 And how you doing? We got a little music in the house today. Pretty good. Got my poppy chulo, our co-host today. And our musician guest, Mr. Andy Sexton from Zimplicity. Whoa! You're the man. You're the man. And how does tech and music play together? Well, we'll find out in just a second. Wrap it up. Oh, man. That's so cool. We never started a show like this before. Really? Nice to see you again, man. I love you, man. We go back for a long way. Long way. When I had hair as long as you. Easy. You did, actually. I remember. You're a hippie. What's a hippie? That's how long we've been around. That's how long we've been around. That must have been in the 60s because I don't remember having hair. That's right. That's true. It was in the 60s. Anyway, please grab a chair. Grab yourself a libation and join us for another exciting episode if you bought to talk. Well, we're going to talk about technology change in the music industry. How long have you been in this music industry? I have to get my age? No. I know you look young. But I was four years old when I started. Four years old. About a long time. I'm 28 now. 28 now. So 24 years. That's pretty cool. Nicely done. Anyway, so we're going to talk about how it's kind of shifted a little bit since the days when you were out there on the street. It's true. We can keep back in the days easily. At four years old, my mom put us on stage. We played our whole lives. My great-grandfather is Alfred Eloi Kea. My great-grandmother is Lizzie Eloi Kea. They've both been inducted into the White Hall of Fame. Simplicity is our band. We've been around for... Oh, for long. Back in the days when you were teaching me how to play the ukulele. And look how good I didn't get. Your grand second place. Yeah, the way grand second place. That's very, very true. So where did you go to school? Four decades. Four decades of trying to do music. Job Corps. Job Corps? You went to school? The Job Corps. Ticked out of that school. Ticked out of that school. Oh, you sound like him. Well, you know, we didn't know who we were supposed to be in school. Okay. In our days, you know, music was everything. But truthfully, South High, Bakersfield, California. My mother was with the He-Ha show back in on... The He-Ha show. No, there's... No, there... Buck Owens, Meryl Hager, you know... That's a... That's when I went to jail doing Life Without Perot. Something. Meryl Hager. Perot Hager. Wow, the He-Ha show. So Buck Owens, you know, but my mom was actually one of the technical advisors for the show and she did all the... Back then it was Beta 2 track. Okay. Which is better than VHS. Still is. And so she had to make sure that the show was done right. So she did the overdubs. Right. All these things. My mother grew up. We were on the table. My mom, you know, did all the editing and these things. And we grew up on it, but we'd always had music in our lives because of my great-grandparents, my grandfather, my grandmother, Vodville back in the East Coast. They did all the Barnum and Bailey Circus and all those things. So they were the steamship that came over and they did all those things in the 30s and the 40s. And then they migrated to California. And my dad, you know, was trying to always keep music in our lives. So my brother and I, you know, had to go to junior high, high school, four years of music theory. Right. We hated it, but band, marching band, concert band, jazz band, orchestra, they made us do it all. So you think about what the amount of time that you spent in this industry and all these guys are gamers, right? I look at the tech side. They spent all these hours in the gamers. And to me there's no outcome for like me, the non-musician. Whereas you spend all these decades as a musician, you learn all your trade, you learn all the different instruments. And then I get to listen. I get to be part of what's going on and all this kind of stuff. It's a whole different way. It's the same amount of hours, but the outcome is so much different. Yeah. You're not a gamer, right? No. No. You can sit this. Gamers was, mom and dad said, go turn the channel. That was very good. Stay right there. Right here. The antenna, outside the window, put a piece of banding wire on something. No, it's way different. Back in the days when I was producing and doing things with the old days of, you know, 16 track, 24 track, never existed. It was 16 track, you know, in this tape and cutting, editing. So it moved from those times from analog to digital. That's why I'm here because digital is not where we're at. Everything's so much easier, faster, quicker. And the gamers nowadays, they would never make it. Because they just don't understand what it takes to produce this stuff. Yeah. And now you can do a garage, you know, your home. You can do everything at home. It's like Milly Vanilla all over again. It's crazy. Yeah. And they kind of start, they were the expose. I would think the expose. They definitely, right? Until they got caught. They got caught. They were just overdubbing everything and so on. And what do you think about all that overdubbing and such? I'm not a musician. No, but I can tell you all the shows, all the shows usually, I mean, there's no other show that doesn't have, you know, tape or tap or something that have clip tracks or whatever. But most of it, you know, back then was live. Yeah. Everything was live. Like this show. Yeah. I'm kind of surprised, you know, you actually have a live show. And it's really cool