The guy who chose real life over rock stardom — and kept making music anyway. Now also the person Hawaiʻi businesses call when they need a song that sounds like home.
Twenty-one series built around one idea — songs, the people who carry them and the places they come from. Some are made at five in the morning. Some take a full crew and a whole island.
North star: become the producer artists fly to Hilo to write with — by making four years of content where every format quietly argues for it from a different angle.
The guy who chose real life over rock stardom — and kept making music anyway. Now also the person Hawaiʻi businesses call when they need a song that sounds like home.
YouTube is the anchor for long-form and credibility. Instagram and TikTok are discovery. Every long-form shoot is cut into short-form on purpose.
Solo series keep the account alive any week. One-operator series are the weekly workhorse. Full-crew series are planned events. On a hard week, drop a tier — don't cancel.
Stream, share, come to shows.
Exhale · Hey Child · Notes to Self · Songs We Sing
The dad-with-a-dream arc. Most loyal.
5AM Sessions · Hey Child · Notes to Self
Highest value. They book sessions.
Come Write With Me · Walk & Talk · Blind Session
Hawaiʻi and Pacific businesses.
The Brief
Vetting range and credits.
The Brief · Exhale · DISCO catalog
The people the Hawaiʻi-rooted series serve first.
Dis Hawaiian Life · Round the Table · ʻŌlelo Mele · Mele Wahi
$500–2,500 per custom track + messaging. Driven by The Brief.
Artists fly to Hilo. Day rate + song splits.
24 sessions a year = 24 pitchable songs. The Art of More (Sony/Crackle) and The Catch (ABC) as track record. DISCO catalog live.
Backend as credited producer on Kamalani, Isaiah, Drew and Kaniaulono releases.
"The 5AM Music Club." Early access to unreleased music. $9–15 a month.
Intimate ticketed events. Hawaiʻi Public Radio Atherton as proof.
Numbered Songs We Sing pressings. Partner shops sell at the counter.
Hey Child
—
CWWM clip
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YouTube ep · 2×/mo
Walk & Talk · 5AM · Exhale · Notes
The Brief · 2×/mo
Hire content lead. Lock studio for camera. Shoot 6 Hey Child, 2 Exhale, 4 CWWM pilots. No public posting.
Two posts a week. Hey Child first, CWWM clips week 3, first YouTube episode week 5.
Reach out to stretch artists. First paid promotion test. First Exhale tied to a release.
First inbound bookings. Decide year-two scope.
The content lead ($4–7K a month) is the hire everything depends on. They film, edit, ship and own the calendar. Look in the Hilo and Volcano film communities first.
The weekly rhythm. Most of these I can make alone, any week.
A letter you weren't supposed to read.
Quiet morning footage in Hilo with a voiceover letter to one of my kids. One honest observation, no lessons.
Inside the mind of someone making something.
One held breath, a rush of two-second studio moments, then fifteen seconds of the finished song.
Two people make something real.
An artist arrives in Hilo. We write a song, produce it, and finish the day in the ocean. The song comes out when the episode does.
Two people, moving, honest.
After the session we walk to a nearby wahi in Hilo and talk about the work, the life and the place.
Stolen time. Real music.
A dark house, one lamp, a looper. Music made before my kids wake up.
Behind the work, not the artist.
How a custom song for a Hawaiʻi or Pacific business comes together, from the brief to the finished ad.
Written before I remembered anyone was watching.
Journal entries written after a session, read on camera in thirty to sixty seconds.
A series that is also an album.
One song. One place. One take.
A live record made across the islands. A core band and a featured guest play one song, recorded and filmed live, in the place that holds it. Video first, then numbered vinyl.
"Each category could be its own line of live records."
"Sort these early."
Wahi Pana
Hidden Rooms
Main Street
Stages
Monthly conversations with room to breathe.
One song. The people who lived inside it.
A conversation about what one song has meant to the people who carry it.
One old record. Why it still matters.
Sitting with a record from the past, often with someone who remembers when it landed.
The place a song came from.
A place-based song, the people who carry it and the ʻāina it comes from.
One song, taken completely apart.
A deep look at how a song is written and produced, layer by layer.
Quick, repeatable and honest.
No preparation. Just the music.
Hearing a new artist, or an old record, for the first time on camera.
The song I can't stop playing.
Sixty seconds on a song I keep coming back to, and why.
One idea, ninety seconds.
One songwriting or production idea, explained in the studio.
Made when the guest, the place and the moment line up.
Four voices. One song. One question.
Four people around one table, sharing what a single song means to them and to their community.
Hear it cold. Write to it live.
An artist hears a track for the first time and writes to it on camera, with no cuts.
A song in the place it came from.
A Hawaiian song performed in the landscape that inspired it.
What does this lyric actually say?
A Hawaiian lyric explored word by word with someone who speaks the language.
A new artist, and who shaped them.
An emerging artist, the music that formed them and, sometimes, one of their influences in the room.
Back where a song was born.
Returning to the actual room, beach or house where a song was written, with someone who was there.
The people in the rolodex, and the series each one fits best.
Artists, cultural practitioners, local businesses and places with a story — if one of these feels like yours, reach out.
stephen@stephenhendersonmusic.com