Gen Miyashiro
I really did not know Roland very well so I can only tell you about what I observed and about some of the brief conversations that he and I would have. I worked as a bartender in the Flamingo Chuckwagon restaurant during the years that he performed for about 3 nights a week for over 25 years. For those with any experience involving people drinking alcohol, you would know that people lose their inhibitions when they drink and some people become happier and more carefree while others become ruder and/or more demanding. Roland never seemed to let other people’s mood get to him and he treated all of us, drunk or not, with consistent kindness and thoughtfulness.
Many musicians seem to have this built in need to perform, it seems that there is a pent-up energy inside of them that just has to find release. And sometimes that need will interfere with other parts of their lives that are also important to them but that need is so great that it would take them away from spending time with those family members that they love. I sometimes got to speak with him whenever he’d take a short break between sets of music and very often he would talk about his wife Vivian and two sons Randy and Jason. It seemed to me that he and his wife really made the most of every Christmas season; it seemed like it was always something that they looked forward to. He said that he and Vivian would rent a hotel room near the Ala Moana shopping center for about a week and they would shop for gifts for their two sons and keep them at the hotel room so that it wouldn’t be found. He seemed to be so proud that his sons were very good baseball players; I’d heard that Roland was a very good baseball player too. And he did say that he was so very proud of his sons when they really stepped up to take care of their mom when she became ill.
He was also one of the most amazing musicians that I had ever met. After warming up the crowd on some of the busier nights, he would call up customers or employees to come and sing-kind of like a live karaoke thing. It seemed that he would very deliberately pace things so that every performer was followed by someone who would get the crowd louder and more excited; sometimes so great that the building literally felt like it was alive and moving. He had memorized an incredible number of songs so that he would be able to accommodate any request and when he couldn’t, he would almost surely have the song ready to rehearse by the following week. He was also able to transpose to any key to make it more comfortable for the performer to sing. There were many times when he would be whispering the lyrics of the song into the customers ear when they had forgotten the words.
I’m sure there are other sides to Roland that I never got to see. But I hope that I was able to share with you that part of him that I was lucky enough to watch and observe and have some conversations with.