because during our days of trying to make music in Hawaii, simplicity was all about making sure our music sounds just like the record. Okay. So back in the vinyl days. Yeah. For those of you that don't know what a record is. 78, 33's and then the 45 and then cassettes and eight tracks and all those things. Real, real. If you got any of those, keep them because they're probably coming back. Well, vinyl is definitely coming back. Big money. They always said vinyl is final. Yeah. And it still is. It still is because somebody got a container full of vinyl. Even the spinner guys still use, you know, vinyls to this. Scratch it. All vinyls to this day. Original scratchers. No, but now they got digital things that make it sound like a vinyl. So it's changed, you know. It's quicker. It's faster. It's easier to get in and out of a studio. I like how you change your voice. I mean, how you go from who you are to froggy. I mean, you do it all the time. You've done it for the 20 plus years I've known you. It's not my fault. It's who I am. It's my talking voice. I got it. Kind of like your other person. And then my singing voice is like, you know, Michael Jackson. But I never thought about it until somebody said it, you know, like I never thought about it. You know, I've been doing this, you know, simplicity. Sorry to wait three decades, you know, putting this business on. God bless all the entertainers who are still doing this. But this is all we've ever done. And I want to say something to the musicians. If you want to do this, put your time in, you know, you have to spend time. A lot of time. So wood shading. And the old days we call it wood shading. Now we call it practice. It's got to practice. So think about this. So think about this back in the day. You didn't practice. You showed up and you just played. So speaking of practice, we have this segment called, I've got one tech tech job. And there's a guy I know. Say that again. You know, I've got one tech job. You know, got one tech job. Not like that. So anyway, we, I have this guy that I know is going to be out of a job in about a month. And that was Daniel. I love that guy. You've got, you know, got one tech job. That was like, like me on stage. So this guy could have no job at the end of January. And so he know, got one check up. What do you think? He's practicing? I think he's great. Yeah, he's good. Because you know what? He's on the run. He's out there. My nephew, Tavana, he's like a one man band. Same thing. All these things together. He's a great entertainer. I should have him on the show too. Because in fact, I'm going to bring him to you. He's really done good. You have a whole new theme on music. Yeah. What's a one man band? You know, it's, it's gone back to, you know, technology. Everybody's using everything. I refuse to use that stuff. I still play live with, with, with real guys and real places and real things. And I won't, I won't go to technology. I won't do it. No, no, you've got amplifiers and speakers and that kind of stuff. All right. Part of it. It's always been there though. She gave me that look like da. Yeah. Yeah. No, but, no, but those, those are the things that are still there. Yeah. It's still live. It's not recorded. Right. And it's not tracks. It's not something that you put on a digital or something you plug in and you go, hey, I'm here. Like garage band? And then I can put, I got, I got more money. I bet you do. I bet you don't use it. No, I don't. You don't even, you don't even know how to use it. I don't even know how. You're freaking, you're killing me. Let me use that thing for a minute. Okay? You should record it one time. But on another note, real quick though as today we all, we've all heard the Hawaiian music. We lost a fellow musician, Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. Pallani Vaughn. My goodness. One of the first musicians I heard when I moved away. And to all those, you know, all those that have paved the way, you know, for me, I'm still alive. I think the next album on McCall or something, I'm still alive. at you.com. Well that's between you two guys. If you ever see these two guys live, they should have a comedy show or something. But in reality, music has changed though through the decades in Waikiki. And I'm still in Waikiki. I play out of Waikiki. I love Waikiki because it's still my place. Snappers, nightclubs where I play for 22 years now. Smokehouse, Harbor Pub, all those places that little four block radius is still there. Oh, I didn't know you were Harbor Pub. Yeah, well, I was. Not anymore. I move over to Snappers now. But I still go over there and they play once in a while. But I've been over there seven years. It's a melting pot. Chart House upstairs. Dean and Dean's still there on Sundays. So the local music scene is still what it was. This is a question like 20, 30 years ago. The players are different. No, it's different. Before you go to Waikiki, every place, every hotel every bar had a band. Now, like the society, seven days. Oh, they don't even exist anymore. Well, I know they don't. That's what I say. Even C&K, all those guys, you know, they put Brother Nolan. They're still playing and stuff. But they're not, they're not, you know, only Henry's is still, you know, he's in Waikiki at Duke's. But you know, I sit with him a lot. Yeah. But the big deal, you know, about it is music has changed because the people in Waikiki have changed. The owners, the clubs, the hotels, it's bigger, it's