 Aloha and welcome to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. I am your guest host, Keisha King. I'm sitting in for Gwendolyn Harris, who had to be out today. My guest today is a producer, engineer, singer, and musician. His most recent musical CDs, called Twanky, are tributes to the classic songs from the Jazz Age and the Great American Songbook from the 1920s to the 1940s. My guest has performed and recorded with Multigrammy, award-winning producers, engineers, Al Schmidt, the great London players and studio arts from Los Angeles and Honolulu, including Pierre Grill, Dwayne Padilla-Emmett, Mahoney, and Jani. Jani was supposed to be with us today, and we're so sorry that she couldn't. But he's also recorded with the great British Jazz players from Brian Ferry's band. My guest has been performing with his Swanky band in London, Honolulu, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, all of the major cities throughout the U.S. Please welcome with me, Patrick Von Wiegant, to the show. Aloha, Patrick. Hi, thank you so much. Oh, well you are very welcome and so deserving. You've done a lot, a lot, a lot. It sounds like a lot when you put it up there, but somehow it sounds like you're reading about somebody else. Right? Oh man, it's all you. It's all you and it's all about you today. We are really going to celebrate all you've done as a musician. We're going to celebrate what you've done as a producer. Oh, stop it. Oh yeah, there's more. My head's starting to get, you know, I'll need a bigger hat size by the time I go with this. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You deserve all the accolades that you've gotten. And certainly this discussion today, I'm looking forward to it. I want to jump right in with your new CD. Tell us about Swanky. First of all, where'd you come up with that name? Oh, who doesn't like the word Swanky? I like it. Everybody loves it. And actually when I came up with it about 10 or 15 years ago, I'd always flirted with the idea. And I started telling my friends, you know, hey, what about Swanky in there? Like, yeah, it's great. Everybody loves it. I looked it up. Nobody was doing it. Nobody was, there was no Swanky band. There's some Swanky stuff, but so I had been working with some friends here, the Hot Club of HulaVille, great band, great guys. And they were doing the old style stuff. And I was doing the old style stuff. And I just thought, you know, that just felt right. So I called the first album Swanky. And people clicked on and then they'd call me up, hey, Swanky. And on Swanky, Swanky. So now it's I'm on the fourth or fifth album. And so I've built the brand in a sense. Yeah. Well, that's what you're required to do. Once you come up with something good, you've got to build a brand around it. Right. And it sounds like you've done that. And this particular CD, you're going into a wonderful fun, Swanky era, the 1920s to the 1940s. Oh, it's wonderful. This brand new CD is called Swanky Sings Fats Waller. By the way, I didn't know I was building a brand. And I really wasn't, all that stuff of branding and all that kind of stuff. It's like, don't, I hate that stuff. I love playing music with my friends. I love producing music. I love being in the studios. I've lived in studios for 40 years. So I love being in there and making records. The Swanky thing has grown. And it's sort of like, all right, take the ride with it and then play with it. And so people call me up and they send me notes. Hey, Swanky and Swanky. So now I go out, build as Patrick Von Weigen and the Swanky band or Patrick Von Weigen and Swanky. People get it right away. They can jump onto it and they love it. Yeah. The new one I decided to call Swanky Sings Fats Waller songs. Because I love the Fats Waller music. And I had been working on that for a long time. And then I was like, all right, let's get these songs together. And I got together with a lot of familiar people, Jani. I called her right away. I called Pierre Grill right away. I had been working with the guys in London over there. I called them and said, hey, would you work with me on this? And they all said yes, of course. And I got very lucky. Well, I think you're doing fun music. And it's certainly really a good time. So I don't anticipate anybody saying no. And if they did, we're not going to talk about that. It is fun though. And people like playing with Swanky. I say get dressed up or think that style. Go old school. Certainly there's a lot of wonderful new music and all that. It doesn't interest me nearly as much as this stuff. My mom and dad turned me on to Fats Waller when I was a kid. And I was like, that stuff is crazy. And then I certainly can't play it. You tell me you're a player. I used to. So we're not going to go there because my grandmother is going to be so upset she'll rise from her grave and just get