Good morning, all! It’s Wednesday, July 13th, and it’s also the first anniversary of our IOLANI on KONA ST. store! I can’t believe it’s already been a year – time sure flies when you’re having fun … or is it stress?!! Kudos to Carla, Nick, and the rest of the staff for their vision, hard work, and long hours. And a HUGE MAHALO!! to our dear customers, our “ohana”, who have encouraged and supported us! I know my dad is watching all this with a big smile on his face …
Nick leaves for Japan on Friday so ManoaDNA won’t be performing this weekend, although Alex and I will be joining Mark and Seann at Gordon Biersch on Sunday afternoon for Bruce Shimabukuro’s CD release party. We then leave for Japan next week where I heard the weather is REALLY hot & humid! I’m starting to mentally prepare myself for this because even though most of our performances will be indoors, we’ll have a couple of outdoor stages too … ughh! In spite of the lousy weather, however, this trip is going to be awesome because we’re going to see all of our fans again and be able to perform for them! Of course, we’ll make sure to have lots of cold water and towels on hand too! :-) And we were also hoping to make a return trip up to Sendai but our schedule may not allow for it on this trip. But no worries … if not this time, next time for sure!
Our new benefit single, FEEL THE LIGHT, featuring Jake Shimabukuro, will be available for download in about a week so be sure to tune in for further updates or go check out our website at manoadna.com. We’ll also be bringing CD copies of the song to Japan, with all sales proceeds going towards benefiting the Tohoku University Hospital disaster fund. I’m really proud of the way everyone came together to contribute their time and talent to this project and I hope you will join us in supporting this great cause. And who knows … we may even perform an acoustic version of the song during our upcoming tour!
And finally … IOLANI will have it’s first ever booth at the Aloha Yokohama Festival!! It will be located in the Hawai’i Tourism section right at the entrance to the Ohsambashi Terminal so please come check it out! There will be shirts, dresses, and t-shirts on sale and display … you might even see one of us there helping out!
Aloha, “D”