Boots Lupinui

So maybe better we just leave it to the professionals like Eddie and Myrna Kamai.

But in the early days of 2017, Eddie Kamai passed away.

And that line of storytelling ended.

Later that same year, my wife Cheryl and I, we moved to Kohala.

And we hadn't even been there for very long when I ran into a couple of guys I hadn't met in years, two great Hawaiian musicians.

They come over for dinner, they bring their wives and their instruments, of course, in that order, of course.

We eat dinner, we move to the living room, the cases pop open, the guitars and ukulele come out, and we start playing.

We're playing old Hawaiian music.

We're playing local music that was on the radio when we were kids.

There was a couple of Eagles songs in there, all kinds of music.

That jam session lasted until four in the morning.

Yeah, our wives are thrilled.

But the whole time I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about how good we sound.

We sound like we're already a band.

I'm thinking, I want to keep this feeling.

I want to feel this again and again.

So later that day, I tell my wife that I've had these ideas for telling stories for years, for making documentaries, but I never thought I could do that kind of thing.

But Eddie Kamai only had so long to tell stories, and I don't know how long I have to tell stories.

I told her I wanted to go hunting.

for the old unrecorded songs of Kohala.