Video Interview: Michael Buono

Michael Buono

Interviewed by Jan Garrett

February 2023

2025.016.0005

Michael Buono [00:00:11] Hi, Jan.

Jan Garrett [00:00:12] Hi, Michael. Everybody who might be watching this, my name is Jan Garrett. I am so pleased to be here today with my dear friend, fabulous musician, drummer, and on and on, Michael Buono. Here he is.

Michael Buono [00:00:27] Hi, Jan. Hi, everybody.

Jan Garrett [00:00:31] So what we’re doing here is, we’re going to be talking to Michael just about some of the memories that he might have of experiences of being in Aspen, being a musician, especially during the late ’60s on through the ’70s, since that was pretty much a very magical time, I think. Would you agree, Michael?

Michael Buono [00:00:52] I would, I would.

Jan Garrett [00:00:55] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:00:56] Yeah. Very lucky. Very fortunate.

Jan Garrett [00:00:58] Yeah, man. And we’re trying to get to that essence of, if we can find out what was it or what is it that continues to be inspiring about that time, or about the music, or just that soul quality.

Michael Buono [00:01:12] Well, what was it? There was a level of musicianship that was really top notch, and the audience knew it, and they felt it, and they loved to dance to us. Your group, The Hustlers, God, I remember them laughing so hard and stomping their feet and loving the music. And then when you’d sing a ballad by yourself with just you and the guitar, they just… there was no talking. It was the greatest audience, and there was something about the town back then, just embraced, you know, the arts. It wasn’t just music, it was, you know, everybody from Hunter Thompson’s books to, oh, a famous artist… I can’t remember names now… but they just wanted that. It was a place to escape the city and just be surrounded by beauty, you know, the physical beauty of the valley. And then we just kind of… we were the desert. The music, oh, it was just great.

Jan Garrett [00:02:26] It was lovely. So just a little historical context here. We are just at the very end of February 2023, and as you can see from my surroundings, JD and I have come to Maui to sing at a friend’s wedding, so we’re so happy to be here because, Michael, you’re in Maui too, right?

Michael Buono [00:02:46] Yeah. 32 years.

Jan Garrett [00:02:48] 32 years?

Michael Buono [00:02:50] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:02:50] So you may hear bird calls in the background as we’re doing this.

Michael Buono [00:02:56] Love them. That’s better than trucks and motorcycles.

Jan Garrett [00:03:00] Starting right… can you start from, you know, what you were doing say mid to late ’60s, and then how did you get to Aspen? Where were you playing? Talk about the Red Onion.

Michael Buono [00:03:11] Well, you remember Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass?

Jan Garrett [00:03:15] Oh, sure.

Michael Buono [00:03:16] When they were huge in the early ’60s, I got a tap on my shoulder from Joe Kloess, the incredible pianist. And he said, “There’s a band in Spokane, Washington, and Werner Kuster, the owner of the Red Onion, wants to book them for the whole winter season, from Thanksgiving of ’65 to Easter of ’66, seven days and nights a week.” It ended up just being après ski, but we were doing both days and nights, and it was so popular. There’s this one ski patrolman, Toro. I want to say Ted Pelletier and his girlfriend… I wish I could remember her name, but she was tiny compared to him. And when we were playing, he would just throw her all around the dance floor. It was just wonderful and just the camaraderie and everybody in the… the ski instructors and the ski patrol, and they’d grab somebody and they’d get on the dance floor and just… it was just the greatest. And then they… I didn’t ski at the time, but they came up… none of us skied, maybe Joe did, but they said, “We want to teach you how to ski.” And it just went on from there. And they showed us how to ride the chairlifts, and they took us way at the top. And there was no way that Jack, the trumpet player, and me and a couple others were going to ski down. So they just put us in the toboggans, and you know how fast they could ski with toboggans? And we were screaming, you know, it was like a roller coaster. It was the greatest thrill…

Jan Garrett [00:05:06] Oh wow.

Michael Buono [00:05:07] …ever. But it was that camaraderie. It was just being welcomed everywhere you went. Everybody from, oh, Paul from Australia… gosh, I wish I could remember his last name… and he was a ski instructor and a, what do they say, server now or waiter?, up at the Chart House. He showed me how to eat my very first artichoke. It just… you know, what I guess what I’m getting at is, it was just one big family, you know, a thousand-person family. And we all were working literally seven days and nights a week. No days off. Do you remember that? Working seven days?

