On Saturday, as the first major stop on our whirlwind Hawaii Trip, we interviewed Stan Cadwallader. Stan lives on Maui, along the famous, twisty and mountainous Hana Highway, on a ranch that he and his husband, the late, beloved actor and singer Jim Nabors, purchased in the 1970s.
Nestled in the hills of northeastern Maui, the climate is subtropical-rain forest or subtropical-wet forest, depending on where you stand! At the center of the ranch, you can face one direction and have panoramic views of the Pacific ocean, and turn around and be humbled by tall tree-lined peaks that disappear into the mist.
There are multiple connections between Stan, Jim, and the people behind the creation of the Organ Grinder. Stan spoke to us about his experiences, and his and Jim’s friendship with the co-founders. In the restaurants’ heyday, Stan visited the Denver Organ Grinder as well as Earthquake Ethel’s Roadhouse in Beaverton, Oregon.
There’s also a fun story about Jim and the Portland Organ Grinder, but you’ll just have to wait for the movie to hear about that one!
Stan surprised us with a Jurassic Park-style tour of the acreage, tooling around in a 4WD open-air Polaris, deftly driven through the dense foliage, by the ranch’s can-do-anything caretaker Josh, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of plant species, and also happened to be a terrific chef.
(At this point you may be wondering if this production has gone a bit off the deep end, lavishly spending our backers’ money! Not so – all of this was made possible by a generous friend I’ve known since high school, who contributed her frequent flyer miles, and used her connections in Maui to get us a place to stay at a private home, and we made the perilous journey up the mountain highway with dozens of one-lane-bridges in a borrowed car. I am so grateful for the opportunity to have recorded this interview, which ties together a lot of loose ends in the Organ Grinder story. – Bob R.)
If you would like to help production continue with some more down-to-earth planned trips, including getting to Denver to cover the story there, please consider backing our Indiegogo campaign, or directly by purchasing our newly-released Organ Grinder album CD collection.
You can help support the project by purchasing from the Crowdfunding Shop.
