The deadbeats get different

The Deadbeats (from left) are: Paul Nelson, Tahiti Rey, Harumi Jerome, Micah McLaughlin and Ethan Capone.

The Deadbeats (from left) are: Paul Nelson, Tahiti Rey, Harumi Jerome, Micah McLaughlin and Ethan Capone.

On July 18, hip hop/funk/jazz veterans The Deadbeats will perform at Hawaii Public Radio’s Atherton Studio. Their plan is to bring a fresh perspective to their music, tying together older material that they rarely get to play live with a handful of new songs yet to be performed in front of a public audience.

The band is comprised of keyboardist Ethan Capone, bassist Paul Nelson, MC Harumi Jerome, drummer Micah McLaughlin and vocalist Tahiti Rey. I sat down with Ethan, Paul and Harumi to discuss their approach to this Satur-day’s gig. Here’s what they had to say:

Paul: The Atherton Studio is a very cool space. Hawaii Public Radio’s main thing when I talked to them was, “How are you guys going to make this a unique thing? Something that’s a different approach than your regular gigs.” So, we’re thinking of ways to take our music and structure it in a way that has some sort of thematic element or show a progression.

One of the things we’ve been up to lately is writing new music for our next album. It’s been a couple of years since our last album (Do You) came out. The Atherton gig will be a bit of a retrospective going through some old material and trying to arrive at some of the new material.

Harumi: It’s exciting to have to look at the old songs. If I didn’t write something fresh, then I have to rehearse it, because I don’t write easy stuff, it’s a mess. I now write with the intention of “I gotta memorize this, so let’s not make it too crazy.” Before, I didn’t. So it’s really hard to do the old stuff.

Ethan: And also, a lot of tunes might be on our album but we just don’t ever play live. Because, you know, when you play live it’s very different — you have to understand the situation, play what the people want to hear. Whereas this show, we can do anything we want. We can get artsy with it; we can do songs that we’ve put on our album but we’ve never played live before.

I look at this Saturday’s event as a way to really showcase our music: the musical aspects and Harumi’s words. I think a lot of time in live performances, Harumi’s words can be lost because there’s a lot to it, deeper meaning, a lot of metaphors. He writes some stuff that I think goes over people’s heads in a normal gig setting, so I really want to make this Saturday’s gig focused on the sound so that people can get in deep to the music. If you had the ability to really listen, then you’d go, “These lyrics are about some really heavy stuff,” or, “This music has some really interesting changes.” That’s what’s cool about this gig.

The show starts at 7:30 p.m. It also features live art by Rob McGarry. For tickets, visit hawaiipublicradio. org/athertonconcerts or call 955-8821. Learn more at facebook.com/ thedeadbeats.

Roger recently turned his blog, Aloha Got Soul, into a record label: alohagotsoul.com.