For the Love of Music

By Amanda C. Gregg

Will Lydgate continues his family's tradition of contributing to life on Kaua'i with a residency program for top musicians at his Steelgrass studio, which he's using to promote music education on the Island

Continuing a family legacy of contributing to the good of Kaua’i, Will Lydgate establishes a musical residency program for top music instructors

Will Lydgate is heading off the Island to pursue his calling at Berklee School of Music in Boston. But before leaving, the bass player with deep family roots on Kaua’i made sure he got several projects off the ground, including work on his eco-chocolate farm Steelgrass, bidding aloha to his students at Kaua’i Pacific School, growing his production studio and setting up a residency program for music teachers.

But that’s only part of the well-established resume of the soon-to-be “chowdah head.” Many have likely heard his song Preeta played weekly on KQNG radio. But he also founded the only professional-grade recording studio on Kaua’i, also called Steelgrass. Once a woodshop, the transformed space is now capable of handling everything from voiceover work to cutting an album.

The soundproof digs are just as inspired as they are high end: Floors are covered with exotic rugs, and walls are graced with art from all over the world, and bamboo and grasscloth wallpaper and purple Styrofoam pyramids help tune out everything from feral chickens to trade winds.

Lydgate at his steelgrass studio. Amanda Gregg photos

“Aesthetics are important, as is being inspired,” Lydgate says of the space.

That design made his studio ideal for sound work on films such as Madagascar II and Kung Fu Panda, which meant hosting the likes of Ben Stiller and Jack Black. (He’s also recorded there with ukulele legend Jake Shimabukuro).

Though many likely recognize Lydgate for his name and community work rather than his studio and musical prowess, he is on his way to changing that.

Lydgate’s great-grandfather was Mortimer Lydgate, who first came to Hawaii in April 1865.

“He was a much-beloved community member among all cultures and ethnic groups on the Island,” Lydgate says.

Acquiring property or making money in the sugar industry wasn’t one of his great-grandfather’s priorities (in fact, it wasn’t until the 1990s that his great-grand-father’s descendants were able to purchase the land they now call Steelgrass Farm, as he didn’t believe in land ownership). Yet land is part of how his great-grandfather’s legacy lives on, as Lydgate Beach Park was named in honor of his contributions to the community.

“I feel a special privilege to be part of an old Hawai’i family with deep roots on Kaua’i and on the Big Island,” Lydgate says.

Approximately a year after arriving in Hilo, his great-grandfather gave his first sermon on Kaua’i on the first Sunday in May 1896, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Lydgate has already recorded some big names at his studio

Noting that the best part of the Lydgate family heritage is the public service his great-grandfather set as an example, Lydgate feels honored to follow his great-grandfather’s lead, which not only includes setting aside land for parks and founding the Boy Scouts on Kaua’i, but helping start the public library in Lihu’e and working to spiritually inspire others.

Lydgate will now honor his family’s tradition of helping serve the community in a different way – one that honors music.

“My goal is to get skills and to bring them back here where they can be useful,” he says. “Someday I would love to see a music education center somewhere on the Island – a place for kids to come after school to play contemporary music with skilled instructors. Give the kids something to do that involves their imagination.”

Giving back to the people and the land is in Lydgate’s blood. He’s done everything from co-founding the Kaua’i Agriculture Initiative, an islandwide volunteer program for sustainable agriculture advocacy, to developing initiatives such as the Mayor’s Garden, which grows food for the Kaua’i Independent Food Bank. Lydgate also helped create the Garden Island Range and Food Festival, an annual locovore event that celebrates locally grown and raised food.

Of course, he’s also helped put Steelgrass Farm, a hot spot for eco-tour fanatics, on the map.

Lydgate came by his musical talents from both parents. Damon Moss photo

“Steelgrass Farm has always been in the back of our minds, and I have been groomed to run it for years,” Lydgate says of the property he co-owns with his sister Emily. Lydgate has put his proverbial blood, sweat and tears into the farm, built with the ideology of restoring farm viability to Kaua’i.

Named after bamboo’s nickname, “steelgrass,” the farm grows its own chocolate, boasts hand-pollinated vanilla orchids, cultivates timber bamboo, makes award-winning palm-blossom honey and raises livestock ranging from goats to Araucana hens. It also cultivates something a little more unique than that: music and the arts.

Lydgate formed the Steelgrass Residency program with Berklee School of Music in 2009, which donates housing at Steelgrass Farm for qualified Berklee faculty. The relationship means music teachers can live and board for free on Kaua’i for a week of public performances, master classes and studio recordings. Though Lydgate attended a five-week performance program at Berklee in 2001 and was awarded a D’Addario

Strings Scholarship to attend the school from 2006 to 2007, the residency program has nothing to do with that, or with his return to the college this month. It just happens to be a good program he wants to support.

