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Coconut Culture

from Coconut Culture by Allan Thomas

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about

I wrote ‘Coconut Culture’ first, and this tune ended up setting the tone for the whole album, and becoming the title track.

I had been hanging out with my pal Jak Ayres on his Yacht Compadre at Tunnels after windsurfing one afternoon. His Aussie girlfriend Lorna, a wonderful cook and great gal, was making dinner and fixing us drinks of coke and a 151 proof Fijian Rum that Jak had brought back from his ‘round the world travels. After the windsurfing and a few drinks of the rum we were feeling no pain. With the magnificent view of Makana Ridge in the foreground, Jak started telling stories about his sailing adventures. He got around to talking about some South Pacific islands where the society was considered a “coconut culture”.

The phrase struck me as alliterative and cool, so I asked him what that meant. He explained that a coconut culture was a culture based on using the coconut for almost everything in island life. There was commerce from selling or trading the coconut oil and dried meat, also called copra. They used the coconut milk for cooking, and the palm fronds for their roofing and building materials. Out of the husks they wove rope, string and masts. Jak went on to tell me about one Micronesian Island group where it was a custom for the father of a newborn to plant several coconut trees on the day on the child’s birth, and those trees would belong to the child for life, providing many essential needs.

I loved the phrase and wrote the song about a guy like me, who went to the islands for a vacation and fell in love with island life and said, ‘This is it, I’m staying!’ Sure, I took some liberties with the concept, buts that what songwriters do, take an idea and run with it.

lyrics

Coconut Culture

words & music Allan Thomas

Cool in the shade
feet in the sand
sweet slack key music
and pretty women
working on a sun tan

I love living in a coconut culture
I love the rhythm of a coconut culture
kick back
unwind
chillin' out
on Hawaiian time

we'll surf at sunrise
on that swell in from the west
about as close to heaven
as I'm ever gonna get

chorus

been there done that
no need go back

two sets of foot prints
in the shadow of a palm
if my friends ask about me
please don't tell 'em where I've gone

I love living in a coconut culture
I love the rhythm of a coconut culture
kick back
unwind
keep it simple
on Hawaiian time

© 1997 Black Bamboo Music BMI

credits

from Coconut Culture, track released February 10, 1997
Allan Thomas - vocals, acoustc and electric guitar
Ken Emerson - National steel and slide guitar
Dave Inamine - Bass
Mike Shipley - Drums & percussion

Art by Steven Valiere

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Allan Thomas Hanalei, Hawaii

Aloha and welcome to my Bandcamp Music Store home page. Here you can listen to full-length samples of all seven Allan Thomas albums and three singles. Also to be found are credits, photos, stories and lyrics for all songs. Dig in...

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