Alicia Bay Laurel

Artist Information

Biography

Marinated from birth in the world music, classical music, folk music, jazz and Broadway tunes my parents played on the hi-fi, I succeeded (after two years of begging) in starting piano lessons at age seven, mastered the Bumble Bee Boogie by age twelve, and was levitated into learning guitar and writing songs when I saw Bob Dylan in concert, shortly before I turned fourteen.
A couple of years later, my cousin Jan Lebow married John Fahey, and I began listening to his recorded music and loved it. One day I cornered him when he was bored at a family party and got him to teach me open tunings. That became my sound.
Most of my musician friends played rock and roll, so I was overjoyed when I first visited Hawaii in 1969 and discovered that open-tuned guitar picking was the national music.
Between 1969 and 1974 I enjoyed a phenomenal career as a bestselling author, illustrator, book designer and media icon for natural living and sustainability. My book Living on the Earth was the first paperback book ever on the New York Times Bestseller List, and it's still in print in English, Japanese and Korean. I wrote, illustrated and designed eight more books, appeared on talk shows, and got written up in lots of magazines.
In 1974, I moved to Maui. There I learned to play slack key guitar and sing Hawaiian songs from some of the most soulful people I'd ever met anywhere. I learned to sing in Hawaiian from recording artist G-girl Keli'iho'omalu's mother, legendary singer and choreographer Auntie Clara Kalalau Tolentino. I learned slack key guitar from Clara's son-in-law Jerome Smith in Hana, and from Uncle Sol Kawaihoa in Wailuku.
In the early '80's, I began playing in restaurants and bars for the tourists. Over a period of twenty years I studied vocal technique with five teachers, including pop singer/songwriter Pamela Polland. (I STILL take vocal tech lessons!)
My lifelong love of jazz (the first LP I bought at age 13 was Local Color by Mose Allison) led me to learn a repertoire of standards and the jazz chords I needed to accompany myself. In the late '80s I started playing at weddings and learned love songs of many genres.
From 1988 to 1999 I owned a wedding business that put on 3000 weddings, and I sang at hundreds of them, sometimes accompanying a troop of hula dancers.
In 2000, Random House released the thirtieth anniversary edition of Living on the Earth. I sold the wedding business and went on tour for eight months with an original one-woman show of comedy stories from my life, and psych folk songs I wrote during the time I created the book. I self-produced "Music From Living on the Earth," a solo CD of these songs, to sell while on the book tour, and, to my astonishment, it was not only reviewed but selected as an album pick on All Music Guide. Then a psychedelic folk radio show in Belgium started playing it. Then EM Records in Osaka, Japan, licensed a foreign edition.
When I returned to Hawaii from the tour, I self-produced "Living in Hawaii Style," a CD of original and historic songs, mostly slack key guitar and tropical jazz. The CD features Sam Ahia, arguably the best jazz guitarist/vocalist in the islands, and Lei'ohu Ryder, a renowned spiritualist and chanter with a string of fantastic CDs of her own.
This CD got airplay both in Hawaii and on the legendary Ports of Paradise radio show in California, was also released by EM Records in Japan, and, in July 2002, I was the only woman headlining at the Big Island Slack Key Guitar Festival. I toured in Hawaii and California to promote this CD with a new one-woman story and music show. Along the way I met and was mentored by Auntie Nona Beamer, a singer, hula dancer and chanter, songwriter and storyteller from one of Hawaii's most famous musical families.
I've spent a lot of time around avant-garde improvisational musicians in my life. I lived with Ramon Sender, one of the founding composers of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the early '60's, and co-designer of the Buchla Box, the first synthesizer built on the west coast. In the early '70's, we co-authored a book, Being of the Sun, containing information about drones, modes and open tunings.
In the late '90's, I began partnering with Joe Gallivan, one of the pillars of the jazz fusion scene in New York and in Europe, who was the first to play a Moog drum in concert, who played in the Gil Evans Orchestra for two years and in a quartet with Larry Young for three years, and about whom an entire section is written in the Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD.
