Golden Hour with Charlene Kaye
By Charlene Kaye
Golden Hour with Charlene KayeApr 01, 2024
Ashrita Kumar of Pinkshift, a Fully Formed Punk Rock Icon
Find Pinkshift’s newest EP Suraksha on Spotify. Find them on Instagram @pinkshiftmd.
Follow Golden Hour on Instagram @goldenhourpod.
Crossing Rain, the Hawaiian Boy Band We Didn't Know We Needed
Hawaii is a special place for Golden Hour. Charlene was born and grew up there, returning often. Dave visited for the first time a few years ago and fell in love. Not the mention the Pacific island has the highest percentage of Asians and mixed race people of any state in the US, and of course it has a rich musical legacy.
And so today on the pod, Charlene brings you the next big thing out of Hawaii: Crossing Rain. The five members of the K-pop-inspired boy band are Monarch, Devin, Jorden, Asher and Shotaro, and their heritages range from Japanese, Filipino, and Native Hawaiian. The members ages range from 15 to 23 years old, and they talk about their K-pop inspirations, what they want people to know about Hawaii, and the time they convinced all their families to be in a music video.
FIG and the Joy of Solo Dates
This month on the pod! Charlene has been taking inspiration from Jimmy O. Yang’s comedy special. Dave is celebrating BEEF’s awards wins and has been binging season 3 of Single’s Inferno.
Then! We are joined by the incredible indie pop artist FIG, whose latest single Solo Dates is all about self-love. We talk about her growing up all over Asia, the meticulous recording process she learned from MICHELLE (friends of the pod), and what’s with all the corn on her social media.
And! If you’re in Brooklyn, NY on February 11, come to Golden Hour’s Lunar Lovefest, a Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day singles mixer and variety show, sponsored by our friends at Lunar Seltzer. Tickets available here.
Sonny Singh's Infinite Optimism Through Spirituality and Music
Happy New Year to our beautiful Golden Hour community!
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Find Sonny Singh on Instagram @iamsonnysingh. Stream his album Chardi Kala on Spotify and purchase it on Bandcamp.
Follow Golden Hour on Instagram: @goldenhourpod
Golden Hour is part of the Potluck Podcast Collective
Dorothy & Jisu of Sundial: From Berklee College "Jams" to Their Own Roaring Twenties
NoSo Is Happy and Proud and Is Ready to Connect With You
On this episode of Golden Hour: Char moved to Brooklyn, Dave finished The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and we give a Golden Goose Award to our favorite hip-hop/punk collective out of South Korea. Then, Char and Dave interview NoSo, aka Baek Hwong, an LA-based indie singer-songwriter. They talk about the making of their latest album Stay Proud of Me, their latest single Kaitlin, the grind of touring, and cosplaying as your ancestors when you make kimchi.
Season 3 Kickoff! - Miss Grit and Following the Cyborg
Char and Dave are back with Season 3 of Golden Hour! They talk about joining the Potluck Podcast Collective, highlights from the 3rd Golden Hour Fest in Brooklyn, and Charlene showers Olivia Rodrigo with praise for her new album GUTS.
Then, Charlene is joined by the incredible indie artist Miss Grit, aka Margaret Sohn. Catching her on tour in UK back in the spring, Charlene and Margaret share their mutual adoration of St. Vincent, dig into Margaret’s creative process in writing her latest album Follow the Cyborg, and ponder the impacts of AI on making music.
Find Miss Grit on Instagram @miss_grit. Stream their album Follow the Cyborg on Spotify and purchase it on Bandcamp.
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Follow Golden Hour on Instagram: @goldenhourpod
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Golden Hour is part of the Potluck Podcast Collective
No-No Boy - Songs About the Missing Chapters of American History
Today on the pod, host Charlene Kaye talks with with the charming and brilliant songwriter Julian Saporiti, aka No-No Boy. Right from the artist's name, there is hidden history baked in, as the "no-no boys" were Japanese Americans who were questioned during World War 2 about their allegiance to the United States. No-No Boy's most recent album, 1975 (another reference to the year the Vietnam War ended), is chock full of rich historical storytelling subject matter: Japanese internment, Vietnamese refugees, Saigon rock music lovers, and violence committed against Indigenous people. This conversation left us inspired and wanting to continue digging into so many more untold stories of Asian American history.
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In other news, the Golden Hour team will be taking a short, mid-season break before releasing another batch of episodes. And, we have some exciting announcements coming in the next few months. Make sure to follow us on your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you soon.