broader. Now they're starting to bring stuff back, which is cool. But in the old days, you could go every block, you had an entertainer. Now it's like they're here, they're there. I've been, you know, blessed, like I said, 22 years in one place is a long time. That's a long time. I've been with three owners and I'm still there. Well, you don't charge. That's one of the reasons. We're still making the same money we did back, you know, 30 years ago. $100 a gig and 30 years ago and it's $100 a gig now. Still true. Still true. Well, but music is the only guys I know that will spend thousands of dollars on instruments, hundreds of dollars on a car, hundreds of dollars in a car, travel thousands of miles for a $50 a gig. But it's 50 bucks, man. That's right. You buy a lot of spam with 50 bucks. But not a lot of gas. That's different. That's the tips. Tips to pay for the gas. But I also heard about you running equipment that I never knew existed. That's right. And what you're saying. So hold that. Hold that. He's here. That's the whole shift in the industry and what's going to go on. So believe it or not, we burned through the first 15 minutes and I got to go pay some bills. This is how I pay my bills. And then you haven't met, have you met Angus yet? No. Well, you're in for a hell of a drink. Anyway, Angus says, can you say hello? Can you say hello? I can say hello? I didn't know that. I feel like cutting language. Oh my God, I know. What can I say? Cut. Anyway, I got to pay some bills. It's a live show. I got to go to the Lua. Hi, I'm Donna Blanchard. I'm the host of Center Stage, which is on Wednesdays at 2 o'clock here on Think Tech. On Center Stage, I talk with artists about not only what they do and how they do it, but the meat of the conversation for me is why they do it. Why we go through this. A lot of us are not making our livings doing this. And a lot of us would do this with their last dying breath if we had that choice. And that's what I love to talk to people about. I hope you enjoy watching it. And I hope you get inspired because there's an artist inside G2. Join us on Center Stage at 2 o'clock on Wednesdays. Bye. I'm Jay Fiedel. And with Ray Starling, I host Hawaii, the state of clean energy, four o'clock every Wednesday, the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum, making discovery of what's going on in energy in this community. Ray, what do you think? We've got a great group of shows coming up, finishing out this year and starting next year. Dean Nishita has been with us today. He's the new consumer advocate and he has told us a lot, but he's got a lot more to tell. So we're going to have him back and others like him in future shows. And Dean, how much of that do you agree with? There's a lot to be said and I'm interested in seeing some of your other shows. Okay, we'll be back. Four o'clock every Wednesday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon. Stan, the energy man, watch it. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to the Batchi Talk. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at 1 o'clock on Think Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks. Aloha. Aloha. Meli Kaliki, Michael. We're back again for the second segment with our buddy Andy Sexton, beautiful ukulele, and Angus. Andrew. Hey, Andy, how you doing? Good to see you. I like you, man. You know, you know, how are you doing? I do very well. I like you. You're cute. Yeah. Are you a Sexton? I am a... Well, I'll tell you what I am. You're from the River Clan. River Clan. I'm from the Healings. I like you. You like it. I like you too. You remind me of my friend. I hear you where I killed two. I got one. I know. You didn't have one today. It's a big one. All right. Oh, I bet you do. Anyway, if you change subject real quickly. Anyway, you know, I got a segment now called, You Know Your City's Cheap Win. I got a picture. You know your city's cheap when they fixed the bottles with duct tape. Christmas season. They can tell I got my week Christmas outfit on. I like it. Very stylish. Very, very stylish. Anyway, you know, I'm all looking for... I have a week number of girlfriends. So I'm all getting some gifts for the girlfriends. What do you got? Yeah, I got one today. Women love shoes. So take a look at that picture. Take a look at that picture. I'm going to get the old crow a new set of shoes. Do you think she'll like them? I think she will not like them. I think my life is over without them. I think they're very cool. Unless she's Chinese. Oh, man, she's Chinese. She's not a good Marilyn. OK. Anyway, that's what I have today. Andrew, or Dhruv, or Andy, or Mr. Simplicity. We enjoyed having you on the show. Thank you very much. Hey, Bobby Chulo, get a job. Anyway, as I always say at the end of the show, put your wing gang free. Where are you? Hello? Oh, my goodness. Hello. You didn't tell me about this part. That's just wrong. I'm going to get you the skirt violation. That's a skirt violation. It's not wrong. It's not wrong. It's just a skirt violation. So you got it. Yeah. Over. Yeah. It's way over my head. Anyway, so before we took the break, you brought up something that was really interesting. It's like, after 9-11 and the shipping and all the stuff that was going on, the whole music industry changed. And you jumped on that opportunity. So tell us what you did. It's kind of a very cool thing. We're live. We're still here. There was a break. The break is over. There was a break. Hey, this is