These men have been mentors to me, and, while Ramon's influence is evident in my first CD, which includes his choral arrangement of my song “In The Morning,” Joe's influence is most evident in my third release, "What Living's All About."
Recorded at Architecture, a great LA recording studio owned and run by Scott Fraser (audio engineer and Grammy-nominated producer for the Kronos Quartet), “What Living’s All About” features a fabulous line-up of session players, notably avant-garde/rock/jazz guitar legend Nels Cline (best known as the guitarist with Wilco), and John B. Williams, bassist for Nancy Wilson, the Manhattan Transfer, the Tonight Show Big Band and the Arsenio Hall Show Band.
I co-produced the CD with Ron Grant, an Academy Award winning film composer, who arranged and conducted some of the material, but I also relied heavily upon the improvisational skills of my great players, and they surpassed my expectations.
In Performing Songwriter Magazine's May 2007 Issue, "What Living's All About" was one of the Editor's 12 Top DIY Picks, and in June 2007, the first track, "Floozy Tune," placed in the Top 20 Finalists in the Jazz Category of the Unisong International Songwriting Contest. In December 2008, "Floozy Tune" placed as a Finalist in the 100% Music Songwriting Contest. In summer 2008, “Floozy Tune” received Honorable Mention (7th place) in the World division (which includes jazz), in the Indie International Songwriting Contest.
Rave reviews of the CD appeared in eJazz News in London (written by John Stevenson, the editor), and in Feminist Review in New York City. The second track, "America The Blues" was a featured download on indieguitarists.com in August 2007. The first track, "Floozy Tune," was featured on MVY Radio in October 2007, my cover of "Nature Boy" was featured on "Psyche Van Het Folk" radio from Antwerp, Belgium, and the entire CD was featured for a year on Radio Free Phoenix.
In October 2006, at the invitation of Artist Power Bank, an environmentalist arts organization headed by legendary rock producer Takashi Kobayashi, I did eight concerts in four weeks in Japan, and in May and June 2007, I toured Japan again, this time performing fifteen concerts, including two festivals, in seven weeks, and appearing as the subject of a TV documentary on Asahi Broadcasting Station.
In April 2008 I returned to Japan for another two-month concert tour, including a concert at the opening of a successful gallery show of my art in Tokyo. My fourth Japan tour in less than three years ran from September 15 to November 5, 2009, and included my 4th gallery show in Japan, a workshop, and eleven concerts.
My book Living on the Earth has been in print in Japanese translation since 1972, making me an icon of natural and sustainable living in Japan. I continue to work as an art illustrator in Japan, providing drawings reproduced on book covers, album covers, in magazines, on clothing, on posters and other merchandise. I had four art gallery shows and performed at the art openings of two of them.
In 2008, working with Joe Gallivan, I sang and played guitar in Jazz in the Schools programs funded by a grant from the Jazz Foundation of America. In November 2008 I headlined at two joint concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area with famed Australian singer-songwriter Joe Dolce (www.sonicbids.com/JoeDolce), who, with his wife, performance artist and author Lin Van Hek, also joined me for three performances during my 2009 Japan tour.
In August 2009 I released “Beyond Living: Finger-picked Ruminations on the Hereafter and Its Messengers,” a CD collection of Americana and world music in collaboration with recording artists from Los Angeles, Japan, Australia and Hawaii.
On May 8, 2010, I was the featured performer at the first annual Living on the Earth Celebration at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona. The week before, Radio Free Phoenix aired an interview with live perfomances plus my recorded music, and continues to feature songs from Beyond Living in its rotation. The second annual Living on the Earth Celebration, featuring my music and art, is planned for May 7 and 8, 2011 at Plaza de Anaya in Tempe, Arizona.
My fifth Japan tour in five years, from September 22 to December 7, 2010, included eleven concerts, two art gallery shows, three art collaborations with fashion designers, a radio interview and an art workshop.
My sixth Japan tour in six years, from May 16 to July 17, 2012, included twenty-one concerts, two art workshops, two art collaborations with fashion designers, a radio interview and numerous commissioned art projects.
My seventh Japan tour in seven years is planned for spring and summer 2013.