“There’s no quid pro quo – we just love art,” he says of offering faculty free housing. “There’s no angle.”

The Berklee residency program isn’t the farm’s only philanthropic opportunity, as this year it will begin its Bamboo Sculpture project, a two-week residency for artists to create outdoor bamboo sculpture the last two weeks of August. Selected artists will get to live on the farm during that time and will be given room and board, (as well as bamboo).

It makes sense that the farm would support music and the arts, as Lydgate has been around both most of his life. His dad had a woodshop and played guitar, and his mom played the piano. Lydgate was about 9 when the influence began to take hold.

“Probably in elementary school – I remember when the band teacher brought in the stringed instruments and we got to play them. I was drawn to the cello, which was prophetic because now I am a bass player,” he says, adding that his first official instrument was trombone, and that bass wasn’t something he picked up until age of 14.

Lydgates’s Steelgrass studio is one of a kind on Kaua‘i. Amanda Greeg photos

Teen-hood for Lydgate also included time at the Peninsula School in California, a sort of organic, progressive school that commends artistic vision, something he continued when he came to Island School as a junior. It was there he met teacher Mary Alfiler (who was the bassist in the rock band Ace of Cups), who allowed him to help teach music to younger students.

It was a natural progression, therefore, for him to pursue music and become a music educator at Kaua’i Pacific School, something he admits he might enjoy even more than his students.

And though it was clear during his last week that those students will miss him, now that Steelgrass Farm is stable enough it’s time for him to return to the Mainland to further his studies.

Of course, he won’t forget the keiki. In fact, it’s with them in mind that Lydgate plans to ensure they, too, get a similar experience to his.

His studies will include work with professors such as Susan Rogers (who engineered Prince’s Purple Rainrecord) and Prince Charles Alexander (whose client list includes The Notorious B.I.G.)

“We are starting a Berklee Hawaii Scholarship fund for Hawaii kids to get help going to Berklee,” Lydgate says. “I hope to see more (local) kids going over there.”

Lydgate will study bass at Berklee

Studying there gave him the taste, to be sure. “It planted the seed of great music education,” he says.

And even though he will be away for a while, Kaua’i will always be home.

“This will always be my home base … I can’t think of a better place to have roots,” he says – an apt metaphor for a musician who will be returning to his farm. “What place can offer the beauty that Kaua’i can?”

Kaua'i Kine

By Amanda C. Gregg

Sally French’s Black Spring. Photo courtesy Bruna Stude’

It was amid the riveting, recent news of the death of Osama bin Laden that I was sent an email quoting Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. on the topic of celebrating the demise of another human being: “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

It made me think of all that is crazy in this world – fanatical and foolish – and made me want to fall to my knees in gratitude for all we have to be thankful for on this beautiful, blessed Garden Isle.

So here are some things we can be joyful about, things we can truly celebrate …

Some of our best art has always held a mirror to our time …

With a bit of beauty, a bit of humor, a nod to violence, pop culture and the context of our own cache of images, Kaua’i artist Sally French whimsically reflects our time, using the same sort of juxtaposed imagery used by famed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, with a tad more realism and contemporary references (like, say, a white Pikachu contrasted on a blood-red canvas). It also seems her balloon-like animals reference the work of Jeff koons, but that could just be me. French’s latest works, titled “The Black Spring” and “Black Rain,” are on display at galerie 103 in Kukui’ula Village in Poipu. French, whose notoriety outreaches the confines of our island by a long shot, describes her latest pieces as a chronicling of the “events in our unsettling world.”

Teamwork created this poster

The collection includes work that spans the last decade, and some that has toured Mainland museums. Galerie 103 ownerBruna Stude says much of French’s imagery from previous work persists through her new work, though brought forward in a different context. French explains that it was either her or the world spinning into dark places that affected her work, noting the onset of the spring season also played a key role. Viewers can decide for themselves whether the blues, pinks, yellows, flowers, birds and insects allude to spring or something else. The exhibit is on display through July 2. An informal discussion and walk-through of her work will take place at the gallery at 6 p.m. June 16. To learn more, go to galerie103.com

Green Guru

By Amanda C. Gregg

Green economist Ken Stokes of Kapa'a is committed to achieving sustainability on Kaua'i 'from the bottom up,' and if Garden Isle folks invest in renewable energy and smart design, he is confident it can be done

He lives in a treehouse and rides a bike to get from A to Z. Though that might sound childlike, there are mature, progressive and forward-thinking ideologies and practices emanating from green economist and Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative board member candidate Ken Stokes, who proves by example that sustainability is fun, fresh and possible.

