Kaua‘i Songwriters Music Festival 2024

The Kauai Songwriters Music Festival is a celebration of the art of songwriting. This year’s festival includes workshops for songwriters on Friday and Saturday followed by an evening concert on Saturday open to the public. Tickets to the concert are $35 in advance. The workshops are $80 and include a concert ticket.  https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/ec6566a0-e92f-425d-8a10-528316334d56

Funded with support of the Hawaii Tourism Authority through the Community Enrichment Plan and the County of Kauai and the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts.

Performers and Presenters Include:

Jason Blume is the author of 6 Steps to Songwriting Success, This Business of Songwriting, and Inside Songwriting (Billboard Books). His songs have been recorded by Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, the Oak Ridge Boys and many others, selling more than 50,000,000 copies. His song, “Come Back” was the debut single for Na Hoku Hanohano award winning band “Crossing Rain.”

Jason’s songs have been included in films and TV shows including “Scrubs,” “Friday Night Lights,” “Assassination Games,” Disney’s “Kim Possible” “Dangerous Minds,” “Kickin’ it Old Skool,” “The Guiding Light,” “The Miss America Pageant,” and many more. He studied film and television composing at U.C.L.A., and contributed songs and background score for Emmy-winning and Emmy nominated TV shows. A guest lecturer at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (co-founded by Sir Paul McCartney) and at the Berklee School of Music, he teaches the BMI Songwriter Workshops and has taught master classes in more than ten countries. He has published more than 125 articles in BMI’s magazines, and has been interviewed as a songwriting expert for CNN, NPR, the BBC, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times.

Emily Elbert builds her home in between worlds. In music, she connects disparate concepts: traversing wide-ranging styles, expressing both the contemplative and celebratory, and fusing the Earthly with the ethereal. She’s honed her artistry on the road, playing over a thousand independent solo shows from Peru to Palestine – but she has also become a sought-after collaborator, playing in the bands of luminary artists including Leon Bridges, Jacob Collier, Esperanza Spalding, Sara Bareilles, Lorde, and Jenny Lewis. All of these experiences feed into her music today. Anchored by what L.A. Weekly calls a “funky, engrossing groove,” the publication notes, “Elbert would be considered remarkable just for her guitar playing, which segues from hard-edged funk and blues to more gently subtle jazz intricacy. But she’s an equally adept vocalist, weaving her soulful phrasing nimbly within the rhythms of her guitar chords.”

Emily recently released her sixth independent album, Woven Together, a rhythmic, flowing ode to the intersections of sensuality, healing and progress. Upon its release, PopMatters remarked, “though it would be safe to call her a spiritual successor to Joni Mitchell, Elbert is truly a chameleonic composer…this is Emily Elbert, a name to bookmark.”

Songwriter Ken Emerson and special guests will be featured. Ken Emerson is one of the world’s most highly regarded traditional Hawaiian slack key & steel guitarists living today. He is a monster player of both, and he switches easily between them during his performances, laying his guitar on his lap and picking up a steel bar for an instrumental interlude. Emerson is famous for his one-of-a-kind slack/steel style playing of vintage acoustic steel-bodied National Resonator guitars. Emerson won the prestigious Kahili Award for perpetuating Hawaiian culture and was a featured artist and composer on the first-ever National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences Grammy Award-winning Best Hawaiian Album. Emerson’s playing was also featured on Donald Fagen’s (Steely Dan) Grammy Award-winning Morph the Cat. He has many additional touring/recording credits including Jackson Brown, Boz Scaggs, Charlie Musselwhite, Taj Mahal,      Todd Rundgren, Ramblin” Jack Elliott, and Elvin Bishop.

Rock Hendricks is a world-renowned saxophonist, producer, and recording engineer. Throughout his career, Rock performed and recorded with many legendary performers such as Michael Jackson, John Lee Hooker, Lydia Pense & Cold Blood, The Funkadelics, Michael Buble, Marvin Gaye Jr., Marvin Gaye Jr. III, The Temptations, Bobby Womack, Coke Escovedo, Walter Becker and Don Fagan, Steve Arrington, The Family Stone, Bonnie Raitt, Leon Russel, Dave Mason, Sammy Hagar, Motown Records, Gabriel Hasselbach, Jeff Lorber, and Paul Hardcastle.

Rock wrote and produced music for the Electronic Arts game “The Sims” with over 150 million games sold.

Rock has recorded over 30 songs with Paul Hardcastle and has had nine Billboard #1 smooth jazz hits.  Rock is playing sax with Paul on yet another upcoming album to be released at the end of 2023.

Allan Thomas is a longtime singer songwriter, guitarist, recording artist, performer, record producer and engineer. He has released seven albums of original material and is currently working on his 8th release. Mr Thomas receives airplay from his various releases worldwide.

Allan has been writing songs since a late teen in 1967. He released his first album of original material for Sire Records in 1971. AT was a staff-songwriter for ABC Music in Los Angeles in the late 1980’s.

Mr Thomas has recorded and performed with Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Graham Nash,  David Crosby and Donald Fagen among others. He has opened shows for Weather Report, Taj Mahal and Richie Havens among others.

Some of Allan’s current recording band members include: Keith Carlock drums (Steely Dan), Jimmy Johnson bass (James Taylor), Russell Ferrante piano (Yellowjackets) Will Kennedy drums (Yellowjackets) Dean Parks guitar (Steely Dan) and Michael Landau guitar (Miles Davis).

Randy Tico is known to many for his bass work with a diverse range of artists such as the critically acclaimed jazz nonet Matrix, Jeff Bridges, Strunz & Farah, Airto & Flora Purim, Jose Feliciano, Kenny Loggins and John McEuen.

But to a whole other world he has established himself as an  award winning composer/sound designer for theater with Critical Mass Performance Group, Denver Center of the Performing Arts, Portland Center Stage, Theater @ Boston Court and Ensemble Theater Company in his home town of Santa Barbara.

Eclectico brings these worlds together with a heartfelt journey through sonic landscapes sometimes uplifting, other times bittersweet but always rich with emotion and gorgeous instrumental performances. Drawing from award winning theater scores, soundtracks  and new compositions Eclectico is Tico’s first release since Earth Dance on Higher Octave in 1990. .