Instrumentation

Alicia Bay Laurel sings and plays guitar, usually while standing up and dancing, and also tells original, humorous stories.
She has charts and hires other players as needed, usually a bass player and a lead guitar player, and sometimes drums and/or percussion. She also can perform accompanied by recordings of her recent CDs minus her voice and guitar on her laptop, which she can connect to a sound system via headphone out to twin stereo plugs or 1/4 plug.

Discography

Music From Living on the Earth
Listen at http://cdbaby.com/cd/ablaurel
Living in Hawaii Style
Listen at http://cdbaby.com/cd/ablaurel2
What Living's All About
Listen at http://cdbaby.com/cd/ablaurel3
Beyond Living
Listen at http://cdbaby.com/cd/AliciaBayLaurel

Official Website

http://www.aliciabaylaurel.com

Links

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Audio

• Floozy Tune
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• Living in Hawaii Style
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• Hang Out and Breathe
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• Zero Gravity
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• What Living's All About
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• It's Not Fair
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• Chard and Chives
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Lyrics

• Floozy Tune
• Hang Out and Breathe
• Living in Hawaii Style
• Best of the Rest of You

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• What Living's All About: One of 12 TOP DIY PICKS FOR MAY 2007 [+ Show ]
  

  What Living’s All About—a title that’s appropriate for a woman who has lived her life with such gust...What Living’s All About—a title that’s appropriate for a woman who has lived her life with such gusto. A Bohemian artist, Alicia Bay Laurel lived on a houseboat off Sausalito and a commune in Sonoma before spending 25 years on Maui. In addition to her music, she’s worked as a cook, collage artist, yoga instructor, wedding planner, underwater photographer and she’s the author of a New York Times bestseller, the whimsical Living on the Earth, first published in 1971.
  
  The rich tapestry of her life translates to her music. In the Billie Holiday-esque “Floozy Tune,” Laurel plays the role of the Sunday School teacher turned barfly. In “America the Blues” she dishes out scathing political commentary to the tune of “America the Beautiful” (“America, America, greed sheds disgrace on thee / You don’t need nukes, you don’t need slaves, you don’t need gasoline”). She has fun with the smart “Aquarian Age Liberated Woman Blues” (“Seaweed for breakfast is good for you”) and the gospel-imbued “Doctor Sun and Nurse Water.” Laurel’s jazzy Earth-mother sound will seduce and inspire.
  
  
  

• What Living's All About: Jazz, Blues and Other Moist Situations [+ Show ]
  

  With a provocative title like this one, Ms. Laurel will certainly catch the attention of any reviewe...With a provocative title like this one, Ms. Laurel will certainly catch the attention of any reviewer! This is most certainly one of the most audacious, heartfelt and honest discs I’ve put in my CD player for the year. Alicia (who sounds like the artistic love child of Joan Baez and Tom Waits) brings a folk-singer’s sensibility to bear on jazz and pulls no punches: On America The Blues, she declaims: America, the beautiful/you’re thorny as a rose:/Radiation, global warming/Poisoned food from GMOs./ She also sings a delightful version of Eden Ahbez’s Nature Boy. The accompaniment from guitarist Nels Cline, bass player John B. Williams and pianist Rick Olson is divine.
  
  Review by John Stevenson

• What Living's All About: "It's Fantastic!" [+ Show ]
  

  All would-be writers who have studied how to write know the rule: "show me don’t tell me." Visual ar...All would-be writers who have studied how to write know the rule: "show me don’t tell me." Visual artists find this advice easy to do and musicians are, perhaps, the same way. When the creative instrument does not rely solely on words, showing is not too difficult.
  
  Alicia Bay Laurel wrote Living on the Earth, a cult classic and the first paperback on the New York Times Bestseller List (spring 1971), which has sold over 350,000 copies. She has also written five other books. Laurel is a talented, trained musician. She grew up playing classical piano, switched to guitar in her teens and learned open tunings from legendary guitarist John Fahey, a family member. On this latest album, What Living’s All About, she works with some of the best musicians in the field, including avant garde guitar hero Nels Cline.
  Alicia Bay Laurel tries to show and tell by weaving feelings, melody and an occasional diatribe word. She celebrates the Earth (nature) and embraces her sensuality. She also loudly laments the destruction of the environment, as in her song “America the Blues,” where the listing of our environmental sins drags a bit. At the same time, the song is strangely effective. The entwining hypnotic music ended with a smashing guitar rift, followed by a spine tingling sound of whale songs and a Native American Chant. This is an excellent protest song. Alicia Bay Laurel and Al Gore should be friends.
  
