Lukas Nelson hosts major benefit concert for Maui at the MACC | News, Sports, Jobs
Lukas Nelson has organized a major benefit show, set for Sunday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. “Lokahi: A Celebration of Maui,” features Nelson, Jack Johnson, Nathaniel Rateliff, Paula Fuga, Lily Meola, Donavon Frankenreiter, and Promise of the Real. Shervin Lainez photo
Feeling inspired to help raise funds for folks impacted by the devastating wildfires, Lukas Nelson has organized a major benefit show, which is set for Sunday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center.
“Lokahi: A Celebration of Maui,” features Nelson, Jack Johnson, Nathaniel Rateliff, Paula Fuga, Lily Meola, Donavon Frankenreiter, and Promise of the Real.
“I wanted to do something to really lift Maui’s spirits,” Nelson explained. “There’s been a few concerts here and there, and I wanted everybody to have an opportunity to sort of let the air out of the tires a little bit, let the pressure release and have some music and come together, celebrating the strength of the community.
“It’s about letting people lift their spirits, and having a great show. We can have some fun and everybody can laugh and dance and sing together, because there has not been not a lot of that on Maui lately. Everybody’s really been tested in the last few months, and the resilience is so strong. I’m just hoping that we can bring some really good energy and some healing.”
Nelson called up a few friends to join the celebration lineup. “I called Jack, and I called Nathaniel, and Lily and Paula Fuga. There will be other artists as well coming in and joining. Everybody’s donating their time and jumped at the opportunity. All the artists involved have a Hawaii connection. Nathaniel has been coming to Maui for about 20 years. He’s got a deep connection to Maui.”
In terms of the show’s format, he said, “we’ll have my band and we’ll have acoustic sets that will come and go. It will be similar to Neil Young’s Bridge School concert or Farm Aid. We’ll have people go up and do their sets and then hopefully at the end we’ll be collaborating.”
On the Wednesday following the Lahaina fire, Nelson and some friends headed over to the West side to help out, buying gasoline for impacted folks. “We were pumping gas for Lahaina residents at the gas station that was open,” he said. “It was hard, though, being there. It was really difficult. People come up to the gas pump and then they don’t know what to say. You’re swiping their gas for them and then they open up. They start to realize there’s no catch, and they feel like they’re in a safer place. You hear the stories, you hear what happened, and you hear the horror of it all.”
He has been working with the grass-roots, non-profit Fresh Help Maui (https://freshhelpmaui.com), which just launched a Santa Clause campaign, and he created a Change.org petition to encourage officials to rebuild Lahaina with underground power lines. “I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t put them underground. They did it in California after the fires in Paradise. It just makes a lot more sense. It’s a no-brainer to me.”
In July, Nelson and Promise of the Real released their latest recording, the critically acclaimed “Sticks and Stones.” PopMatters praised that it was, “designed to help you reach your happiness goals,” and the music magazine Uncut said that it “comes off like a bracing exhalation of post-pandemic relief.”
Reflecting a broad range of country flavors from good-time rocking boogie to emotive ballad, Nelson explained he wanted to create “a live album for honky-tonk, get out there, the clubs, bars, and theaters we’re in, and festivals, to be able to play great sing-along, upbeat songs. I think it really did. The shows have been really well received.”
Among the highlights, Greek philosopher Plato influenced the rootsy, uptempo “Ladder of Love.” “I was reading ‘The Symposium’ and the concept of different types of love, and the higher senses of love. There’s the more carnal and the more spiritual and it keeps climbing up.”
Maui gets a nod in “The View,” where he sings about not feeling island fever. “It’s sort of open-ended. It could be Maui or it could be the face of the one you love every day. You never get tired of the view.”
Getting wasted shows up in a few songs, including the hilarious “Wrong House,” where the narrator wakes up in a stranger’s home. “I’ve written a lot about my old self on this album, because I don’t do that anymore,” he said. “It was sort of self-reflective, an ode to the old me, especially with (the song) ‘Alcohalleluja.'”
“Sticks and Stones” marks another exceptional achievement from this mighty talented band. As Rolling Stone noted in a recent Farm Aid review of Nelson and Promise of the Real, “they’re better and better every single year.”
Looking forward to Sunday, Nelson said, “It’s really great because music is what I do and I’m not often able to play on Maui. When I come here a lot of times, I’ve been on tour for four months, and I’m ready to just relax. But this has been something that I wanted to do for a long time. The last year we did the show with dad for the Food Bank, and I’d like to make it, since this is my home, that when we do play here, more often than not it’s in order to give back to the community that I feel like has given back to me, in so many ways. I grew up here and obviously I’m integrated into Maui’s community deeply. I live here. My soul is connected here and so when I feed Maui, I feed my own soul.”
“Lokahi: A Celebration of Maui” is presented on Sunday at the MACC. Gates open at 4:30 p.m. and show starts at 5:30. Tickets are $55 for general admission at the rear of the venue, and $65, $85, and $125 for reserved seating, available at mauiarts.org.
Lukas Nelson has organized a major benefit show, set for Sunday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. “Lokahi: A Celebration of Maui,” features Nelson, Jack Johnson, Nathaniel Rateliff, Paula Fuga, Lily Meola, Donavon Frankenreiter, and Promise of the Real. Shervin Lainez photoToday's breaking news and more in your inbox
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