so upset because I was classically trained as a pianist. And she's probably upset. I never made it to Carnegie Hall or at least Alicia Keys. But that's something from my past. We're not even going to call on her. No, we're not going to. No, but we're here to talk about you. I want to get into one of the songs that you've chosen for us to listen to from your new CD. And we're going to talk about why you chose Fats Waller to pay tribute to. So let's get into that. If our engineers are ready, let's go ahead and listen to a little bit from Fanky Tributes, 1920s to 1940s. Right? Yes. Let's do it. Well, you can talk. You can rave. Say awful things about me. I don't care what you say. Go on your way if you doubt me. Because if I go to church on Sunday, then party down on Monday. Ain't nobody's business if I do. This is a surprise because that is Jani singing that song with you, her solo. She said that's a higher range for her. That was very high. And she looked at me when I said I'm doing it in this key. She gave me not the stink eye, but you're going to make me do this. And she can do it. She's great in the studio. Yes. I work with her in the studio. We've done many albums together. And we've worked here. We've worked in London at Abby Ray Studios and Capitol Studios in Hollywood. Oh, nice. And I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of studio cats. And she's amongst the tops. She's right up there. When I played her in this key, I said I have to sing in this key. She goes, so she went. And she did an amazing job. Yeah, but then she got down into the zone there. Yes, she did. Yes, she did. It all sounded beautiful and very fun. And I love, you know, I love that era too. I love to hear it every now and then. So I love the album cover. I saw the little picture there of Betz Waller. Yeah. It looks like yours. Well, I wanted to pay homage to the great man. You know, it was like I just, I had been playing these songs. I have a friend in LA who plays these songs on guitar. Oh, wow. And he's the greatest Fats guy I know, Fred Sokolow. He knows them all. He knows every part of all the songs. And he knows the intros and everything. And when I do a song, he says, you're going to do the introduction? I go, no, I'm just cutting in at the chorus. But he introduced me to a lot of these songs too. And he's been a good proponent for me. And then we were putting a lot of them together. And I was just like, I had enough. And I played the Fats records in a car all the time. I said, all right, it's time. It's time. It's time. But you did a good job. Oh, thank you. You're very welcome. And what I liked about that cover, just going back, you were paying homage to him. And then you actually had on the attire to match, even with the hat tilted to the side. Yes. Yes. Have you got any feedback on that yet? I tell you, one of my friends, one of my friends, a wise guy said, I see the resemblance between you and Fats. Yeah. You know, like you look very similar. I'm like, thank you. Yeah, it's a very obvious identical twin mix up. But he was, I take it as a compliment. As a compliment, I'm sure. Totally. Totally. Yes. And I was careful not to put my hands on the piano, because I was like, I didn't want to imply that I could play the thing, because I can. And I was messing around doing stuff. And I said, no, no. So I did the cigar. And it was just fun. And the whole point of the record, too. It really is fun. Yes. Fats was nothing if fun. You know, it's not fun. Right, exactly. And all of his music exudes fun. And then, of course, here you come all these many years later, and you're doing the exact same thing. You look like Mr. Excitement to me. So I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. All right. So now I know you mentioned a few already. Tell us a little bit more about some of the people that you've actually had the opportunity to collaborate with and then give us your wish list. Who would you like to collaborate? Oh, that's a good one. I really feel, I feel very lucky. And I say, you know, you hear that I'm lucky and blessed. I really am. I sort of feel like I didn't stumble into this, but I've been stumbling upwards, I think. And I've been working. So I have a pretty decent work ethic. So when I got into it, I started to work. But I really didn't start singing this jazz, the old stuff, until singing it seriously until about 10 or 15 years ago. Well, that's not very long ago. No. Yeah. And you know what, I want to stop right there and just kind of reiterate the point that you just said, especially for our younger musicians, you said, I stumbled forward. So first of all, don't fall back and lay flat on your back. And then also you had some luck coupled with a lot of hard work. And I've always thought a good formula for success, I always say, is like a third talent, a third hard work and a third luck. Right. But