Calling a 480-square-foot space with an equally small carbon footprint home, Stokes and his wife of seven years, Susan Dixon, cite one word to describe living this way, above it all (literally): Discipline.

“Everything has a place,” Stokes says. “Everything is put back where it goes.”

Laughing, a bit knowingly, Dixon agrees. “It’s particularly hard with clothes.”

Overlooking the Kapa’a reef among the branches of a monkey-pod tree with a neighboring banyan that helps with shade, the couple has carved out a mind-blowingly organized and cohesive sense of place in their treehouse, where even books on a bookcase (which doubles as a wall) are meticulously in alignment, creating a visual order and elegance in this small space.

Stokes lives simply and sustainably with a place for everything and everything in its place

Nothing is out of place in the Stokes’ tree-household, where there’s serenity along with a certain poetic freedom from massive amounts of “things.”

In fact, the few “things” in the household don’t collect dust, but rather are used to the maximum.

Perhaps this existence is a bit of a throwback to childhood for Stokes, as he had a rural upbringing all his own, having grown up in Alaska (when Juneau wasn’t much bigger than Kapa’a, he says). Stokes, whose mother was an artist and grade-school teacher and father was a corporate manager with the Department of Interior, says he and his siblings spent their time skating on a nearby lake, sledding on the hill up the road and relinquishing their back porch to the black bears during spawning season, “so they would have a place to de-bone their fish from the stream,” he says.

As for how he spends his free time on-island now, it’s a mix of blogging, bodysurfing and cycling, along with finding inspiration in the “ordinary heroes around Kaua’i whom I call ‘taroists,’ because they see something that needs doing and they just do it.”

Of course that’s a taro/kalo reference, and Stokes is all about the “garden” in Garden Island.

Stokes is a self-proclaimed “life learner” who studied urban economics in graduate school at Syracuse University. A tad impatient when it came to getting out there in the world and making a difference, Stokes completed three years’ course work before leaving without his Ph.D., because, he says, he was ready to work on cities, noting he didn’t want to teach. Upon leaving grad school, Stokes continued learning on the road, as he was hired to help create strategic plans in cities across North America.

“It was a lot of miles on airplanes in those days,” he says. “I was fortunate to get involved in urban economic planning and to head 12 cities to get a federal grant for urban economic planning.” One of those cities was New Haven, Conn., where Stokes served two terms on the City Council. He then attended Stanford to get his MBA, because he became interested in a tech venture and also wanted to augment his management skills.

Ken Stokes in his Kapa‘a treehouse

Following that, he came to Oahu after a failed business venture with some colleagues.

“I don’t know how to describe what happened with my flashy MBA,” he says. “I spent every penny I had on a business plan and concept I and some of my colleagues had, and failed to raise capital. I was broke and brain dead and moved to Oahu in ’87. It was a left turn in my life. I got off the career track. I decided I wanted to live.”

Stokes became founding manager of the state’s first relevant corporations incubator, Kaimuki Tech Enterprise Center. “I opened the place and filled it with good tech ideas,” he says. “Unfortunately, I didn’t last very long inside of that state bureaucracy. I did kind of keep a hand in a new tech startup, and ran an upscale services company for three or four years right at the height of the visitor boom in 1990-91, when there was a lot of Japanese investment.”

Stokes eventually sold the company to Japanese investors and came to Kaua’i.

After meeting and falling in love with his wife here, he began talking with farmers and kupuna, and it wasn’t too long before he wrote a book, Tending the Garden Island,which set out a gardener’s mission in terms of sustainability, with respectful deference to the host Hawaiian culture. The book takes into consideration our ecological footprint, and offers the simple acknowledgement that our island moniker has the very word “garden” within it, suggesting to “think ahupua’a” when it comes to organizing thoughts on ecosystems. Stokes’ synopsis of the book is that it is “about achieving sustainability on our island from the bottom up.”

Next up was launching his increasingly popular DIY blog on sustainability, SusHI (Kauaian.net/blog), a site that has tipped off a few news stories here and there and has attracted attention around the globe.

Though some may recognize Stokes more for being a KIUC candidate in this current election (online voting deadline is March 19), it seems being a board member is a job for which Stokes has been prepping for decades, and one he hopes, given the opportunity, will enable a continuation of forward-thinking collaboration with KIUC board members such as Ben Sullivan and Carol Bain.

Ken Stokes makes a smaller carbon footprint by riding his motorized bike

A man with a plan – “greener, sooner, cheaper,” Stokes has often said – investing in renewable energy and smart design is one way that will help Kaua’i. Using the housing sector as an example, Stokes says we’ll have to switch away to sustainable systems, not just toward clean technologies.