not a union shop. Yeah, one minute. Yeah, and you know, they're union musicians. Yeah. I'm not. And you're not. So there you go. So there you go. Anyway, so. So it changed because of 9-11. And so all the shipping charges went crazy. So I was a tech. I repair instruments, any instrument you have, I can repair it. But I found a niche in renting instruments, especially drum lines. Or renting. I ran them to them. I had four different companies that are travel agents in contact with me. And they said, how can we fix this? Because it's cost thousands and thousands of dollars to bring over here. I said, well, so I accumulated all this equipment from big tubas, to sousaphone, to marching gear, amps, whatever they need. And I found that they could use them in cheaper. If they're running for me, then to ship it. Then all of a sudden the phone started ringing. And I'm busier than ever because four or five times a season, you know, going to a spring break, Christmas, 7-7, all these things. I'm talking about 75th anniversary. You just knocked that out. Oh, goodness. Thank you, Lord, for that. Because 75-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we had 2,500 kids at Holy Coal. We had 5,000 kids in their instruments at the Missouri. We had 10,000 people at the convention center that evening. By the way, Kelly Boyd, you guys killed it over there. They're forever entertainment is great. All these instruments had to be moved and taken. And that's what I do. I coordinate on my team, my crew. And we did the whole thing. I'm exhausted. And you call me, you want me to be on your show. I'm like, OK, I'll be here. That was yesterday. That was yesterday. I got home at 1 o'clock this morning. Well, I called you last week. And by the way, I didn't call you. To be honest, I met you at the bar. It was a Lola's bar, which is the number one local bar. Lola's bar, which is another good local bar. Well, Lola's is where I play music at. So we do, like, once a month over at Lola's. Also at Snappers Night Club, like I said, Friday, Saturday. And Smokehouse on Wednesday night. So music is still my life. And I want to tell anybody that wants to get their music. If you really want to do this, it's really passionate about it. Don't do it for the money. Because you ain't going to make no money. But you'll be happy with your music. It's so true. It's OK because it'll come sooner or later. We've been very blessed and thankful. We won all kinds of awards. And the most precious awards of anything has always been the people's choice. And for 10 years in a row, back in the day, we were that guy. But we're still playing. I'm saying to the musicians, don't give up on your dream. If you believe you want to do this, I've had so many people tell me, how can you make a living doing this? Well, you know what? Well, four years later, I'm still doing the same thing I'm trying to do. And I'm still making a living. I'm still loving what I do. And I don't care because they can't stop me. But you are innovative. The thing is that you never change because you stayed in the music industry, but like you just talked about, this whole tuba, shipping all of heavy equipment, that kind of thing. You took advantage of that opportunity, saw it, and jumped on it. And the industry really goes through this metamorphosis. I mean, like you said, vinyl's coming back. But check this out. Now that everybody knows, everybody's going to be buying stuff now. I can never get into the band. Oh, yeah, well. Thanks a lot, Gordon. Appreciate it, man. I'm sorry. It goes to my business. Nah. There's quality. It's like anything else, right? It's service. Service is always important. And it's service all the time. Yeah, and you can say, I was here first. And so back in the days of ukulele, I was the first guy to play with the orchestra, Honolulu Symphony. Ukulele was my thing since I was a kid. I got carried around since I was one. Changed over. Kelly Boyd-Dilemma, Troy Fernandez, all these dudes. Kaimuki High School, right on. Those were the all group. They all learned from me playing ukulele. And it's changed. Because back then, it wasn't cool to play ukulele with a raggy. Play a raggy thing. You get an earpool. Your mother, don't you play like that. You had to play, you know, like that. No, nahi. Nahi means thank you. That's good. What was it? OK, hold on. Shoot his mom, leave the room and go. Come back in the room and go, oh. True story. You got to love it. You got to love it. It's changed. And I was the first guy to bring those stories into ukulele. And then the first thing somebody said, where's your guitar? It's like, oh, this is my guitar. Yeah, this is how it works. Gardner, that girl that plays Led Zeppelin music or something. Have you seen her? I've seen her. Yeah. She had that one hit wonder kind of thing. But then she kind of disappeared. Was that a stairway to heaven? Yeah, I think it was a stairway to heaven. I can't remember when it was. But Hawaiian music will live forever as long as you keep doing it. And you know what? They always said, you're not playing Hawaiian music. And I said, well, I'm Hawaiian and I play music. I've got to be playing Hawaiian music. Well, there you go. I'm going to interpret it that way. So what do you think of things like Pandora and all the music downloads? Things have changed. Because we went through this whole vinyl, like you said, the eight track, the beta two track. Then we went to CDs. Then we go to Pandora and all the digitized music