if you have more in any of those areas, you can compensate. Yeah. I just, I had always been playing in bands and playing with friends. And I'd been in a studio making records. I loved, I just loved every part of it. When I was a kid, my parents encouraged us. And I saw the Beatles on TV and I said, I'm going to do that. Oh, wow. And then I got into the studios and, you know, and I got into bands and studios and such. And, but I was, I never really, I tried to sing a little bit, but every, you might notice I'm not a tenor. So all the songs are done, you know, by tenors and that. Yeah. So, and a bunch of friends really helped me. They said, you know, you change the keys. You don't have to sing the keys. I don't have to sing in Fats's key. Yeah. You know, you'd think Fats is a baritone. He's not, you know, it's like he sings up there. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, I can't sing there. I can't sing that thing in E flat. So it's like I bumped it over to A flat. I was like, holy cow. It works for you. And all these people who I mentioned earlier, uh, Pierre, Dwayne, Sonny, uh, Janai, all these people encouraged me and pushed me and said, you know, okay, change the key. Do that. Do this. And then that really lit my brain up. And then, you know, I was like, oh, I can do any of these songs. Yes. Or not any, because there's some that are very hard. But I found that I had a range. And then I went to Neva Rago, who's a great teacher here. A lot of people knew her. And she helped me. She said, look, you don't have a huge range, but just find where it fits. And then it was like, okay, and do stuff you love. So that's pretty much been the journey over the last 10 or 15 years. Have a great friend in California, Harry Donahue. Nobody knows him, but Harry and Valerie Donahue, all this music came out of their house, because we'd go up to his house. We were in a choir together. Oh, wow. He played piano. I played bass. And he said, come up to my house and we'll play some music. And the first one we did was, um, give me a kiss to build a dream on. And my imagination will thrive upon that. The Louis Armstrong. Okay. And we started with that and worked up and then, you know, 10, 15 years later, you got a bunch of songs. So that really birthed the whole swanky thing. And then now once I do it, people call, I'll get a lot of friends who will say, hey, you should do this song. Try that song. Or, oh yeah, I think this would be good for you. Yeah. And I've gotten a lot of songs that way, you know. Good for you. So this is a good place to stop right here. We're going to take a very quick break. And when we come back, we're going to spend more time with my new friend Patrick and his album, Swanky, the tribute to Fats Waller. We'll be right back after this break. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book, which is also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success, and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person, and want to improve your life, and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner, inviting you to join us on Wednesdays at 1 o'clock for cannabis chronicles. The 10,000-year Odyssey, where we take a look at cannabis as food, cannabis as medicine, cannabis and religion, cannabis and dear old Uncle Sam. So please join us to learn all about cannabis. Again, Wednesdays at 1 o'clock. Okay, thank you. Aloha, and welcome back to the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection. I am your guest host, Pisha King, and today we've been having a great time with Peter Vaughn Weekant, and we've been talking about his newest album, or CD. See, I'm a little bit older, too, right? Okay, but we all knew what I meant. Talking about his latest project, how about that? Okay, The Swanky Tributes to Fat Swaller. We're looking at the 1920s to the 1940s, and we're jumping right into that CD. Oh, I loved it. So the first song we heard a little bit earlier, Ain't Nobody's Business, was You and Jeanne. Correct. And she was singing in a higher range, and it sounded amazing, right? Because I've seen her. I've seen her a couple of times live, and she has an amazing voice, amazing range, right? I feel it when she sings it. I have a great time. This one surprised me. I've never heard her sing this era. She got squeezed on it, and she didn't put the kibosh on it. She didn't say, don't do it. Right, right. But like I said... She killed it, as they would say today. She killed it. She did an amazing job, and I loved every bit of that. I love what you did. This is my first time hearing you. So it was a joy and a pleasure to get to know some new music, right, or a new artist, right? You're welcome. Thank you. The pleasure has been online. I want to jump into the next song, and then I've got more questions. Is that all right? Oh, I love it. Awesome. All right, this