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Dorothy Betz
Dorothy was born and raised in Coconut Grove, Florida, in the days when there wasn't much there but sailboats, palm trees, and palmetto bugs the size of coolers. Like Bob Dylan, she ran away from home several times and was caught and brought back all but once. She was performing in little sleazy coffee houses by the time she was in high school. There she met Fred Neil, who took her under his wing and taught her some survival tactics and some neat tricks on the guitar.
After a couple of years in Boston playing rock & roll in a strikingly original but unknown band, Dorothy moved to Berkeley, California, where she became active in musical theatre. She did the first nude scene ever in a UC Berkeley campus production. She co-wrote and co-directed a musical western adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", which was performed in repertory at a summer theatre festival. She also performed in the singer-songwriter scene in the Bay Area. But it was way too cold.
Dorothy moved to Maui in 1976 and never looked back. In 1979 she was a co-founder of the first recording studio on Maui. But in 1983 she took a sharp left turn into salt water. She and a friend salvaged the steel from the Wailuku Sugar Mill boiler and turned it into an ocean-going ketch, living out of the sea and working on boats. This culminated in a long ocean voyage as ship's cook in M/S Edna, a floating general store that called at some of the most remote islands in the South Pacific, including Pitcairn Island, where Dorothy provided some of the music for their bicentennial show and dived on the wreck of HMS Bounty. Edna was the last of the great "Trade Schooners" under sail, an island tradition that goes back hundreds of years.
Back on Maui again, Dorothy was breeding Golden Retrievers when she met Les Adam in 1995 and began writing music with him. Dorothy has also performed with a long list of Maui's finest bands, including Bill Laymon & Friends (aka Patriot Act), Willie Nelson's Planetary Bandits, the Road Alligators, and the Upcountry String Band, as well as being a charter member of the Mana'o Radio Orchestra. She and Les perform their soulful original music in any format from a duo to a 7-piece band, horns and all.
Dorothy is deeply committed to Mana'o Radio, an all-volunteer, non-commercial, extravagantly eclectic community station. She has her own popular show every Tuesday from 8:00 PM to midnight. And she and Les Adam co-produce Upcountry Sundays Acoustic Style, a benefit showcase featuring the best of Maui talent as well as visiting artists, performed before a live audience on the first Sunday of every month. All of these shows can be heard worldwide on the Mana'o Radio website, www.manaoradio.com.
Dorothy and Les would love to share their music with you.
Les Adam
Born in Oklahoma and raised in Visalia, California, Les Adam has been totally involved in music since he got his first harmonica at the age of four. By the time he was in high school he was recording in the wild and heady LA music scene of the late sixties. At that time, he was playing drums and doing session work with jazz artists. That all changed when he became friends with B-3 icon Jimmy Smith, and decided to learn to play keyboards. The rest is history.
After a few years of gigging around California, a stint in the army, and some cross-country travelling, Les moved to Maui in 1975, enjoying what is commonly referred to as "the good old days."
Since then, Les has played with just about everybody in Maui's amazing music scene, including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Pat Simmons of the Doobie Brothers, Merl Saunders, Bill Kreutzman of the Grateful Dead, and Los Lonely Boys, as well as well-known Maui acts such as The Road Alligators, the Planetary Bandits, and the Vince Esquire Band. He is much in demand as a recording session player, and has also diversified into playing interactively with silent films and storytellers.
So drive on down the road with Les and Dorothy, for some music to make you smile.
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