mock both dreamers’ warranted naivete and the ever-unknowable whims of circumstance.

It was, after all, a time of great flux for the country at large—on the rebound of deep recession in the early ’80s.

The couple returned feeling defeated but with renewed vigor for their commitment to their Maui community, and resumed various posts in local radio.

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“Barry used to like to go to the (Haleakala) crater. It was like church for him,” says Collins. “He would go in for a week, get a cabin if he could, and camp. Oh, he loved it.”

While Collins cites how she and Shannon shared many similarities, she notes their key differences, too. While the crater may be Shannon’s church, Collins tells me with a wink, “if I have any time off, I prefer room service.”

And when I ask her what her church is, she says it’s probably dancing (she does tap and jazz several times a week with Judy Ridolfino, i.e. “Judy’s Gang”). Ironically, though Shannon was a Maui music stalwart, Collins says he did not like to dance; and in their time together danced but once, at Collins’s son’s wedding.

“Once, he finally talked me into going with him—and I’d never been inside the crater before,” Collins recalls. “It was Easter weekend… but the thing that was significant was that when we came out after five days, when we went home, there was a message on my machine that we’d been let go (from Pacific Radio Group).”

Though loosing their jobs, Collins says, “was nothing personal,” she says it was this experience that spurred Shannon to take a real look at their dream of opening their own radio station. What was once an impossibility now seemed more viable, as the FCC’s ’78 freeze on issuing licenses to rstations that operate with 100 watts or fewer appeared to be on the eve of reversal.

“At that point, he became obsessed with following the low power FM initiative; constantly monitoring the FCC sites, the news, trade publications,” says Collins. “He knew that if this FM thing ever happened would be the only way we would get our own radio station.”

Collins indicates that a lot of his early fire was in the spirit of anti-corporate anger. Indeed, low-power FM has been called by some as “the antidote to the modern radio industry.”

But in the years that followed The Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act of 2000—and Mana’o Radio’s birth—Collins says the community camaraderie Shannon then experienced softened him the beautiful reality their realized dream had created. Suddenly, it was not just their dream, but everyone’s. “It really did change him,” she says.

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“On his first ‘re-birthday’,” Collins says she packed four Tupperware containers with some of Shannon’s ashes, and took them to four, carefully chosen spots on the island—one sentimental locale for each cardinal direction. Smiling, as if with the taste of a kiss fresh off the lips, Collins says, “and I brought Hershey’s chocolate bars, with almond, smoked oysters with Ritz crackers, and a special trail mix that Barry would blend himself from Down to Earth.”

At each place, she says she would sit, meditate, cry, and snack on what was their favorite shared treats. And at each place she says she saw a spiritual sign.

Her first stop was in the North, at Sprecklesville, “among the sand dunes where we were married, and where we’d lived for seven years.” There, she saw a bright cardinal hopping amidst low branches and on stumps. But try as she did to photograph this flame-feathered friend, it was always just out of frame. She gave up, got back into her car, and just as she was about to leave the cardinal came fluttering back to rap its beak on her car window. Again, she tried to photograph it to no avail, and off it flew into the Paia morning.

“It was like it was teasing me!” Collins giggles, adding, “And if you knew Barry, you’d know he hated having his picture taken. So I knew, ‘Oh, that’s Barry.’”

Next, she drove East, to Shannon’s church, the crater; where on a still and cloudless day Collins says she watched a shimmering brume rise up from the crater floor, envelop her and disappear. And in the South, where she spread his ashes at Makena Landing, a very nearby honu (the first she says she’d seen in the wild) crested above the waves to look at her before dipping back into the blue.

As the day wound down, Collins says her final destination was Kahakuloa in the West. “It was getting dark, so I didn’t make it far… And it was windy. Now, this was my fourth Tupperware–and I’m not stupid–so I stood facing the wind, held up the container and let go.” Just then, she says the wind changed direction for just a moment. “Oh, I had Barry’s ashes all on my face and in my mouth! It was like he was saying, ‘OK, drama queen. Time to go home.’”

Collins says one day, she’d like to take some of his ashes to the Bay Area where they’d lived together, and where he’d also spent a lot of time in his early adulthood. “Little by little,” she says, “I’m letting him go.”

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Like Collins, while we all have to let our loved ones lost go–little by little, in different places and ways—we never have to relinquish our heart’s cherished memories. And the new memories we can collaboratively create—particularly in honor of those memories—only add to the vibrancy with which we choose to recall them.

Over half of Mana’o Radio’s volunteers are working musicians—many of whom will be performing at this year’s BarryFest—and who all share a passion for music over the air. Join them as they share their mana’o and celebrate their love for a valuable community mouthpiece, and the life of the man who helped make it possible.