Jan Garrett [00:05:50] Well, we didn’t work as much as you guys did.

Michael Buono [00:05:53] No, but when you came to town, you’d work a couple of weeks and…

Jan Garrett [00:05:56] That’s true. Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:05:57] I don’t recall you ever having a day off…

Jan Garrett [00:06:00] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:06:00] …you know, with The Hustlers.

Jan Garrett [00:06:03] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:06:03] And… what great memories this brings back.

Jan Garrett [00:06:07] So think about the Red Onion. For people who were not there in, say, the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Red Onion was a whole lot more expanded. I don’t even… I’m not sure it exists anymore. But give a little… talk about Red Onion.

Michael Buono [00:06:21] The tiny front bar was there five years ago. So that would have been 2018, when I was there last…

Jan Garrett [00:06:31] I think they called that Beer Gulch.

Michael Buono [00:06:34] Oh, is that it? Beer Gulch?

Jan Garrett [00:06:35] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:06:36] But, you know, it started that way a hundred years ago. And then Kuster and Jim Perry, do you remember that name?

Jan Garrett [00:06:45] I do.

Michael Buono [00:06:46] …Jim Perry, were partners financially. And then Otto, I can’t remember the chefs, but they all were involved, not just as a chef, but I think financially also. And then they put in a back room with a stage. And then they took the building next door, which I believe was or maybe is Aspen Sports, and they gutted it, and they put in a gourmet kitchen, you know, open air where everybody in there could see Kuster and Otto and everybody cooking. They had the… flame broiled everything, you know, just there’d be a big cloud of smoke, you know, and then the fans would take it up, but the aroma. And he built a wall between the lounge and the restaurant that could be closed off, so they would close it until like 9 or 10. Then they would open it for overflow, for people that wanted to see the show.

Jan Garrett [00:08:04] Right.

Michael Buono [00:08:04] And my favorites, the show, are, of course, Pete Barbutti, the comedian; an incredible singer, Ethel Ennis; another singer, Bill Henderson. And then we’d have magicians, we had hypnotists, the doctor, Doctor Alan, something like that {Alan Alan}. But he would do, he’d bring people up and hypnotize him to be drummers. They’d put them on my drums and they thought they were, you know, Gene Krupa or something.

Jan Garrett [00:08:35] I remember that there were a couple of “girl waiters,” you know, like, oh God, a girl named Honey, she was from Boston, I think, who was very susceptible to being hypnotized.

Michael Buono Oh yeah!

Jan Garrett [00:08:49] He was hypnotizing other people, but Honey would be serving drinks, and suddenly she would be hypnotized.

Michael Buono [00:08:53] She’d just freeze. I remember that. Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:08:57] Anyway, wow, what a time. And that was when the band that I happened to be in at the time, The Hustlers, came up and played. I think it was ’66, ’67 on, then for a couple of years, après ski especially, and the lines would be going clear around the corner. I mean…

Michael Buono [00:09:14] Yeah, it was incredible.

Jan Garrett [00:09:16] …crazy stuff.

Michael Buono [00:09:17] But once again, it was that thousand-person family that lived and worked in Aspen. And the waitress you mentioned, Honey, and there was one other on her shift, dark haired. They had master’s degrees in, I want to say, education. And one of them was going for their doctorate, but I don’t think they ever left town. You know, they were what we would call ski bums, but we all know how elevated that is. You’re not a bum at all. These people had master’s and degrees and stuff, you know. I didn’t, you know, I left school to do this. You know, I still had to be in the Air Force, but I knew how to kiss butt. And the commanders would let me go for four and a half to five months and not attend any meetings, but I had to be there for the summer, you know. We would travel with the Thunderbirds, the Air Force jet team. We’d go all over the northwest and then, you know, later on, ’69 through ’71, I had to be activated in Texas, and I would come up on long weekends and play with Bill Torma on bass and Don Grusin.

Jan Garrett [00:10:41] Oh, man.

Michael Buono [00:10:42] So that was like 1970. Don had just come there. Dave Grusin, his brother, had been there sooner, and he built a house on, you know, “The Mountain” across town.

Jan Garrett [00:10:57] Yeah, Red Mountain.

Michael Buono [00:10:58] What is it?