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Listen to 1975 on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/33pWLN5PV3dsWS11LxmJsR?si=u4aDLUx7TDeFJr8nqPuQYQ Find No-No Boy on Instagram: hhttps://www.instagram.com/nonoboysongwriter/ Follow Golden Hour podcast: https://www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod Follow host Charlene Kaye: https://www.instagram.com/charlenekaye Follow producer Dave Yim: https://www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Connie K. Lim (aka MILCK) - Finding Her Way Through Trauma and Creating a Viral Protest Anthem
Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a very special acoustic performance of MILCK's song Animal.
Content Advisory: This episode contains descriptions of domestic abuse.
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Listen to Animal on Spotify: open.spotify.com/track/6wcdbVdJ1GCJc7DhRqwQiL?si=0847d5045f4149b4
Find MILCK on Instagram: www.instagram.com/milckmusic/
Follow Golden Hour podcast: www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod
Follow host Charlene Kaye: www.instagram.com/charlenekaye
Follow producer Dave Yim: www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Yvette Young of Covet - The Guitar Virtuoso talks Love of Butt Rock, Overcoming Anorexia, and Sticking Up for Herself
Host Charlene Kaye and Yvette get into her atypical childhood, her love of all things butt rock, and the biggest challenge she still faces as an Asian woman in music.
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Listen to Covet's most recent track, Firebird, on Spotify.
Find Yvette Young on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/yvetteyoung/
Find Covet on Instagram at: www.instagram.com/covetband/
Follow Golden Hour podcast at: www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod
Follow host Charlene Kaye at: www.instagram.com/charlenekaye
Follow producer Dave Yim at: www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Kimmortal - The Filipinx Canadian Talks Community-Driven Hip Hop
Kim Villagante, AKA Kimmortal, is a Vancouver-based, queer, non-binary, Filipinx rapper, singer, actor, activist, visual artist and all-around badass. Today on the show, host Charlene Kaye gets into it with Kim on being a multidisciplinary artist, their fraught relationship with the word "community," and what they said to Thundercat to make him laugh.
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Listen to Kimmortal's most recent track, This Dyke, on Spotify.
Find Kimmortal on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/kimmortaltheartist/
Follow Golden Hour podcast at: https://www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod
Follow host Charlene Kaye at: https://www.instagram.com/charlenekaye
Follow producer Dave Yim at: https://www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Jess Bowen of The Summer Set - Being "the Girl in the Band" and Learning to Take Up Space
On today's episode, Charlene catches up with her former Scottsdale, Arizona schoolmate-turned-rock-star, Jess Bowen. Jess, who is half Filipina, is primarily known as the drummer of the pop punk quartet, The Summer Set, which formed when the members were still in high school. The band broke up in 2017 and reunited just last year, 2022, to release their 5th studio album, Blossom.
Now in her thirties, Jess shares everything she's learned about being a female musician in a male-dominated genre, how she used to make herself small, and how she has learned to take up space. Jess also talks about her experience jamming with Chad Smith in the Netflix documentary Count Me In, the moment her Filipina mother accepted her drumming career, and navigating social situations as a half Asian person who appears white.
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Listen to The Summer Set's most recent album, Blossom, on Spotify.
Find Jess Bowen on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/jessbowen/
Follow Golden Hour podcast at: https://www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod
Follow host Charlene Kaye at: https://www.instagram.com/charlenekaye
Follow producer Dave Yim at: https://www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Lea Thomas - Finding Spirituality in Nature and Music
Today on the show, Charlene talks with singer-songwriter Lea Thomas. Born on the island of Maui in Hawaii, the half Japanese musician remembers writing her first songs about her childhood banyan tree with her beloved first guitar. Later, she dove into the music industry and city life in New York, only to find herself burnt out, yearning for spiritual power of nature. Now based in the upstate New York, Lea's music travels between wall-of-sound indie, to country-infused folk rock, to ambient shoegaze, yet it's always grounded in her intimate, warm vocals.
Stay tuned to the end of the episode for an exclusive acoustic performance of Lea's song "What Did the Music Sound Like," off her 2021 album Mirrors to the Sun.
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Listen to Lea's most recent album, Mirrors to the Sun, on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3gaxiMrzBfbqwygpq8hRgG?si=UBLiu-IqS5C5WYkalZt2jA
Find Lea on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/lealeathomas
Follow Golden Hour at: https://www.instagram.com/goldenhourpod
Follow Charlene Kaye at: https://www.instagram.com/charlenekaye
Follow producer/guest host Dave Yim: https://www.instagram.com/dave_yim
Get tickets to Charlene's one-woman show Tiger Daughter on Jan 20: https://arsnovanyc.com/charlene-kaye-tiger-daughter
Telling His "American Bollywood" Story - Sameer Gadhia of Young the Giant
Sameer Gadhia is the powerhouse vocalist of the alternative rock band Young the Giant. For over a decade, the Indian American singer and songwriter has helped lead the seminal group through multiple gold and platinum singles and five full length albums, the latest, American Bollywood, was released in late 2022.
