This, The Spooktacular, ran the 26th and 27th. 26th was the public event, and 27th was two kids shows in the morning – they literally ship the kids in throughout the whole island via bus…

About an hour before the show the stage manager came up to me and the audio guy and said that “we don’t have an intro. We have an intro every year for this and we have none right now.” We ran through what we had and then through what we could do with the time given and she said the magic words “We have 5 dancers in the back with jail outfits and the conductor will be dressed as V.” Neither of them had seen V before, but I had the plan from the moment she said that and went with it. We made 2 CD’s, one with emergency service sounds (fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, etc…), and one that started with 5 explosions, went into the sound of a battle (multiple machine guns, tanks, etc…), when they all died down you could hear a bomber dropping three bombs, in the silence after the bombs you heard 5 quick burst of single shot gun fire and then 3 spaced out shots…

The stage manager and audio guy sold the idea to the conductor and here’s what we had happen:
1) Sound began with the 5 explosions
2) Lights randomly lit up and off all over the theater and the fog machine covered the front of the stage…
3) About 10 second into the mahem, the dancers came out (in jail uniforms) and pretended to be running from something…
4) About 10 second later the three bombs hit, and then the burst of 5 gun shots – two of the dancers played dead…
5) The single shots took out the other three dancers
6) The conductor walked out as a triumphant V…

Anyway, you should have seen it. I should have recorded it, but I need a new camera. Very cool, especially if you consider how quickly we came up with it and that all sound came off of my iPhone!

We did not do this intro for the kids shows which ran this morning – don’t stress, we have more taste than that!

This one ran on the 25th – long day – long show (3+ hours). I ran rail for the show, which is why the pics are taken from stage left (my show position)…

I love all hawaiian shows, and Kahulu is a good friend of mine (Napua’s sister) – so this one was a no brainer in the “was-it-good-?-o-meter”…

This one ran last night…

I love anything with a huge percussion section – especially when they know what to do with it. These guys kick butt!!!

This one started yesterday at 10:00 and ended just a few hours ago.  I set the stage with the band roadies – very cool bunch of guys who know a lot of guys I know – so we had some fun talking…

The show was good – very tight – Huey sounds exactly like he sounded 20 years ago (which is always refreshing to me for some odd reason)…

I’ve run the stage for every one of these and plan on doing it for the rest of them.  This, and the Slack Key Festival, are my two favorite shows of the year.  I simply love running the stage for these shows – cool, talented, people make what I do the best job in the world!

There’s no issues with the talent for these shows.  They’re all relaxed, want to show the audience what the ukulele is all about, and there just to have fun – which really allows them to do whatever.  The audience loves it…

I play the uke myself – so I’m all over it!