Jan Garrett [00:10:59] Red Mountain probably.

Michael Buono [00:11:00] Yeah. Red Mountain. And so we all just played, and then I’d drive all the way back in time to salute the commander, you know, Monday morning and… all night drives, but…

Jan Garrett [00:11:15] So that was really great jazz. I mean, Don Grusin and, you know, you’re an incredible jazz drummer. And then it started to transition into, you know, there were a lot of other kinds of bands that were playing in Aspen. Everybody was playing with everybody else. Can you talk a little about, were you playing there before you got into Starwood? Can you talk about that?

Michael Buono [00:11:35] Yeah, but it was mostly with Don and Billy, and if Billy couldn’t do it, there was a great bass player, Jim McCabe.

Jan Garrett [00:11:43] Okay. Yeah, I remember him.

Michael Buono [00:11:44] And Koji…

Jan Garrett [00:11:46] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:11:47] …Kataoka, I want to say?

Jan Garrett [00:11:49] Yes, it is. Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:11:50] Another bass player. He and I, we were the… Vince Guaraldi, the guy that wrote all the Charlie Brown stuff?

Jan Garrett [00:11:57] Right.

Michael Buono [00:11:57] He came in ’71 or ’72. First time we’d ever played with an electric grand piano. And I believe, you know, I think it was Yamaha, gave it to Vince to endorse, and he brought it up to Aspen, and Koji and I played with him for, you know, weeks. You know, it wasn’t seven days a week, now we’re into where, you know, summer, now we’re into weekenders and stuff. But, and in… oh, wait a second, during the winter, he was there with Flip Nunez, and we all skied together with Stein. You skied with Stein Eriksen.

Jan Garrett [00:12:35] Yeah. I did not keep up with Stein. Let’s just make that clear. But I do want to say something about skiing with you, Michael. And this would have been probably late ’60s, I’m not sure, but we’d go up the chairlift, and you… I don’t know how you got these things… you had ski poles…

Michael Buono [00:12:50] Smugglers.

Jan Garrett [00:12:52] …that were hollow and that had, like, glass tubes in them. So if you wanted to fill that with your margarita or whatever, you could take that up skiing, right? Do you remember that?

Michael Buono [00:13:03] And I did, I did. And one day John Denver jumped on the lift with me and had a hit, you know. He… and it was hilarious. People were looking at us, we’re holding the…

Jan Garrett [00:13:16] The ski pole. Right.

Michael Buono [00:13:17] …and just letting it… and you know, and then one time I had, like, a red wine in my left hand and a white wine in my right hand, and we’d go up to Stromberg, Al Stromberg, had that incredible restaurant.

Jan Garrett [00:13:34] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:13:36] And he used to do picnics on Ajax or Aspen Mountain now. And that’s when I would put red and white wines in my smugglers.

Jan Garrett [00:13:46] Smugglers. Oh, I love that. I love that. What I also remember was that at that time, if you were an employee of anyone in Aspen and could prove it, you could buy a lift ticket for $1.

Michael Buono [00:13:58] Yeah, yeah. Well, I have to even do better than that.

Jan Garrett [00:14:03] Yeah?

Michael Buono [00:14:04] If you played après ski at the Highlands, that meant you were part of the Ski Corp. You got a, you know, a thing around your neck. It was free skiing every day, any day. No restrictions, even Christmas. It didn’t allow you to go to the head of the line, but, you know, if you knew a ski patrolman, which I did… You remember Howie Mayer?

Jan Garrett [00:14:29] I remember the name.

Michael Buono [00:14:31] Yeah. Howie Mayer. Tall, lanky, drove an open-air Jeep 365 days a year, you know. I mean, he’d get up in the morning at four, you know, and dust off the snow and then drive and be on the mountain by 6:30. And sometimes he’d say, “I’m going to be there at 6:30. If you want a first run, meet me.” And I would do it, you know. Do you remember KSNO, the radio station?

Jan Garrett [00:15:00] Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Buono [00:15:02] So a bunch of us, I was on the air 10 to 2, so if Howie said, “Be there early,” and I told Peter this, that the greatest memory ever was the day after World Cup. And Howie said, “Meet me at 6:30,” and I got to run the downhill with no one on the mountain except a ski patrolman who had already removed the flags, you know. And the maintenance guys had already busted the moguls and straightened it out, you know, because you remember the headlights at two in the morning on the mountains, you know, and they’re working and… oh, God, I’ll never forget that. Get off the lift with Howie, and he says, “Go have fun.” And I got to ski the downhill course. And I didn’t do it fast, but it was just beautiful, you know? And, once again, it comes down to the people, you know, just the people.