Today on the pod, Charlene gets in deep with Sameer, discussing Young the Giant's early formation, his cultural awakening during the Trump years, his Sirius XM show Point of Origin, and the stories behind this next era of Young the Giant.
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Sameer Gadhia on Instagram: @sameergadhia
Young the Giant on Instagram: @youngthegiant
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Follow us! @GoldenHourPod on Instagram
Host @CharleneKaye on Instagram
Producer @Dave_Yim on Instagram
Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com
"F*ck Your Opinion" - MICHELLE (Emma Lee and Jamee Lockard)
On this episode, Charlene is joined by Emma Lee and Jamee Lockard of MICHELLE. Emma and Jamee are two of the four lead vocalists in one of the most buzzed about bands to come out of the New York indie pop scene in the last few years. Both are Korean American and New York City natives, who write songs that you can either serve up a Gen Z dance party, or cry alone in your room to, with lyrics touching on themes of heartbreak, home life, and their own racial identity.
On the pod, Emma and Jamee discuss their mixed race anthem FYO, what it's like to collaborate in a six person band, and whether Jamee should bring her black belt recorder skills to MICHELLE writing sessions.
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Follow MICHELLE on TikTok and Instagram: @wearemichelle
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Host @CharleneKaye on Instagram
Producer @Dave_Yim on Instagram
Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com
Med School, Battling Depression, and Producing Music All Herself - SuperKnova
Today on the pod, an in-person conversation with Charlene and Ellie Kim, aka SuperKnova. Ellie is a Korean American transgender artist who writes, shreds guitar, produces, mixes, and masters all her own music. Her highly personal music aims to put the queer experience front and center. She also details the experience of her own transition and celebrates the complexity of being many different things at once. And before becoming a professional musician, Ellie actually completed med school, at one point advocating for her hospital to change their policy on performing surgery for babies born intersex.
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Connect with SuperKnova at https://vibe.to/superknova
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Host @CharleneKaye on Instagram
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Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com
From Humble Beginnings to Superstardom - Black Eyed Peas' Apl.de.Ap
Apl.de.Ap's journey from a poor farming community in the Philippines to a member of the one of the best-selling musical acts of all time is nothing short of miraculous. To give him better opportunities, his mother sent Apl, whose real name is Allan Pineda, to Los Angeles to live with an adopted family. Homesick, Apl would soon meet another young boy who shared his love for breakdancing. That friend would become his lifelong collaborator and co-founder of Black Eyed Peas, will.i.am. With their third member, Taboo, Black Eyed Peas would go on to win six GRAMMY Awards and sell 35 million albums.
In this episode of Golden Hour, host Charlene Kaye talks with the hilarious Apl about his humble beginnings, having to support himself working as a telemarketer, and navigating an eye condition that left him legally blind.
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Find Apl.de.Ap and Black Eyed Peas on Instagram
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Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com
BONUS EPISODE: Season 1 Recap - How It Started, How It's Going
In this special bonus episode, Charlene and producer Dave Yim close out the first season of Golden Hour by talking about the origin the show and re-visit some of their favorite moments from the past nine episodes. Thank you so much for being a part of our little community, and we'll be back later this year with more conversations celebrating Asian joy, creativity and intersectional solidarity. Peace and love.
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Nobuko Miyamoto - The Birth of the Asian American Movement
For our final guest of Season 1 of Golden Hour, we wanted to take it back to a time when the term "Asian American" was only just being born. In the late 60s and early 70s, a new political consciousness was forming amidst the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. It was out of this time period that a trio of musicians recorded a singular album in 1973 called A Grain of Sand, widely considered to be the first recording of Asian American music.
On this episode, Charlene talks with the album's co-writer and singer, Nobuko Miyamoto, who is now in her 80s. They talk about her recent autobiography entitled Not Yo' Butterfly and her solo album released on Smithsonian Folkways called 120,000 Stories. Nobuko shares her experiences living in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2, how she and Chris Iijima formed their partnership that led to A Grain of Sand, and what happened when she got a phone call from one of the most famous Japanese American artists.
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Shanghai Restoration Project - Give Up a Day Job and Collaborating with Your Partner
Shanghai Restoration Project is a band that is as uninhibited and imaginative as their name suggests. In this episode of Golden Hour, the two members of this genre-bending electronic duo, Dave Liang and Sun Yunfan, talk with Charlene all the way from their new home in Barcelona, Spain. They discuss how they each decided to give up a 9-to-5 to pursue a career in the arts, how they first started collaborating, and why Asian creatives need to stop caring so much about what their families think.
