Follow the heart(s): A Grateful Aloha

The restaurant at the local resort is called "Happy Talk". When we arrived last week, we tried to make a dinner reservation but Jan 4 was the earliest they could accommodate us. We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation and the hostess seemed visibly frazzled. She said the band - we were expecting Hawaiian music - had taken our table so they needed 10 more minutes to set up space and fetch chairs for us. While we were waiting, we also heard from others that they were waiting for space at the bar since the dining area was closed for a private event. It was all a little bit concerning.

As we sat down, we heard various rumors including:
- the restaurant was hosting a "friends and family" event for the band
- the band regularly played in front of tens of thousands of people
- they were the Grateful Dead

It all seemed too absurd for our tiny resort restaurant. A number of the band members were young; too young to be the Grateful Dead. We weren't rock savvy enough to be able to identify anybody on stage, but with the help of a data-enabled phone we did match one person's face to a photo from the Grateful Dead (we think, anyway).

Finally, in the middle of dinner, one lady came up to our table. "Are you just random restaurant patrons? Do you know what's going on right now?". And while we had figured some of it out, we still didn't fully grasp the situation. She explained that this was a spontaneous show; essentially a rehearsal for a concert in Lihue on Friday. She named all of the people on stage (the son of a Grateful Dead member, the son of Crosby from Crosby, Stills & Nash, and some people from the String Cheese Incident). She was completely blown away that we had randomly found ourselves in the middle of the hottest event in town. And frankly, so were we!

After the show, the restaurant manager explained that he knew about the private event ahead of time but couldn't say anything about it, and the band members were contracted to keep mum as well. He had expected only 40 people, which is why they could still book a few reservations, but word got out. Around 70 people showed up (hence the stressed staff) and the manager said he turned away an additional 500 people (including some who managed to find his personal cell number!). The waitstaff also didn't know about the band until they arrived for their shift.

And that is how we found ourselves with prime seating in the middle of a rock concert rehearsal!

Front row, left - is he an original member of the Grateful Dead?