Jan Garrett [00:16:03] So this is the sort of thing that we really are loving hearing from you, Michael, because it’s like… I don’t think this gets into the Aspen Historical Society. I mean, they’re… what we’re really talking about is the heart and soul of it.

Michael Buono [00:16:18] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:16:19] Of it, of all of us.

Michael Buono [00:16:21] Well, would you agree that it’s the people?

Jan Garrett [00:16:24] Oh, absolutely.

Michael Buono [00:16:25] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:16:26] So talk a little bit… now let’s jump into the middle of the ’70s. Can you talk about Starwood? Because Starwood was a really popular band, mid to late ’70s. You guys were on the verge of stardom.

Michael Buono [00:16:40] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:16:41] So tell me about that.

Michael Buono [00:16:42] The word that I was searching for earlier, it’s like, you know, the butterfly effect? Something happens, you know, a hundred years ago, and that’s what you’re doing today. And we wouldn’t be talking about Starwood, or at least my involvement, if it wasn’t for you… or it could have been Victor. I can’t think of anybody else in Liberty or the John Denver Band, maybe John Sommers, maybe Steve Weisberg. You know what? Come to think of it, maybe it was Steve. I got back from Japan. I was on the road with Quincy Jones, and I got back to L.A., and my answering service said, “Monday night, you have two tickets waiting for you at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,” I believe. And it was John Denver with Liberty.

Jan Garrett [00:17:36] Wow. Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:17:36] And so Billy was busy, and so I just went by myself, and they were good seats. They were maybe ten rows back from the front. Saw you guys, and I think you saw me. I think you guys were waving to me and all of that. And then you did your opening set, and then the lights came up and all of a sudden, from about five chairs down to my left in the row in front of me, people started yelling, “Mikey! Mikey!” and I looked over and it was Bobby Mason, Bobby Carpenter, and then a couple of people I didn’t know: Bernie Mysior, David Holster, and maybe Glenda Griffith. Maybe it was Glenda, but… So they came over and said hi, and then John came on, and we all had backstage passes, and we went back to say hi to you guys, for sure, and John and everybody and… I don’t remember which one approached me, but they said, “Are you doing studio work?” And I went, “Yes, that’s what I do.” And they said, “Would you come and listen to what we’re doing at RCA?” And I went, “Sure.” And we talked, and I went, and I met Mickey Crawford, the engineer producer, and some of John’s management was there. It wasn’t Jerry Weintraub, but it was somebody… may have been Kenny Kragen or somebody, and they asked me if I would do the album. And I went, “Well, yeah, that’s how I earn a living.” So they told me what they could pay me, and everything was good. And Bernie and I got aggressive on the ping pong table at RCA Studio One or something like that, you know. And we were just… because coming out of the Air Force, I was really a good table tennis player because that’s all we did, you know, play in between our events in the Air Force, we’d play ping pong. And so we did that. We recorded the “Homebrew” album, you know, after 3 or 4 weeks of recording and Mickey saying, “Is it time for dinner?” Yes. Then we’d go to Dan Tana’s, the elite restaurant, where you walk in and you’d see movie stars, and we’d order everything, and Mickey would sign for it. And you have to talk to other Starwood members about this, too, because we thought RCA was paying for this, right? And at the end of the recording, you know, we saw the bill, and we ended up paying for it. It was thousands of dollars of food and wine that could have gone to, you know, new drums, new guitars, you know, buying a van for tours. But no, we just… but we all, every one of us, thought that the record company was paying for it and not true. But can I hold up this album?

Jan Garrett [00:20:51] Yes. Hold that up.

Michael Buono [00:20:52] Can you see this?

Jan Garrett [00:20:53] Oh, the good… Starwood. Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:20:57] And that’s “Homebrew.”

Jan Garrett [00:20:58] Oh, that’s great.

Michael Buono [00:20:59] And at this time, there was only five of us.

Jan Garrett [00:21:03] Uh huh.