Friday (September 17), 6:30pm check-in/7pm show, McCoy Studio Theater, MACC, Kahului; $22 adults/$11 keiki 12 & under

In Playboys and Killjoys: An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Comedy, American literary critic Harry Levin writes, “The most protean aspect of comedy is its potentiality for transcending itself, by responding to the conditions of tragedy by laughing in the darkness.” The very protean Comedy Hui cast members—who boldly and wittily transcend themselves with regular improvisational shows—have had audiences guffawing in the black-box darkness of the McCoy Studio Theater, with the only tragedy being they perform but monthly. For September’s showcase, the wahine of the troupe take over, with special guest Kathy Collins. Witty though they may be, attendees must also have their wits about them. In the style of Who’s Line Is It Anyway?, audience members are asked to (quickly, mind you) shout-out characters and situations for each theater game played, which the hui impressively executes without the aide of costumes, props or set pieces, in the “pure” styling of Los Angeles’ Groundlings Theatre, the training ground of director/producer Amanda Taulere. (They do, it should be mentioned, get occasional assists from their “funkalicious” live band.) It’s entirely engaging, at times outrageous and is sure to have you laughing all the way to next month’s installment. Hui: comedyhui.com; MACC: 242-7469, mauiarts.org

Stay Pau Alrede Update: Guest comedian Kathy Collins gets lei’d by John Ziegler, after the audience sings “Happy Birthday” to Collins, who celebrated another ellipses around the sun on September 13.

Friday (July 2), 5:30 – 8pm (street closed at 6pm), Market St., Wailuku, Free

There’s a panging sensation at the back of my eyeballs, whenever I must suppress my misty pride for Wailuku’s Market Street. Sure it’s home to MauiTime, but it’s the composite of our cooler-than-cool neighbors that make this place so gosh-darned special.

Daytime strolls may best capture the street’s sunny charm, but for one night a month—when the sun dips low and traffic is stopped—Market Street proves why it’s the best host for full-effect First Friday fare. July’s festivities celebrate a special second-birthday for purveyors of HI-style hip, Maui Thing. Their Summer Line will make its grand debut down the catwalk, while Kathy Collins hosts and Willie K performs (6:30 – 8pm). If you missed last year’s baby luau bash, you missed out. That fashion show may well have been the best ever, on the island—and this year, they’re bound to outdo themselves (as seems to be Maui Thing’s way). Mana’o Radio will do a live broadcast from the show, and 15percent of sales at MauiThing will benefit the local station… Recently reincarnated, Wailuku Coffee Company (formerly Café Marc Aurel), celebrates their rebirth with grand (re-)opening festivities (thank goodness). There, Sheryl Renee & The Hand Jive Trio will perform (8pm), as a benefit for the Arts Education for Children Group. Too, check out Gene and Shea Argel at Café O’Lei, the Pam Petersen Band at Banyan Tree Park, a cash-prize poetry slam at Gallerie Ha, and ‘awa bar at Native Intelligence. Event Info: 808-878-1888, Booth Info: 808-249-9710, 1stFridayWailuku@gmail.com

Lately, it seems busty blondes or a shirtless Taylor Lautner are the only fail-proof ways to pop out a box-office hit. However, back in the day, as anyone who’s ever seen “Shakespeare in Love” would know, a yappy dog and a clown was the go-to equation for a crowd-pleaser. Well, “Sylvia,” to be performed this month by B.E.T. (Bare Essential Theater), involves both a dog named Sylvia, and the principal of my old high school. Sounds like a recipe for success to me. The script is about a middle-aged man in New York who brings home a dog, which his wife disapproves of. Their compromise is that the dog can stay for a few days while they decide if they are going to keep her or not. I am envisioning jealous-wife tantrums, a grown woman acting like a dog, my principal with some witty one-liners, and hopefully lots of good laughs. The play will be starring Lisa Teichner, Lou Young, Ute Finch, and Kathy Collins. Your only chance to see it is at 6:30 pm, January 11th, at the Historic Iao Theater. And the best part, it’s absolutely free! Visit the MauiOnstage Website or call at 244-2680 for more information, or if you are beginning to think that you too have an untapped theatrical talent, and would like to participate in the next production. Also check out my calendar listing for this event at the Maui Time website!

Edgar Allan Poe

So many options for scaring the kids this month at the Iao Theatre courtesy of the Maui Onstage group. Starting with First Friday, October 2 bring the kids down at 6pm for the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, also known as the headless horseman story, its FREE!

Obake Stories are Scary!

Later in the month of Rocktober Cathy Collins and Jeffrey Gere are presenting ‘Obake Stories’. Man if some good local creepy ghost legends don’t freak you out then nothing will! Scare the pants off the kids for $10 at the Iao Theater on October 17, 2009.

On October 24 and 25th you can catch “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe, performed by Jerry Eiting, Steven Dascoulias, and Casey Murphy. Its a tale of revenge and murder. Nothing is creepier than Poe. Did you know he married his 13 year old cousin? Show starts at 7:30 pm and is $5.

Spooky Real Estate on Market Street

Last the Haunted Theater is back! Iao Theater is transformed into transylvania and packed with ghouls and zombies for your horrifying pleasure on October 29, 30, and 31. Its only $2! It will be open from 6:30-9:30 pm and on Halloween from 6-10 pm. Enjoy the nightmares kids!