Kumu Hula Moanalani Beamer opens a video honoring Lahaina with a powerful chant. The video is currently available on YouTube.

After Maui musician/master luthier Steve Grimes composed the inspirational song “Lahaina Town” following the 2023 fires, filmmakers Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday collaborated with Grimes to produce a seven-minute video honoring Lahaina.

“This song is near and dear to our hearts, and the video will hopefully reach hundreds of thousands of people who can support Maui’s long-term relief and recovery,” said Warshawski.

Combining video of West Maui vistas, including the devastation, with close-ups of the musicians involved, it opens with a powerful chant by Kumu Hula Moanalani Beamer. It also features John Cruz on lead vocals, with Lukas Nelson on backing vocal, Doobie Brother Pat Simmons on lead guitar, Andrew Fowler and Garrett Probst on guitars, and a chorus of Pomaikaʻi Elementary School students.

Among scenes in the video, Grimes and Cruz are shown performing “Lahaina Town” together at the 2024 Sunflower Festival, at the ProArts Playhouse and at the MACC with Jack Johnson and Mick Fletwood assisting, and singing solo at the Maui Invitational in November at the Lahaina Civic Center.

“When Steve performed at the Maui Invitational, there was a crowd of people who were singing along at the end,” said Warshawski. “It was just really powerful. The song is powerful and inspiring.”

Filmmakers Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday collaborated with Maui musician/master luthier Steve Grimes, who composed the song “Lahaina Town,” to produce a seven-minute video honoring Lahaina. Courtesy photo

Filmmakers Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday collaborated with Maui musician/master luthier Steve Grimes, who composed the song “Lahaina Town,” to produce a seven-minute video honoring Lahaina. Courtesy photo

Helping raise its profile, Hawaiian Airlines will feature the “Lahaina Town” video on their flights for six months starting in April.

The August 2023 fire in Kula came close to Grimes’ house and studio, compelling him to evacuate with 38 instruments and a truckload of wood. “It was very emotional,” he recalled. After recording a guitar part and lead vocal for “Lahaina Town,” he decided to reach out to Maui’s John Cruz for help. “I thought the song needs someone with more power, more gravitas in the vocal,” he explained.

Previously producing a wonderful video for Grimes’ beautiful song “After the Rain,” the Kula-based husband-and-wife team of Warshawski and Soliday have been working for four years on a feature-length documentary, “I Grand,” on the Maui musician.

“We started in 2020, after Steve had finished (making) his 1,000th instrument, right before COVID shut everything down,” said Warshawski. “We’ve been kind of following Steve and some other musicians for the last couple of years. We have it all shot, but we’re trying to raise funding to edit the movie. When Steve wrote the song, we thought, obviously, this is something we want to put into the feature documentary. The music video is probably going to be the last scene.”

With Grimes composing “Lahaina Town” in the midst of the documentary project, Warshawski said, “We worked with Steve to make sure that we were creating something that was true and authentic for him and everybody who was in it. We all wanted to film as many local relief and recovery efforts that were happening on the ground as we could. We wanted to involve local families and local nonprofits.”

The work of new nonprofit Treecovery Hawai’i Inc. is featured in the music video. The organization’s volunteers have been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to help keep surviving trees in the Lahaina and Kula burn zones healthy, while also providing soil remediation in the area, and they will oversee the growth of 30,000 new trees over the next several years.

“It’s really meaningful for us because we were able to work with Treecovery, which is doing incredible work on Maui,” Warshawski noted. “They gave us access to film some of the work that they’re doing.”

Acclaimed documentary makers, Warshawski and Soliday previously released “Uncle Bully’s Surf Skool” about Lahaina surf instructor Bull Kotter, which won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 43rd Hawaii International Film Festival and just won the Humanitas Award in the Impact Video category at the annual Social Impact Media Awards.

They also made the documentary “Big Sonia” about a Holocaust survivor, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Barcelona International Film Festival, and “Finding Hillywood” about young Rwandan filmmakers after the genocide, which won audience and best documentary awards at festivals.

Approaching the Lahaina video, Warshawski explained: “We were very careful about how Maui’s portrayed and how we just wanted it to be authentic and inspiring. We wanted people to feel hopeful and ready to give and ready to help after they watch it.”

“Lahaina Town” is available at youtube.com/watch?v=VTwmz-mjlKY.