Michael Buono [00:21:04] I don’t know if you’re seeing all of that, but…

Jan Garrett [00:21:06] Hold it up. I want to see the further down. Oh, no, I guess. Okay. Yeah. There you go. A little higher, go up a little higher because I want to see Bobby Mason. Yeah. And is that David Holster? No, I don’t know who that is on the bottom. Okay, that might be Bernie.

Michael Buono [00:21:20] Yeah. No, that’s Bernie and Bobby on the bottom. David and I are in the middle, and Carps was on top. So this was before Bryan Savage.

Jan Garrett [00:21:30] Okay.

Michael Buono [00:21:31] This was before Haden Gregg.

Jan Garrett [00:21:33] Okay.

Michael Buono [00:21:34] And it was… so they… when it was all over, and I’d signed my release to be on this, ate one last dinner. And the manager, I believe, I can’t remember who… but no, it was Kenny Kragen who passed away a few years ago. He was one of Jerry Weintraub’s people. The nicest, just, you know, just the greatest people in the world. And he asked me if I would be interested in joining the band permanently.

Jan Garrett [00:22:10] Wow.

Michael Buono [00:22:12] Took me about one breath and I said, yes.

Jan Garrett [00:22:15] Of course.

Michael Buono [00:22:16] Because if you recall, in the mid ’60s when I came back from Japan, my calendar wasn’t full for sessions. And when I say sessions, it’s like commercials. That was bread and butter. We were going from one studio every two hours doing commercials for McDonald’s, the banks, everybody. And I only had like 1 or 2, and it was from the same guy, Jim… I can’t remember his last name, but he was like the commercial king. He did all the Burger Kings and the McDonald’s and stuff, and he said, the message was, “He wants you at 10 a.m., at his studio, bring a marching snare drum.” And so I did, and he put me in the corner and he said, “Okay, just play along with this.” I put on the headphones, and I played along for 28 seconds, and the cut, the track was incredible. The drummer was great. The violins, the strings, everything. And so it finished, and I went back into the room and I said, “Well, who did the drums?” And he pointed to a machine.

Jan Garrett [00:23:28] Wow.

Michael Buono [00:23:28] And he said, “I did. I programed that machine.” And I went, “That’s better than I could have done.” And I said, “And did you have the orchestra in here?” And he pointed to another machine, and he said, “That’s the machine that did the orchestra.” And I went home, and Billy and I, Billy Torme, we had a house out in the valley, and we kind of saw the future, and it was so easy for me to say yes, and get me out of town.

Jan Garrett [00:23:59] Oh, right. I see.

Michael Buono [00:24:00] And I packed up everything. Billy Torme had to fend for himself, get another apartment because, you know, we had a three-bedroom house, and, you know, we had a studio in the living room, and with me gone, he couldn’t do it on his own. But I went back to Aspen and joined Starwood, and at that time, it was Homebrew. And we had to change the name because somebody had already trademarked the name Homebrew. And, you know, then we went with Bill McEuen and Columbia Records. And it was just, it’s the greatest, greatest time of my life because we toured, you know, we traveled with the Dirt Band, opened for the Dirt Band, and it was just the greatest, you know?

Jan Garrett [00:24:51] And you guys were playing real music, live music.

Michael Buono [00:24:54] Original, not covers, original live music. The only negative, Jan, was we came along when disco hit. And we wanted to try something out, so we went to a disco house in Aspen, and we asked the DJ “Put this track on,” and I think it was “Silver and Gold” or something, and the audience just yawned and they, you know, they didn’t want to dance. And then the DJ wouldn’t even play the whole thing. He lifted the needle, and he went back to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you know. And we looked at each other, I think it was Carp, Carpenter, and we looked at each other and went, “Okay.” Because we didn’t want to follow the Eagles, you know, they had their market. And yet that’s where Kenny Kragen, I think, had us going, and then Bill McEuen was trying to find a spot for us, a marketing spot, and George Martin came up from the Beatles.

Jan Garrett [00:26:08] Wow.

Michael Buono [00:26:09] And we had dinner with him, and he wanted to sign us. And Bill McEuen, bless Bill, he said, “When can we get in the studio with you?” And George says, “It’ll be about two years because next month I’m in the studio with America. And then I’ve got da da da da da da da,” you know? And Bill said, “These boys will be divorced by then.” And we were, you know, we were. Carp and David went to L.A., and the rest of us stayed in Aspen. And Bryan ended up with Al Stewart, and I think he toured with the Aces, the Amazing Rhythm Aces, and a couple others. And then he found his market in smooth jazz. You know, he did really well.