and so on. And now I can download the stuff on Pandora. I can bring it up on whatever. So how has that changed? You can't sell the CD now. You can, but I don't know if you're playing live. In the clubs, we can sell it live because it still works. But in reality, music has changed so much around the world. And no matter what you try to do, it's not going to stop. And people still in music is not cool. They're going to do it no matter what we say and no matter what we do. I had an album in Japan that was like a gold record in Japan. I never seen the pinnacle. I've never seen it, but we saw something. I bring it up and it goes, I love your CD. Can you autograph my CD with the Japanese logo? I had a flower on it. It's a truth. So all I can say is the music's out there. No, the music's out there. And whatever it takes, I call it, if you can take it and use it and play it, I'm cool. It really means it because we can't stop it. As long as you can keep playing in the music, it's still alive. Simplicity, you look wonderful tonight. We changed what Eric Clapton did on his song until this day it's still being played. It's still number one. It's still okay. And all we can say is God bless him for playing your music. Don't give up on yourself and practice. Practice, practice. See, it is what it is. I mean, you told me that all the time. I mean, I took ukulele lessons from Andy. And he's laughing because I was so bad. But I can tell you why. And you know why. I never practice. You gotta practice. And that's just like anything. You got it. It's like anything, you gotta practice, Rick. I'm good at what I do. He's good at what he does. He's sitting there. I get it. That's all the money we spend and so on. So the advice that you have and so on, you've been in this business now for like, you didn't say the number of years, it's gonna be 40, 50. No, no, no. All right. Okay, never mind. No, it's okay. I've been in business for 52 years. So the biggest challenges. Now, the biggest challenges you have now, because we talked about, you got Waikiki and the different clubs and so on. What are the biggest challenges? I mean, you've gotta be out there on the street. You've got Keith, your buddy helping you, you know, get out there. It takes a team. I mean, you've gotta do this every group, no matter what. You have to have the team. You try to do it on your own, but you can't. It's just too much. The matrix is too much. To have agent or manager, people that help you, even family members, it's still a lot of work, no matter what. Like I said, it takes two hours to load up the gear, get to the gig, you load everything up, you start it up. Nobody sees it. And then all of a sudden, you go change your shirt and you come back and then you do the gig. Your voice just stays together. And then you go back, you go back to, you know, you gotta play and then you finish playing and then you gotta take everything, put it back in the van, and then you gotta take it home and unload it. And then you go, that was a mean $100, I mean. I'll give you a 50. I'll give you a 50. I got a hundred and fifty. You gotta pay the rest of the guys. After taxes. Gas. No, no. But the matrix to play music is still very large. But if you're willing to put the time in and you're willing to really sacrifice, it'll always be there. And I twice said, we've lasted so long because of sacrifice. And Michael Seta, John Sexton, Philip O'Cow, you know, Boom Gasper, nice with Pro Jam, all these guys, you know, love them, boom, all my heart because they were always there. They were always played together. We always showed up, we always did a thing and we're still doing it. You guys always seem to have this close-knit relationship. There's always, the musicians are like, you're not, you know. How's this one? We've been together long and we've been married. Well, okay. I'm down, I was down. I wouldn't go down that, well, I'm sad. Everyone's sitting in this table. My band, I don't know about you, but my band, they'll tell you, we've been together long and we've been married. You know, only my brother's still got, you know, sweetie, love you, baby. But the rest of them, I've had this yoke longer than I've had more things than I've had. We're not gonna go into that space again. So anyway, so I'm trying to think, I don't know how to end this show tonight today, because it's so cool. So we'll end it with a little bit of music and then just so you know, this is yours. Somewhere here, we have, well, right there. We have an autographed solo cup. All of our guests get autographed solo cups. So here number 96, not 86, as opposed to being 86 out of somewhere. So there it is. Some of us in this table have been 86 in some places. I say mahalo, muy lor. All right, and then close us up with a little bit of music and thank you guys again for watching, you know what, boy, I'll watch you talk. Okay, let's talk to my water. Why do you treat me like a boo boo? Andy Sexton here, well, simplicity, check him out in Waikiki and check him out every Friday at one o'clock. Live on Think Tech of Y, I want to thank Zuri. I like the way this is in. Jay, Robert, Nick, Ian, and all the team behind us that make this happen. And I like to say things every year. It's like, it's the merry Christmas time of the year. Not happy holiday, not happy holiday. It's merry Christmas. It's the reason why it's called merry Christmas. And don't forget, gang, as we always say at the end of every show, one, two, three. How you doing?