next one we're going to play. Why don't you give us the intro? Look right here, camera through. Right there? Yep. Right there. It's called Sweet and Slow, and Fats Did It. I don't... He didn't write it, I don't think. I could be wrong. I should know all this because I just wrote out all the credits, but it's called Sweet and Slow, and it's been covered by a lot of people. I hope you enjoy. I love it. So you were listening to Sweet and Slow. What? Sweet and Slow? I like that. It's a very, you know, swanky song. It is. It's uncharacteristically, from the Fats version, he plays with a little bit, because he always teases in songs. He mugs a lot and, you know, does a lot of goofy stuff. And this one, he keeps it pretty straight. Yeah. And I wanted to keep it pretty straight, but I had to throw into the lines, you know. Yeah, yeah. I like the lyrics, though, but there's a lot of reference to animals. Talking about the rabbit in the hair and the buffalo. Well, they were referencing popular fairy tales and stuff, right? All right, right, right. You know, the rabbit in the race, you know, the turtle in the rabbit. It's like, who writes that stuff? Right, right. You know, I mean, the guys in the 20s and 30s were writing that stuff. Yeah. And I think it's funny. I mentioned my friend Fred Sokolow, and we were playing a few fat songs and he has Shuffle Off the Buffalo and Going to Buffalo a couple times. And I said, well, who's writing about buffalo anymore? Right, that's why I mentioned it. It was a good rhyming word, you know. We got no place to go when you go to Buffalo. I was like, okay. Okay, it works, right? It works. If it works, put it in there. Well, now, I kind of asked this question a little bit earlier and you skated away from it. So I want to go back. Either dead or alive. Would you like to work with that you haven't already? You know, when you said that, and I've had a few seconds to think about it, it scares the heck out of me to think about, you know. The obvious. Fats. No, these wild fats, you know. He wouldn't have me on the stage, I don't think. No, you don't think that. I don't, you know. And that's where I go into that insecurity of life. But who am I, my dream? Of course, you know, I wanted to be in the Beatles. I wanted to be in the Stones, you know, and that kind of stuff. There's a few wonderful jazz singers out there. I feel like I'm the luckiest guy in the world, singing with Jani. It's like, you know, that's just right up there. I'd like to sing with some famous people, but that's my ego talking. Right now, you know, you got me babbling here. I feel like I am playing with the people I really want to. Yes. And I'm able, you know, the swanky album that we did in London at Abbey Road, I had... World famous Abbey Road? The world famous, the Beatles studio. We went into studio two. And before we went over there, before we went over, I contact, I had heard Brian Ferry, who you had mentioned at the beginning. Yeah. Brian Ferry is a very famous old British rocker, but who loves jazz. And he's done these wonderful jazz albums. And my friends turned me on to him. I was like, oh my Lord. I said, I want to play with those guys. There you go. So I contacted him. I sent him a note. I found him on Facebook and I sent him a note. And I said, hey, I'm coming over here. I sent him some videos and some clips from our Capitol studio record that it's like, it has a little cred, you know. So it's like, oh yeah. And I sent him a note saying, I'd loved, you know, we're coming over. I booked the studio. I booked London. I booked Abbey Road. And then I said, I'd love to get you guys to play on it. You sent me a note back saying we'd love to. Awesome. And I was like, oh my Lord, I'm in heaven. And then I told Jani, I said, I'm going to go to London and do Abbey Road. She goes, I'm coming. I said, I know. I went in on that. Yes. She says, yeah, yeah. And we had a blast. She came, you know, we had a blast. And she lit up the room. Those guys lit up. We had Martin Wheatley. If you look on all of the Downton Abbey and all those TV shows with the old British things, every time you see a guitar player, that's Martin Wheatley. He's in all of those. And Colin Goode, the pianist, and Paul Moylan on bass and a young guy, Mezz Claw on drums. We then met a guy, Wayne McIntyre, the engineer, vocalist, Clarinetis. And I've become very good friends with him. And now we've done three or four albums worth of material over there. So you don't have to wish for the greats because you've already played with some of the best. And you're still playing with some of the best. I pinch myself. I really do. Yeah, you really are very, very fortunate and blessed. What would you say to up-and-coming musicians, especially those who are yet still in school, with all of the different things that are happening with music and the arts, even though