Jan Garrett [00:27:00] So that was kind of end of ’70s. Is that the time period that that was?

Michael Buono [00:27:04] 79? Yeah. Well, yeah. ’78, ’79 because John McEuen, another virtuoso…

Jan Garrett [00:27:13] Right.

Michael Buono [00:27:14] He called me and he says, “Michael, call this number.” He said, “There’s a singer named Dolly Parton that’s auditioning drummers.” And so I think I went to LA, I think I drove to LA, auditioned for her, and I didn’t get the job because I didn’t sing.

Jan Garrett [00:27:35] Oh.

Michael Buono [00:27:36] So I got a phone call, and Greg Perry, the conductor, pianist, music director, he said, “Can you commit to a full year?” And I went, “Yeah.” And he says, “Okay, we’re going to hire a singer.” And it turned out to be Anita Ball from Long Island, a Nashville girl from Long Island. God, could she sing. And so I got to play drums for a year with Dolly and just went from there, you know, just… And Bobby Mason had a great career. It just… everybody found their spot, you know? It was just great, and oh man you know… And did you know I’m on a platinum album that’s played every Christmas because of this?

Jan Garrett [00:28:23] No. Whose…?

Michael Buono [00:28:26] I was in L.A., and it was with Paul Williams, the writer.

Jan Garrett [00:28:30] Oh, yeah, we know Paul. We…he almost came to our wedding, JD and I.

Michael Buono [00:28:35] Oh he did? Oh, man.

Jan Garrett [00:28:36] He would have. It’s a long story. But yeah, JD has written many songs with him. Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:28:41] Oh, man. Well, he’s the best. And I got to tour with him. And because of that, the band, Paul’s band, we augmented the orchestra for I believe it may have been the first television Chipmunks Christmas special.

Jan Garrett [00:29:00] I love it.

Michael Buono [00:29:00] And, you know, it’s on every year and, you know, it was just the greatest. But that all came from the connections, you know? The Dirt Band, the John Denver connections, the Red Onion. I mean, it was…

Jan Garrett [00:29:18] Steve Martin, yeah.

Michael Buono [00:29:19] Steve Martin. God, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. In summary, it’s just all of us willing to follow a path of creativity and support each other, you know. Night Plane, the Jimmy Dykann, Haden Gregg, Bryan Savage group spin off. KT and the Sail Cats.

Jan Garrett [00:29:41] Right.

Michael Buono [00:29:41] Someday we’ll talk about KT and the Sail Cats, and you know, oh, man… But to sum it up, it’s just a full, warm body feeling when I think of all those years from, let’s see, ’65 to ’85 was when I called Aspen my home base.

Jan Garrett [00:30:04] Yeah. So now you’re in Maui. And do they say, can you tell me what “aloha” means?

Michael Buono [00:30:13] It’s everything from hello to goodbye. And I wish Heather was here because she… “Alo” is when you put your heads together, and “ha” is when you breathe each other’s breath. It’s like a true coming together. It’s a true meeting of the minds and spirit and body and just the aloha of the islands, all the good of the islands, you know. And you don’t say goodbye, you know it’s never goodbye. it’s closer to “I’ll see you soon,” you know, “I’ll see you again.” So, aloha.

Jan Garrett [00:30:52] So we should just say aloha to all these lovely people.

Michael Buono [00:30:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s so good to see you and JD here. And yeah, Aloha… and Mahalo.

Jan Garrett [00:31:10] What is mahalo?

Michael Buono [00:31:11] Thank you. When I first got here, I thought it was the trash can. Because you see “Mahalo” on all the lids of the trash can. What it really means is, “thank you for putting your trash in the can” instead of on the ground. And for about five minutes, I thought, “Mahalo? Does that mean trash can?” And I’m not the only one, you know, a lot of people new to the islands, you know… And then there’s that Shaka, you know.

Jan Garrett [00:31:41] Yeah.

Michael Buono [00:31:41] Hang loose.

Jan Garrett [00:31:43] Yeah. So, aloha. Mahalo.

Michael Buono [00:31:47] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:31:48] Thanks.

Michael Buono [00:31:48] Thank you, Jan.

Jan Garrett [00:31:50] You betcha.