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Follow Shanghai Restoration Project, Dave Liang, and Sun Yunfan on Instagram
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Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com
Thao Nguyen - Finding Healing In Music and Becoming Her Truest Self
In this episode Charlene gets into it deep with the magnificent artist Thao Nguyen. She is most well-known as the charismatic frontwoman of Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, whose latest album Temple was released in 2020. Charlene and Thao talk about her long and prolific songwriting career, visiting Vietnam for the first time, and why she feels more at peace now than any time in her 14 years of making music.
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Find Thao Nguyen on Instagram
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Ian Chang - The Singular Drummer on His Road to Becoming a Professional Musician
Today on the pod, Charlene catches up with her friend, the brilliant drummer and composer Ian Chang. Ian's style of drumming is utterly singular, and his wildly inventive songs have been praised by everyone from NPR to Modern Drummer. While Ian is perhaps best known as a member of the dark indie band Son Lux, he's also been the man behind the rhythm for records by Moses Sumney, Landlady and more. Ian and Charlene talk about their shared experience living in Hong Kong as kids, starting out in their musical journeys as pop punk fanatics, and the challenge of find one's own voice as an artist when your musical influences stretch far and wide.
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Find Ian Chang on Instagram
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ÊMIA (Anh Le) - Storytelling in Songwriting and Singing Karaoke Backup Vocals
In today’s episode, Charlene meets up with fellow New Yorker Anh Le, better known as ÊMIA. The 24-year-old Vietnamese American is a singer-songwriter whose music boasts a mix of powerful pop vocals, clever songwriting, and creative production styles. Charlene and Anh discover they have a lot in common: both had an early love of Avril Lavigne and spent their childhoods moving around. Stay until the end and listen to Anh give us a special acoustic live performance of her unreleased song, Super Fun Party Girl.
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Find ÊMIA on Instagram
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Mike Park - Asian Man Records Founder on a Life in Punk Music
To say that Mike Park is an icon in the world of ska and punk music would be an understatement. Not only is he the frontman of the ska/punk bands The Chinkees, Bruce Lee Band, and Skankin' Pickle, but after starting his own label Asian Man Records in 1996, he's worked with over 100 artists putting out their music, including Alkaline Trio and Less Than Jake. In this episode Charlene and Mike talk about his getting signed to a major label in Korea, supporting up-and-coming Asian artists, and who the band name "The Chinkees" came from.
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Find Mike Park on Instagram
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Kenton Chen - Viral YouTube Covers and Learning Self Love
In today's episode Charlene is joined by the unbelievably talented Kenton Chen. Kenton is known for his jaw-dropping covers on YouTube with Scary Pockets and Postmodern Jukebox. He's sung with artists such as Kesha, Portugal the Man, Demi Lovato, and Jennifer Hudson. Charlene and Kenton talk about their parents reaction to them becoming artists, share what their careers might have been if they did not pursue music professionally, and hear about Kenton's solo project, Bridesmen.
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Stephanie Jae Park - Becoming Eliza Hamilton and Finding Her Voice
Our second guest on the podcast is the incredible Stephanie Jae Park! Stephanie is a Korean American actor, singer and songwriter who currently plays Eliza Hamilton on the national tour of Hamilton and has a long list of Broadway credits that include the King and I, Cinderella and more. During the pandemic, she and her partner Voltaire Wade-Greene, who was the dance captain of the original Hamilton cast, started a band called Saffron Lips, for which they co-write and co-produce all of the music. We get into that, her upbringing on Guam, her time at Cincinnati Conservatory of Music (CCM), and the crazy story of how we met.
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Darren Criss - Returning to Music and Mixed Race Identity
My first guest on the podcast is one of my oldest friends and musical comrades, Darren Criss. Darren and I met at the University of Michigan at our very first open mic, when I saw him playing "I'll Make a Man out of You" from Mulan on an acoustic guitar (so late 2000s). We became instant friends and played our very first shows together around Ann Arbor and beyond. After college, I moved to New York to pursue music and he moved to LA to pursue acting. And if you know him, you know that he played Blaine Anderson on Glee and most recently won an Emmy for his role as Andrew Cunanan on The Assassination of Gianni Versace—and is now getting back to his roots as a musician. He just released a new single called f*kn around and if you watch the song’s live performance debut on the Late Late show with James Corden, you’ll catch me playing guitar with him. We were able to sit down and have a long conversation about his Asian American identity and how he has come to embrace it as a part of how he defines himself and his art.
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Find Darren Criss on Instagram
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Email us your thoughts at goldenhourwithkaye@gmail.com