For the members of Red Session, a third wave ska band, which started in a garage in Hawaiʻi Kai in the early ʻ90s, a reunion is coming. Red Session will bring the band back together for one performance at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 22, at Nextdoor in Chinatown.
“It is absolutely a one-night-only show,” said Jamie Winpenny, Red Sessionʻs songwriter and guitarist.
The venue has space for about 300 fans. There are less than 50 tickets left, Winpenny told Aloha State Daily as of Wednesday.
Over the years, Red Session opened for ska bands such as The Specials, The Toasters, The Selecter, Fishbone, Mighty Might Bosstones and Hepcat, among others.
Red Session just dropped some live recordings from the past in a new album: “Monday Night Live & More.” Previously, the band released a full-length album, “R. Roan’s Wee Thyme” in 1996.
For the upcoming reunion show, Mainland artist Chris Murray, who tours nationally and was part of the now defunct band King Apparatus, will also take stage.
Winpenny and drummer Shon Gregory were the original band members, and the pair began practicing music in the early ʻ90s in the garage of Winpenny’s parents.
“We had fun and started writing some music together and started playing with some other people,” Winpenny said. “Then, we started playing house parties, mostly in Kailua — strangely — because we were all from Hawaiʻi Kai.”
It was through those parties, that the duo met the band’s bass player, Christopher Maas, and vocalists, Selika Drake and Pat Harrison. To fill the horn section, they put up flyers at the University of Hawaiʻi’s music school, Winpenny said. Two people responded, and that is how the band added Chad Tamashiro on trombone and David Jackson on trumpet.
In 1997, the band moved to the Bay Area in California to tour full time, Winpenny said. Eventually, Red Session dismantled when some of its members returned to Hawaiʻi.
Several continued to make music with other groups. Gregory joined another ska band, Go Jimmy Go, and toured with them all over the world before concentrating on his construction business. Winpenny became part of another band, playing guitar on a national tour before returning to Hawaiʻi. Today, he plays with the Irish Pub rock band Doolin’ Rakes, which plays “a whole different genre of music” and did a one-week residency in Las Vegas, he said.
For this show, two band members — Maas and Tamashiro — are flying in from California to take the stage.
"The bass player flew out last week just for the weekend for rehearsals,” Winpenny told ASD on Feb. 19. “He's flying back in again today.”
Most of the band members have different day jobs. Winpenny is a journalist. Drake is a public school teacher. Gregory works in construction. But on Saturday, Feb. 22, all of them will share a common responsibility to step back on stage.
There was a reunion once before in 2002. For that show, held at the now closed Hawaiian Hut at the Ala Moana Hotel, the band took the stage in front of about 900 people for a soldout performance, Winpenny said.
Red Session performs almost entirely original music, he said.
“We're all from Hawaiʻi, so we talk about positive stuff,” Winpenny said. “I think there's just a lot that people can relate to, and I think that we're going to have such a an amazing turnout because we were around at a time when there was a really fertile music scene in Hawaiʻi. There were big gigs every weekend with local bands. There were other big ska acts coming in and big metal acts. There was just a really big communal live music scene.”
Fans of punk rock, reggae, heavy metal and ska would attend the same shows, he added.
“We want all of these people that were part of that community to just come and celebrate themselves,” he said. “Celebrate what we've all been through in our lives together, or separately. We all survived. We're all here. We all have our lives, and we all still have each other. It's just a way for us to bring our age cohort back together again to share those memories and vibes. And then also, to try to reach out to younger music fans who might not have been as familiar with our work over the years.”
Tickets for this reunion show are $13. The doors open at 8 p.m. The show is limited to attendees who are at least 21 years old. Buy tickets here.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
