Alicia’s podcasts
Published in February 2021 by Echo Point Books & Media of Brattleboro, Vermont. Available in our online store.
“This video looks great, and captures the feeling of your wonderful book. My sister and I adored the 1st edition of Living on the Earth, and you definitely influenced our views on the right way to live. I can’t believe it is now 50 years later!”
Mark Chickering | Project Development
ECHO POINT BOOKS & MEDIA, LLC
Sophia Rose, very creative herbalist, writer, photographer, designer, life artist, and my good friend, assembled this video collage of art from my books and photographs of me and my communal friends in the early 1970s in Northern California, to a fragment of my autobiographical jazz waltz, “1966.” You can savor Sophia Rose’s divine herbal and artistic offerings at La Abeja Herbs.
Kaorico Ago Wada’s portrait of Alicia Bay Laurel at Cafe Millet, near Kyoto, on June 13, 2015.
Here‘s a link to Hikaru-san’s article and photos in the magazine he founded in the 1970s and has edited since then.
Here‘s a link to a video he made of my performance at Art Cafe Naksha in Awajishima of a famous old peace song, “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” on July 11, 2015. I tell the story of the song (at some length) before I sing, but, once I begin singing, people join me, and, in the instrumental break, and to the end of the song, everyone gets up and dances in a circle, echoing the lyrics: “…and the people in the streets below were dancing ’round and ’round…”
Here is a link to a video he made of my performance at Modern Ark Pharm Cafe in Kobe of my song Beautiful, Beautiful, June 28, 2015.
Here is a link to a video he made of my performance at Modern Ark Pharm Cafe in Kobe of my song Paisley Days, June 28, 2015.
Many thanks to you, dear Hikaru Hamada!
I met Laura Theodore online via LinkedIn’s Vegan and Vegetarian discussion group. Laura is a jazz vocalist with an impressive resume and a unique voice, who also hosts vegetarian cooking shows on television, radio and the Internet.
I pitched myself to her as a guest on her internet radio show, telling her I had recorded one (well-received) jazz/blues CD, and I’d also written and illustrated a book that had been a best seller in the 1970s, is still in print in English and in Japanese, and was recently selected as one of the 101 most influential American cookbooks of the 20th century by the Fales Library at New York University.
She bit.
So, here is the link to our phone collaboration last December, a show first airing today, January 31, 2013. Not sure the sound track is still working (as of 03-20-21).
On December 15, 2010, FM YOKOHAMA’s beloved radio personality Mitsumi aired her interview of me on her show “Ine! Good for You!” She translates my answers to the interview into Japanese, but you can still hear some of what I said in English. If you speak Japanese, you will have even more fun listening to the show. It’s 17 minutes and 14 seconds long. You can listen to it here.
My Hawaiian Hanukkah song, Festival of Lights, has been getting some airplay from podcasters this year. You can listen to it here.
Festival of Lights was podcasted on Washington Travel Cast 12-01-07
Festival of Lights was podcasted on EdÂ’s Mixed Bag 12-15-07
Festival of Lights was podcasted on Podcast Ping 12-17-07
Festival of Lights was podcasted on Power Ogg 12-18-07
Festival of Lights was podcasted on Becoming 12-20-07
Arthur Kopecky and Alicia Bay Laurel at the panel discussion at the CSA conference.
Listen to the panel discussion.
Alicia Bay Laurel, Ramon Sender, Delia Moon and Arthur Kopecky, four authors who each lived in more than one commune during the late ‘sixties and early ‘seventies in northern California, discuss the significance of those communities at the 30th annual conference of the Communal Studies Association, an international group of scholars who present papers on communal societies of many eras and locales.
Ramon Sender, Delia Moon, Arthur Kopecky at the panel discussion.
The panel is chaired by Timothy Miller, a much-published author on communal societies, professor at University of Kansas, and founder of the Communal Studies Association. The panel discussion took place on September 30, 2006 at the Marconi Conference Center in Marin county, California, a site which was once a commune run by Synanon.
Friday, January 26, 2007. I visit Andy Olson and Cheryl Sweet at Radio Free Phoenix, their home-based local and internet radio station, for an interview.
Andy Olson is a veteran DJ of the early 1970’s FM radio revolution, which, he told me, played a big part in creating the singer/songwriter phenomenon of those days. The commercial stations on AM wouldn’t play the thoughtful, political and psychedelic music that was born of the consciousness boom of the late 1960’s, but a bunch of maverick DJs used the unwanted FM bandwiths of the time to promote these songs. After they proved there was a large listening audience for the new singer/songwriters, the big labels began to pick them up and the commercial stations began to play them.
Andy and Cheryl in the recording studio of Radio Free Phoenix.