we do have some of the arts still in our schools? Right. What would you say to an up-and-coming musician who wanted to play? Well, keep playing and keep playing with people. Keep playing, go out and play live with people. Go out and push yourself. Ask people to sing. I've gotten to where now, like, when I go to a place, I was in New York last week. I went to Shea Josephine, the Josephine Baker restaurant that her son, her adopted son, opened. Well, I went over there. I was working close by. And I knew there would be some hot jazz in there. And I brought a couple CDs. And I went over to the piano player and shook my hands, said, oh, I love your stuff. And I put my CDs on a table and showed them on the piano. And I said, hey, I'm doing this kind of stuff. And I sat down. And a couple minutes later, he's playing songs from the CDs. And then he came over to me. And he said, I didn't ask him. And he came over, he said, hey, will you want to sing a few? I said, oh, yeah, sure. But other times, I'll go up and ask directly. And I've been encouraged to do that. So I say to young people, learn, play. You have to play alone a lot. You have to practice. All of us have to practice. I've been practicing singing. I sing in the car. I sing at home. I work on it. I change keys. Keep doing that. But get out of your comfort zone. And it's hard. I'm always afraid. A lot of times, it's like to walk into a place where these hot people are playing. And you're going, you know, your head's saying, I don't belong here. I don't want to, you know. And then you go, step over the line and just go up and say, hi, I like your stuff. And most of all the musicians will give you a shot. Yeah. Because it's a community. It's a community of people who love what they do. And they certainly, all of you all love to inspire. And I think it's because you've been inspired by others. Oh, absolutely. For you. So it's reciprocal. So one last question before I let you go today, because look, we've had so much fun and time is already gone. I'm not done. I have an hour's worth. I have an extra hour to go. You got more stories, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. I want to hear about Abbey Road and all that good stuff, right? But what do you have coming up next? Are there any tours coming up? Right now, literally, this album just came out this week. Congratulations. Thank you. And it's on the World Wide Web. It's on all the streaming services, Spotify, Apple, Music, all that, Pandora and all that. I'm promoting that. Going back to Los Angeles. And I'll be, I'm going to Nashville. I'm playing in Nashville. I'm playing with some guys in LA. We're playing in some small places. And I'm planning on going back to Abbey Road. In November. I love the studio. It's a wonderful studio. And it just feels comfortable. It's not as expensive as you'd think. It really isn't. You just have to go over there. And plus, I like the guys. And I've got some gigs over there. So I've been building a little reputation. And it's, you know, I got very lucky. I met Giles Martin, George Martin's son who's taken over the Betel Empire. So he's doing all the production of all the Betel stuff now. And he's doing movies and Rocket Man and all kinds of stuff. And so he was in the studio. He uses Abbey Road all the time. And so he was asking me all about my record and all that stuff. And, you know, he came into the room and everything was, like, very cool. You know, that kind of stuff happens. And you're like, wow, you know, I'm hanging around some good players, you know, some good musicians. And it's fun to encourage other people. It's just, you know, there's a young gal, by the way, I'll be quick. Her name is Ella Grace. She's on this record. I've been singing with her for the last five years. She's now 16. Oh, wow. And her parents are studio musicians. I've heard that name somewhere. Well, she's going to be, I think she'll be very famous. And she's named after Ella Fitzgerald. She's a little blonde girl from the valley. Her mom and dad are studio cats in LA. But she's a sweetheart. And we're doing, I'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter on this record. Ooh, sweet. So you've heard it. You've heard all of it. All the good stories and all the good music can be found on Peter Von Wee Gantz. Patrick. Patrick. Chris, it's us twice. We, twice. Twice I did that. Edit, client, whatever you want to say. No, no, no. Oh my gosh. Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick Von G. Kisha, Kisha, Kisha. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Find his CDs. Swanky. Swanky. His tribute to Fats Waller. I love it. We've had a lot of fun today, right here on the Hawaii Smooth Jazz Connection with me, Kisha King, your guest host. Someone will see you next time. Kisha, Patrick, Mark, Peter, Paul, John, and Mary. All of us. See ya. Aloha. Bringo.