  “Zero Gravity” is a haunting song about a city at night, reminiscent of Ground Zero in New York City where the Twin Towers used to be. Laurel talks about sex in this CD and does it with class, sometimes with gentle humor, like “Floozy Tune.” However, you won’t know what she’s talking about unless you listen closely. This blend of jazz, blues and gospel is a powerful feminist statement. It’s fantastic!
  
  Review by Patricia Ethelwyn Lang

• What Living's All About: "Lovely" [+ Show ]
  

  Alicia Bay Laurel conveys life's sudden shifts and jarring juxtapositions on What Living's All About...Alicia Bay Laurel conveys life's sudden shifts and jarring juxtapositions on What Living's All About (Indigo With Stars 003). Sandwiched between the opener, "Floozy Tune," and "Aquarian Age Liberated Woman Blues," two formally classic blues that could have come from Ma Rainey if not for the namechecks (belly dancing, astral projection, The I. Ching, bee pollen candy and natty dread), comes "America the Blues," with strident references to economic inequality, environmental rapine, corporate greed, and political corruption. Laurel moves from girlish singing on the Twenties-style songs to this doomy incantation, the arrangement taking full advantage of the jaw-dropping talent of avant-guitarist Nels Cline (best known as Wilco's secret weapon). With cuts such as "Doctor Sun and Nurse Water" (a gospel-drenched number with oddly matched lyrics), and the "Fever" tribute of the title track, "Living" will strike some as too California in its outlook. But lovely touches abound, such as the stately, quietly anthemic "Love, Understanding and Peace," and Doug Webb's beautiful alto work on "Zero Gravity."
  
  Tom Hyslop
  Blues Bites: Reviews in Brief

• What Living's All About: "Enjoyable" [+ Show ]
  

  Like one of my favourite heartfelt singer-songwriter singers (Heather McLeod with 'Funny Thing',1997...Like one of my favourite heartfelt singer-songwriter singers (Heather McLeod with 'Funny Thing',1997), also Alicia went to more towards (slightly standard) jazz territories, but as a former hippie, it is clear this is not done as a compromise to please/tease a public. Her interpretations (most songs are self penned) are with great feelings, and a certain light happiness beyond each other idea or emotion. She describes the style mix well on the cover as "jazz, blues and other moist situations". With additionally a a bit of New Orleans influence on "Floozy Tune", and a bit of gospel on "Doctor Sun and Nurse Water" (about what the environment of Hawaii did to her), she wrote inspired something between jazz and jazz-blues and something else soulful. I like the idea on "America the blues" saying "America, don't wave that flag to con us with your jive...".."we're all family on this planet".. (Just imagine how America is built upon so many nationalities and bought talents from everywhere, -unfortunately mostly still chosen from what are seen as the trustworthy countries and areas (so practically still excluding preferably the French, Spanish, and several Arab-speaking countries and native Indians for economic concurrence, racist, nowadays partly religious, and a few other reasons).. Potentionally I realize America still has all opportunities and a certain openness to experiment for those who succeed to start to participate in the system. This track, like a few tunes elsewhere has some, for me, rather amusing freaky electric avant-garde guitar by Nels Cline (Wilco). Alicia, for having experienced a certain earthbound process, matured, she still has the happiest aspects of the hippie; this sum must having benefited the soul and music of the singer, who on her recent photograph on the back cover still looks 25 or so, so I guess the message of this lies somewhere as a benefit hidden in the music. Rather brilliant as an interpretation I think is "Nature Boy" (originally by Nat King Cole, but also covered by Grace Slick), in an emotionally calm contrapoint-driven moody jazz style, with the help of John B. Williams on upright bass and Enzo Tedesco on other instruments. A really fine and enjoyable album.