However, now that a few media megaliths own the great bulk of the radio stations and play only whatever the big record companies are promoting, a similar revolution is taking place on Internet radio. Maverick DJs are playing “indie” music, that is, self-produced recordings by singer/songwriters that do not conform to the commercial norm. That’s me. Thanks to artist Tracy Dove for giving a copy of What Living’s All About to Cheryl Sweet last summer, and to DJs Andy Olson, Cheryl Sweet, Liz Boyle and Miss Holly King for playing four cuts from the CD ever since.
Andy told me that, since many commercial stations simply computerize their programs and no live DJ actually chooses or comments upon the music, in-studio radio interviews with musicians rarely air. But on non-commercial station programming and on Internet radio, the DJs and hosts welcome all kinds of content, including live interviews.
Considering the service that independent stations render to the community, they ought to be well-funded. However, most are running on scarce donations and volunteer work. Cheryl works nights as a cardiac nurse in a local emergency room, in addition to hosting her own radio show and, with Andy, raising four children. The station owes its continuation to her efforts. Andy predicts that with the expansion of “wi-fi” (wireless internet connection) to cover entire cities, Internet radio will one day be as ubiquitous as conventional radio. (Note from 2021: he was right!)
I loved being interviewed by Andy Olson and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to us. Click here to hear a podcast of it.
Guitar chart handlettered by Alicia Bay Laurel in 2002.
You can listen to Festival of Light here.
In 2009, Sable Cantus, the choir director at Temple Beth David, in Westminster (Orange County), California, found Festival of Light online while searching for a song his choir could sing for a Hawaiian-themed Hanukkah party at the temple, and contacted me via my website for permission to use it. I not only assented, but volunteered to attend and participate, since I was living in Los Angeles at the time, about an hour’s drive away on the 405 freeway. Sable made sheet music of his choral arrangement of the song, which I have as a pdf document. Please let me know if you would like a copy and I’ll email it to you.
Temple Beth David made the feminist in me sing. The rabbi and the cantorial soloist are women – gorgeous, intelligent, talented women. Here’s a photo of me at the party, sporting a blue and white mu’umu’u (my best approximation of a Hawaiian Hanukkah gown), next to Rabbi Nancy Myers. In the center are two people whose names I don’t know, and on the right is Cantorial Soloist Nancy Linder.
And, hooray, below is a REVIEW of Festival of Light, by Jeanne Cooper, published in SF Gate, the online edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, on December 24, 2009:
“I’ve only just discovered a beautiful slack-key Hanukkah song, “Festival of Light,” by Alicia Bay Laurel, which appears on the 2001 “Old Hawaiian Christmas” compilation CD (SeaWest label), now out of print; you can hear by clicking on the player below, or following the link above. Anyone who’s a fan of ki ho’alu may enjoy it no matter what the season.”
My own assessment of the song:
Festival of Light is sweet and sincere rather than humorous, a Hawaiian slack-key-guitar-inspired folk song combining Hawaiian elements (aloha, ocean) with Hannukah elements (the eight nights surrounding the new moon preceeding the winter solstice, family gathering, candles of menorah). I performed two vocal tracks and two guitar tracks (one Hawaiian slack key, one in standard tuning).
Story Behind the Song:
Rick Asher Keefer, a producer-recording engineer whose Na Hoku award winning Hawaiian CDs include those by reknowned Hawaiian artists Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Brother Noland, and his brother, Tony Conjugacion, created Old Hawaiian Christmas, a compilation holiday CD, in 2001, and asked me to write and perform (probably the first ever) Hawaiian Hannukah song. The CD (and this song) continues to get airplay in Hawaii in the December holiday season.
Rick engineered and helped me produce my first two CDs (Music from Living on the Earth and Living in Hawaii Style) at Sea-West Studios, near Pahoa, Hawaii, in 2000 and 2001. He and his wife Donna Keefer both perished from cancer, he in December 2013, and she in April 2015. They are sorely missed by a large musical community, not only in Hawaii, but in Japan, and in Seattle, their first home. Rick engineered albums by the woman-fronted rock band, Heart, including Dog and Butterfly.
Lyrics to Festival of Light
Verse One
Festival of light on a winter night
Gathering of friends and family
Flickering candles in a row
Shining for a miracle in history
Refrain
All of this on eight starry moonless nights
All of this surrounded by the great blue sea
All in the spirit of aloha
Smiling in the heart of Hawaii
Verse Two
Now is the season for sharing our light
Singing and dancing so joyously
Thanking each other for kindliness
Flowing through our lives so plenteously
Refrain
All of this on eight starry moonless nights
All of this surrounded by the great blue sea
All in the spirit of aloha
Smiling in the heart of Hawaii
(c) 2001 Alicia Bay Laurel, Bay Tree Music (ASCAP)
Alicia Bay Laurel 
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