“You know, most practitioners in sustainability these days are very depressed because it just seems incomprehensible that we will be able to shift these systems in time,” Stokes says, wryly. “But I’ve always been an optimist … I also get that some of these behaviors can change in the blink of an eye, and if it’s true as the numbers bear out that it’s a smart money move to invest in solar for your house – which I believe is taking off as we speak – we could literally convert in a fairly short time once people got clear that it was not just affordable, but that you could make more money doing that than from a savings account.”

Investing roughly $40,000-$50,000 in solar (which Stokes says is closer to $20,000 per household after incentives) will have its return. “Even if you have to go borrow to make that investment, and you pay it off in seven years, what happens in the eighth year? Can you say, ‘free’? That’s the attraction.”

Stokes says it’s this kind of thinking that could make high utility bills a thing of the past. “You could take a bank loan whose monthly payment was the same as your current utility bill, pay it for seven years and then, it’s free,” he notes.

Stokes lives in his Kapa‘a treehouse with wife Susan Dixon

The strategic plan for KIUC doesn’t forecast or plan for energy coming from the household sector, which is a concern for Stokes.

“I’m a strategic planner who’s not excited by this document,” he says. “But the wonderful thing is you’re refining it all the time, and that is something that occurs at the board level.”

As for those out there who might feel getting residents off the grid will leave the utility stuck with core costs, Stokes said that’s why the co-op is in need of a new business model, the most obvious element being that you split it into two parts: generation and distribution.

Regardless of the election outcome, however, Stokes says he is willing to help any way he can.

“This is stuff that needs to happen whether I or anybody else gets elected or not,” he says. “I’m certainly not going anywhere – I’m getting older – but I do have a sense of urgency and yes, I’m committed. This is me, this is my life, this is what I do. The prospects of participating in the discussions that help us finally turn our utility toward a sustainable future is:You’ve got to want to be involved.”

To take a peek at Ken Stokes’ sustainability site, go to: kauaian.net/blog.

Kaua'i Kine

By Amanda C. Gregg

Cheri, Tom and Bethany Hamilton, Sarah Hill, Noah, Becky and Tim Hamilton. Amanda C. Gregg photo

Such pride we have for our North Shore hero Bethany Hamilton, and now again she’s given the island something to be proud of: A well-made movie telling her story. If I had a few words to describe Soul Surfer, I’d say it’s a mix of inspired awe, respect and gratitude.

Awe in how quickly she got back on that surfboard (within a month after the shark attack), respect for her courage and gratitude for reminding everyone that compassion moves us to do great things. If ever there was courage encapsulated, it’s in Hamilton’s story – and lest we forget how young she was, 13, when all of this happened – and she handled it with more courage and resilience than almost any adult could. Add that she is a gorgeous, talented and agile athlete, and it’s no wonder that we want everyone to remember she is from Kaua’i.

Nalani Thain’s winning art

There’s a great scene in the film following the attack where Hamilton travels with her Christian group to Phuket, Thailand, after the 2004 tsunami and teaches a young boy (who has lost his family and is justifiably afraid of the water) to surf. Talk about chickenskin. At the end of the movie, we learn this scene wasn’t just Hollywood hyperbole, as we see photos of Hamilton with the little boy on the surfboard on a split screen alongside the credits. Other inspired images during that time include a shot of her as the first pitch honoree for the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees, along with a list of her accolades which include winning the FOX Teen Choice Courage Award, the Wahine O Ke Kai Award at the SIMA Waterman’s Ball, being an Olympic Torch honoree and named Woman of the Year by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. Despite all that recognition, one poignant comment Hamilton’s brother Noah made at the film premiere was that she is grateful to the island’s residents for keeping her life normal, which he said, his sister “cherishes.”

Well, we cherish you, Bethany. Here’s to you. Your movie is going to be huge, and we know you won’t forget the “little people” …

I'd like to also congratulate theo winners of the American Girl drawing contest sponsored by Kaua’i Visitors Bureau and Kaua’i Monk Seal Watch Program. The contest comes just a few months after Kaua’i's Kanani Akina American Girl doll won the company’s 2011 Girl of the Year award. Drawing contest winners included in the 8- to 10-year-old category: Isabella Fox (first place), Brooke Kanna (second place) and Sarah Santos (third place); and in the 11- to 12-year-old category: Nalani Thain (first place), Camryn Garcia (second place) and Grace Yatsko (third place). Kudos to Kaua’i Visitors Bureau executive director Sue Kanoho and author Lisa Yee, who helped share Kaua’i's aloha spirit with the rest of the world by putting a doll like Kanani Akina in the spotlight. Akina, a multiethnic doll with a rich community of ohana who celebrates Hawai’i's cultural traditions and cares about issues like saving the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, also dances hula, does standup paddleboarding and eats shave ice. Hana maika’i, ladies …