• Music From Living on the Earth CD Review [+ Show ]
  

  Review on www.allmusic.com by Stanton Swihart February, 2001 Rating: 4.5 stars out of a possible ...Review on www.allmusic.com
  by Stanton Swihart
  February, 2001
  Rating: 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 and selected as an Album Pick
  
  The debut recording from Alicia Bay Laurel comes after a 30-year apprenticeship in everything from folk to jazz, Brazilian, and Hawaiian music (in addition to a career as an acclaimed author and illustrator), and it is a beautiful and rejuvenating catharsis of a record. It is a thankful piece of work, refreshing and pure, full of sweet naivete but also a kind of undiluted wisdom and a strong sense of self-awareness, best exemplified by one song, "Oh Sweet Self." The songs were written in Laurel's commune days, during which she was writing the original version of her bestseller Living on the Earth, chiefly between 1968 and 1975. All but one of the songs, though, were recorded over a two-month period at the beginning of 2000 by Laurel with just her guitar playing as accompaniment. As simple as the pleasures of the music are, however, this is not simple music. This is a quintessentially folk album, but not a standard one. It betrays strong elements of jazz and even hints of gospel, and Laurel displays some fabulously fingerpicked acoustic blues passages throughout, especially on songs like "Chard & Chives," the jazzy autobiography-in-song "Nineteen Sixty-Six," and the instrumental "Sky Blues." In addition, the influence of Indian culture shows up not only in the classical "Vai Raga" but also in the folk-raga hybrid instrumental of "Waterwheel" and some of the leitmotifs of "Mandala." Many of the songs utilize tricky and unconventional open and modal tunings, all expertly managed by Laurel. The songs stand well on their own, but work even better as complements to and invocations of Living on the Earth. Lyrically, there is a concerted slant towards the communal/hippie themes that were so endemic to the period during which all the songs were written: love, nature, freedom, understanding, spirituality, compassion, voluntary simplicity. "Chard & Chives," for instance, is an innocent ode to gardening that soon extends to the larger ideals of living in and with nature, and then to the importance of growing into one's life. The wonderful "Hang Out & Breathe" offers gentle rural charms and serves as a sort of folk meditation on Ram Dass' tenet, "Be here now." And the a cappella "Rain" is a straightforward celebration of the cleansing properties of the title subject. But these ideals also happen to be universal themes, many of them still, unfortunately, lacking in the world, rendering the songs just as relevant as the day on which they were composed. The album appropriately closes with the 40-voice choir version of "In the Morning" recorded live in the 1970s by the Occidental Community Choir from choral arrangements made by friend, mentor, and avant-garde composer Ramon Sender. The solo folk version that opens the album is a gorgeous awakening to our common humanity, and a lovely way to bring the music to commencement. But when the 40 voices join in the end, the song turns into a transcendent prayer. It seems to break from its strictures, wander out into the early light of day, and mingle with the living earth where it can breath, before rising up toward the heavens, a gift. Many of the songs on Music From Living On The Earth, in fact, seem like small, tranquil gifts.

• Music From Living on the Earth Review, March 2007 [+ Show ]
  

