Waimanalo Blues

Waimanalo Beach is on the southeast side of Oahu. My late partner Glen Baker turned me on to the song. I downloaded a chart from the Berkeley Ukulele Club and created my own, tailored to my brain’s needs. The song is a protest against beachfront development. Also known as Nanakuli Blues, it has often been covered, including by Don Ho and Arlo Guthrie. The Berkeley chart matched Country Comfort’s arrangement, skipping most of the intro instrumental. Country Comfort plays slack-key guitars, so playing along in standard tuning sounds a tad off, but tolerable. Ukulele Rebellion had a Hawaiian theme, so this was one of my contributions. I first recorded this in 2020; this version is my preference. This time, I used the Klos 8-string, mic’d as well as a pickup channel with some reverb to help provide depth. I used iMovie post-processing to enhance the bass levels.