by Simon Allen

P.C. I first met Margaret when she was around 13. Her family came from Oahu to visit Kaua’i almost every summer. My first experience with her was more about enjoying the ocean and hiking. It wasn’t until she came back from college at Dominican in Marin, California, that I realized she was a musician. It was at this time that we began playing music together. We were playing acoustic music with guitar, ukulele, and dulcimer. She had a very interesting harmonic approach to music that really appealed to me. She was also beautiful, which only amplified my attraction to hanging with her. We periodically became romantically involved.

At one point, we were living together in the mountains above Honolulu. This is when we began to hang out with Carlos Pardeiro. Carlos is a musician from Uruguay who came to Hawai’i to surf. In South America, he was a very popular musician in a band that was their equivalent of the Beatles. He also wrote very beautiful acoustic songs. When we started playing music with him, he was living under the Chart House restaurant in Waikiki. We would visit him and surf Ala Moana, then play some music. Sometimes we would drive to the north shore of Oahu, singing three part harmonies all the way. The songs by Carlos on These Trails are a result of this time. Carlos now owns a TV station in Tennessee called Safe TV - http://www.safetv.org/Home.htm. He is still recording and writing great songs.

Margaret and I met David Choy and Peter Corragio (the producer of These Trails) when we recorded a demo at Peter’s Sinergia Studio. Peter was a concert pianist who was beginning to explore the Moog synthesizer. David Choy, whose musical background stretched from Beijing Opera to rock and roll, was his friend and assistant. We recorded “Rusty’s House”, and on the strength of that song Peter suggested that we do an album of music in conjunction with his synthesizer explorations.

P.C. My musical background is really Hawaiian music. I was thoroughly immersed in it when I was a student at the Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu. However, when I went to college in Los Angeles in the late sixties, there was something else going on. I saw all the great musicians of that time playing live – Hendrix, Clapton, Janis Joplin, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Zappa, the Airplane, the Doors, etc.. I was also introduced to Miles Davis and the arrangements of Gil Evans. At the same time, I was deeply involved in choral music at my college. It seems like the whole spectrum of music was delivered to me like a pizza. I was into Buffy Sainte-Marie, Taj Mahal, Sandy Bull, Joni Mitchell, the Incredible String Band, etc.

Margaret was three or four years younger than I was, so she was also influenced by many of the same musicians that I was. She came into the music as a pianist, and then she began to play the guitar and recorder, and dulcimer. Her harmonic tendencies seem to be her own thing, because a lot of what she did I had never heard before.

Carlos Pardeiro had many different influences in South America – he loved the guitar playing of Baden Powell, the passionate folk music of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, the soulful singing of his mother, and of course, the Beatles.

David Choy was a sponge. He was into everything.

P.C. Margaret and I, and the rest of the These Trails musicians never did any live gigs together. Margaret and I played a lot of music wherever we were, but it was never a commercial thing. It was more candlelight at night.

P.C. The 70’s were considered a musical renaissance in Hawai’i. There was a resurgence of pride in being Hawaiian, and there were many great groups playing at that time: the Sons of Hawai’i, Peter Moon, Keola Beamer, The Brother’s Cazimero, Country Comfort, etc. There were acoustic musicians everywhere, many of them playing Hawaiian style slack key guitar, or "Ki Ho Alu." Margaret and I did several songs on These Trails in this style – Our House in Hanalei, Psyche I, Rapt Attention. We did not really use these tunings in the traditional way, however: we were always looking for the unusual harmonies inside the tunings. One major influence at that time for us was Buffy St. Marie. She was living on Kaua’i by this time and was very generous with her music and experience. She came into the studio one day and listened to our stuff. She said it was a musician’s album. Another great writer we admired and played with was Liko Martin. He is one of Hawaii’s great songwriters, although he has never really come out of a studio with a finished product. Many of his songs have been recorded by other groups in Hawai’i. Another great writer was Carlos Andrade, who I recorded "Pacific Tunings" with as the band Na Pali. We later morphed into the Hula Blues Band with Taj Mahal.

P.C. I actually went into the Sinergia Studio with Carlos Andrade to record some other songs and ended up recording one with Margaret. On the basis of that song, Peter Corragio suggested we do an album of music that would incorporate his new fascination with the Moog synthesizer. I saw Peter at Margaret’s funeral last year. As usual, he had a beautiful wife (one of many) and was deeply involved in the music. We lamented the great loss caused by Margaret’s untimely death.

P.C. The Hawaiian Islands are among the most beautiful on the planet. It is impossible to live here and not be affected by their great beauty. Traditional Hawaiian songs constantly deal with natural themes interwoven with the human presence. For Margaret, nature was everything. She had this thing about trees, and was always in them. A sense of place really emanates from Margaret’s songs. When she says in Rapt Attention “you are the blue of the bluest sky, I am your conception”, she was serious. Carlos Pardeiro was a keen student of nature, also. El Rey Pescador lauds the fishermen of South America, who are very highly regarded in their own folk music. I wrote Waipo after spending an afternoon on the rim of Waimea Canyon in the mountains of Koke’e. These Hawaiian Islands are changing rapidly – their fragility is due to extreme isolation from any other land mass. The endemic plants and animals are being decimated by the introduction of alien species. It seems like the Hawaiian people share this decimation.