  On the trail of eye-gobbling line illustrations, there’s some rather attractive ones to be found on ...On the trail of eye-gobbling line illustrations, there’s some rather attractive ones to be found on the ‘Music for Living on Earth’ CD by Alicia Bay Laurel (on EM Records) – in fact, they remind me for some strange reason of the work of Tim Hunkin, whose drawings in colour supplements described, in easy to follow steps, the workings of everyday objects such as the photocopier, the fax machine, etc. The front cover of Alicia’s debut though favours more symbolic and mystical images as centre stage is occupied by a naiad / dryad figure with a sun rising behind her. Born into an artistic, freethinking household to a surgeon father and a sculptor mother, Alicia’s teen rites of musical passage included numerous coffee house gigs in the Bay Area (that’s San Francisco, not Cardiff – ed.) bolstered by guitar lessons from her cousin Janet’s husband – a certain Mr John Fahey. What better guitar tutor could a girl want? However, Alicia’s first real entry into the counter-culture world came in 1970 with her ‘Living in the Earth’, a guidebook for the ‘Back to the Land’ movement which sold a total of 350,000 copies. Nearly 30 years later the ‘Music…’ LP was released to roughly tie in with the book’s updated reprint. By then she’d moved to Maui (I wonder if she ever met any of the members of Mu?) and it’s really no big surprise that Hawaii’s unhurried and relaxed way of life permeates the album’s very essence. Given that the material was recorded in the winter of 2000, I’d guess that these numbers were written back in the day, as the lyrical concerns – achieving illumination through nature (‘Thanksgiving Hymn’. ‘Chard & Chives’) and investigations into eastern mysticism (‘Mandala’, the Magic Carpet-like ‘Vai Raga’ and ‘Rimpoche’) certainly seem to point in that direction. If only the budget could’ve been stretched to major label style expenditure on the latter cut – it’s tailor-made for a big old penguin-suited orchestra sawing away. I’ll just have to imagine that. Nevertheless, it’s still the strongest piece and has a melodic waft that is both beguiling and melancholic in ways travelled by Ruth Ann Friedman and Britain’s great lost Jaki Whitren. Equally ear-pleasing bouquets come in the form of the ‘Waterwheel’ instrumental, its casual elegance no doubt making her former guitar teacher’s chest fill with pride, and ‘Rain’ which captures a wistful solo voice caught in a torrential downpour of H20. One last point of interest concerns ‘In the Morning’, a madrigal replete with handy skincare tips, such as “it’s years of cold washing that prevents old age”, which has a second and more unusual version sung by The Occidental Community Choir, the original vocal score being devised by Ramon Sender of the San Francisco Tape Machine Center (home to Terry Riley, Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros et al), whose reactivated ‘Worldfood’ CD (on Locust) remains a must-have for all fans of (super)looped out experimentation. Back to Alicia Bay Laurel for a tick: there are two other CDs released under her name, ‘Living in Hawaii Style’ and ‘What Living’s all About’ – see her website at www.aliciabaylaurel.com for further information.
  

• Living in Hawaii Style:"Compelling" [+ Show ]
  

  It took Alicia Bay Laurel nearly half of a lifetime and years of concerted study in a variety of sty...It took Alicia Bay Laurel nearly half of a lifetime and years of concerted study in a variety of styles before completing her debut album, but, oh, was it worth the wait. A gorgeous amalgam of John Fahey-style fingerpicking, modal passages, and lovingly sacred sentiments, Music from Living on the Earth was a sparkling stream of music pure from the heart. It took but mere months for Laurel to back up those sentiments with a second album that is every bit as compelling and beautifully realized, although it isconsiderably different in both tone and purpose. Living in Hawai'i Style is instead a collection of Hawaiian songs - some traditional, some native and, indeed, some from the pen of Laurel herself, a longtime resident of the 50th state. Although a few have (most notably jazz guitarist George Benson), ha'oles (or "gringos") have not traditionally been accepted with ease into the wider Hawaiian musical community. But Laurel proves herself acutely in-tuned to the nuances, subtleties, and details of traditional island styles, and the gorgeous open-key melodies or her original tunes are tailor-made to Hawaii's deep legacy of slack-key guitar. Without debating the notion of authenticity, it can be said, at the very least, that Living is a supremely humble and giving album, both towards the listener and towards the Hawaiian musical history that it upholds and extends. That it goes well beyond is the album's most endearing grace. Far from playing shallow and dilettantish, Living is, in fact, a paradisiacal love letter to Hawaii's musical lore and to the place the artist calls home, and it could not honor the tradition any more than it does. Laurel studied Hawaiian musical culture for more than two decades before even attempting to put her learning on tape (although some of the original songs date to the mid 1970s), and the album benefits greatly from that level of sensitivity and deference, as it incorporates nearly every style endemic to the islands, from ancient chant and drinking songs to a birthday tune, wedding songs, wonderfully breezy hulas, environmental anthems and songs of welcome. With ample help from the widely respected Hawaiian jazz-guitar great Sam Ahia and ravishing vocal support from spiritualist, composer, and educator Lei'ohu Ryder, Living in Hawai'i Style is every bit the blissful oasis that Hawaii often seems itself.
  Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide

