In college, we never really had any agendas… nothing very important to do, nowhere to go… probably like most.  Whenever we had free time, we just couldn’t get enough of each other.  I remember Dave coming along one night.  He was very humble, extremely good-hearted and funny.  He completed our group perfectly.  He always brought his guitar, and we always tried to sing.  Most songs only consisted of the first verse and chorus, repeated 3 times… if we even made it that far.  We mixed it up by changing the location from Dave’s rattans to UH to Lois’s.  One night, in particular, started a small dream.  I drove everyone in my mom’s van to a neighborhood near the beach.  We set up camp in front of a dark house on a small strip of sand on the beach and began to play music.  Dave began to play some chords, and, one by one, each of us started adding words to it.  I can’t exactly remember who said what, but that’s when the Dawn Patrol officially got started.  It was Dave, me, Jen, DJ, Gary, Adolph, Jeff, Scott, Neil, and Brian.

I’ve got my friends with me, We’re sitting here by the sea talking bout the good ole days,  White caps in the light, harvest moon in the midnight skyJust a typical night in the islandsDon’t know where to go, sitting here, the Dawn Patrol

We’ve still got a ways to go til sunlightWe added the last verse later and tried to write more.  We first played it in public at Jon’s birthday.  He had a few of his friends get on the mic and just do it.  So, we did it.  They liked it, so we offered the song to them, no strings attached, for their first album.  They bit.  We went in to the studio to sing the tune for Jon’s reference, and their producer offered us a record deal.  Yeah, we still can’t believe it either.  We celebrated by getting some fast food.  I still have the receipt with the hand written date, a big “We made it”, and our signatures on it.  That project fell through.

Years later, after Dave had married, we saw each other at this photo shoot for another fast food place.  Yeah, I know… weird.  So, we just jokingly talked about singing and playing again – maybe even for real gigs.  We started to gather up all the songs that we liked.  Dave introduced all of these great artists to my repertoire – Patty Griffin, Eva Cassidy, Jackson Browne, India Irie.  Shayna, Dave’s wife, was a driving force behind our start-up.  She set up a mini concert for all of our friends in her mother’s back yard over-looking Waikiki.  We handed out little comment cards with lines for – favorite song, song requests and comment.  After that, we started off mostly playing at Dave’s relatives’ weddings and first birthday parties (which was a little weird considering that most of our songs were all slow or depressing – Rain by Patty Griffin, These Days by Jackson Browne, etc).  Well, most of Dave’s cousin’s already got married.  So, we were gig-less, and we told Jon about our dreams of playing music.  He suggested that we cut a CD with him.  For those who do not know Jon, he was a member of a group called Pure Heart and later became a solo artist.  He and some friends built their own recording studio in Halawa.  The rest is history. Oh, so Dave came up with all of these great songs, one after another, while I was mostly stuck writing songs with the same– well, that’s a whole other story, though.

We have been lucky along the way to have had such great support – I started to name all of them, but realized it was almost an impossible task.  We are just so grateful.  Thank you so much for letting us and our music into your lives!  I know this one won’t disappoint you. 

Toes Inspiration

This song is really about age and loss. When I was young, I can remember standing on my mom or dad’s feet and being carried around by them walking. They were always there, constant, and always so tall. That was a long time ago. When I wrote this song, I had realized that time wasn’t slowing down. I was getting to that age where you realize you can’t hold on to everyone special. Sometimes they just slip away without any warning. Sometimes their shoes seem too big to fill. Sometimes, you feel like you don’t know where to go once they’ve gone. There’s really no answers to this… just questions.

Mr. Meredith Inspiration

The inspiration came for this song after watching a show on public television. Many people may know about the contributions and sacrifices of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, who have been hailed as saints for the civil rights movements. However, there are a multitude of others who became a part of that same fight, unintentionally, because of their desires to just be equal. Mr. James Meredith is one such man, fighting his way through a hostile crowd in order to get the same type of education as his neighbors. In asking for no less than to be treated equal, I saw them as “angels”. Sometimes they become ones without knowing or expecting.