“Grandfather’s Clock” Slack Key

Welcome to Kaleponi Records, my musical home on the web. My name is Fran Guidry, and I play kika ki hoʻalu or Hawaiian slack key guitar.

Kaleponi is the Hawaiian word for California, where I live. Ki hoʻalu, or slack key, has a direct link to California history. The guitar was carried to the Big Island of Hawaiʻi by vaqueros from California. You can read more about the history of slack key guitar on the Dancing Cat Records web site.

Slack key guitar is named for the retuning that characterizes the style. Most of these new tunings feature loosened, or slackened, strings which give a deep rich sound.

My personal slack key history goes back to 1999 and my first visit to Hawaiʻi. When we turned on the TV in our Waikiki hotel room I was captivated by the playing of Keola Beamer. I knew in an instant that I had to learn to play this beautiful music. Over the years I've learned from great players and teachers like Ozzie Kotani, Keola himself, Patrick Landeza, Kevin Brown, Cyril Pahinui, Kawika Kahiapo, Raymond Kane, Dennis Kamakahi, and Ledward Kaapana.

Monday, January 27th, 2014

Funny how a song comes and goes through our lives. I don’t know when I first heard Grandfather’s Clock but it was a long time ago. I remember when I rediscovered the song, it came back on the Tone Poems CD with David Grisman and Tony Rice, a CD enjoyed for hours.

But the real jolt hit me when I found the song on Leonard Kwan’s Slack Key LP. Although that album was common in Hawai`i it was hard to find in California, and I remember losing out on a number of Ebay auctions before finally winning a scratched and worn copy of the record for over $30. Still I felt like I had gotten my money’s worth when I heard a slack key version of Grandfather’s Clock in Leonard’s unique style. After months of work I developed my own arrangement inspired by Uncle Leonard’s and I’ve played it ever since.

When I set out to shoot another video set in my favorite oak tree in the Acalanes Ridge open space this old song came to mind. Somehow the tree reminds me of a grandfather, shaggy and sprawling, surrounded by young ones, a connection to an earlier time. So I packed cameras and tripods, recorder and guitar, and hiked up the hill on a warm-for-January afternoon. I shot a timelapse while I set up cameras and audio, met a couple out for a stroll along the trail, then just finished running through the song as they returned. In a remarkable coincidence the gentleman was raised in Hawai`i and was a long time fan of slack key, especially Ledward Kaapana. And Ledward and I shot another video within the branches of the very same tree just last year: Aloha `Ia No `O Maui – Slack Key on Acalanes Ridge, hmm, looks like I forgot to do a post about that here at Kaleponi.com – sorry folks.

I do have another video of this song from a long time ago, a 2007 performance at Don Quixote’s in Felton, CA. This is another one that made it to the YouTube channel without an accompanying post here on Kaleponi.com: Slack Key – Grandfather’s Clock

So here’s an old song and an old tree, Grandfather’s Clock from the grandfather oak:

This entry was posted on Monday, January 27th, 2014 at 5:33 am and is filed under Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.