• Music From Living on the Earth CD Review [+ Show ]
  

  In 1971, Alicia was in her twenties when she started to live in a hippie commune, and had published ...In 1971, Alicia was in her twenties when she started to live in a hippie commune, and had published a kind of handbook for hippies wanting to live in nature and enjoy a child-like innocence and joy. The book, now in reprint- contains charming drawings and became a successful bestseller. Between 1968 and 1975 she wrote additional songs for it, which were all but one, recorded in 2000.
  
  The music has an underlying similar kind of deliberate naivety to enjoy life with a certain practical minimalism, which is feminine, charming and lovely. The songs are short. The stylistic folk simplicities just here and there (like on "In the Morning") are completely forgivable or still suitable because of its strong inner sweetness, which works like a winking eye to inner wish for love, and which still works as a ode to life. There has been attention to some variety in guitar playing. There are also stylistic surprises, like original bluesy interpretations, or an open tuning track called "Vai raga" with Indian flavour, or a 40 voice choir interpretation of the opening track as a perfect closer.
  
  This is a very nice and lovely album which is suitable for repeated listening experiences and which grows with each listen. (I discovered this album through a Japanese collector's list of psychedelic folk). The album itself is like a resume of one life's experience in a certain world of existence.

• Living in Hawaii Style [+ Show ]
  

  Our friend Alicia Bay Laurel (author and illustrator of the 1971 bestselling book Living On The Eart...Our friend Alicia Bay Laurel (author and illustrator of the 1971 bestselling book Living On The Earth) has put together an album of original and historic Hawai'ian songs, sung with slack key guitar. After more than twenty-five years living in Hawai'i, Alicia has obviously absorbed much of the spirit of her adopted home--a spirit she conveys with great respect and also an effervescent joy. Most of this is lovely music about what's good in life on an island where native culture and nature are still respected and honored by such "adopted natives" as Alicia. Just as important, several songs point to the threats and damage to Hawai'i's people and land done by less-respectful outsiders, and a call, gently and beautifully, for a return to balance and sovereignty.
  Chris Roth, Editor, Talking Leaves

Setlist

I perform a variety of original songs (jazz, blues, Americana, world music, gospel, folk, Hawaiian) from my four CDs, typically in one or two 45 minute sets. If I play any covers, they will be the ones I recorded on my CDs. I usually play at least one instrumental fingerpicked guitar piece in a show.
Here are the songs, listed by CD:
from "Music From Living on the Earth":
In The Morning
Chard and Chives
Rain
Hang Out and Breathe
Thanksgiving Hymn
Rinpoche
Oh Sweet Self
Waterwheel
Mandala
Nineteen Sixty-six
Vai Raga
Pain and Love
Lullaby
Family to Me
Sky Blues
Invocation
from "Living in Hawaii Style":
Hau'oli La Hanau (Happy Birthday)
Kanikau O Hawaii
From Hawaii to You
Nanakuli Blues/Nanakuli Song/Vale of Feathers
Waikaloa
Ukulele Hula
Holua, Kapalaoa and Paliku
Sassy/Manuela Boy/Livin' on Easy
Moonlight and Shadows/Blue Lei
Kawailehua'a'alakahonua
Auntie Clara
Living in Hawaii Style
Maui Chimes
Kaupo
Auntie Alice
Kipahulu
from "What Living's All About":
Floozy Tune
America the Blues
Aquarian Age Liberated Woman Blues
Zero Gravity
Doctor Sun and Nurse Water
What Living's All About
Sometimes It Takes a Long Time
Nature Boy
Best of the Rest of You
I Could Write a Book
It's Not Fair
Love, Understanding and Peace
from "Beyond Living"
Mele Nalu
Hill of Death
Bosan Gokko
Waltzing with Angels
Altid Frejdig Naar du Gaar
The Garden
Auntie Nona
Hang Out and Breathe
Nami
Ruminations
Aloha 'Oe

Basic Requirements

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