Page 2 - MidWeek Kauai - June 30, 2021

2 KAUA‘I MIDWEEK JUNE 30, 2021
Paula Fuga gets ready to shower fans with a hot new project, Rain on Sunday, her first full-length album in more than a decade.
F ew things make Paula Fuga as uncomfort- able as the heat. It’s why she carries soap, extra clothes and a towel just about everywhere she goes, and why she’s always ready to shower at a moment’s notice. “I’ m just a very hot per- son,” the musician acknowledges. “Ididagig
once and people were greet- ing me every few feet and wanting to take a picture, wanting a hug. But in my head I was thinking, ‘I’ m so hot — please, stop touching me!’ ”
Louisiana, in the winter of 1978 (her birthday is Dec. 30), she soon found herself in warmer-than-ideal con- ditions after her grandpar- ents moved her into their Waimānalo home.
Now, 42 summers later, Fuga is doing something else all over again — that is, taking hot lyrics and putting them to oh, so cool melo- dies. Following a decadelong pause in album releases, her long-awaited project, Rain on Sunday, was finally re- leased last week. It features not only her soulful vocal stylings and elegant ‘ukule- le playing, but the notable voices and instrumentation of Jack Johnson, Ben Harp- er, J Boog and Natural Vibra- tions as well. In addition, the deft production work of Mike Love, whose leadership Fuga credits in bringing the project to fruition, is on full display.
Like a proud mama, Fuga
glows when talking about birthing her latest composi- tions. Many of the album’s 12 tracks promote ideals of love, hope, freedom, progress and perseverance, and the song- stress believes the wisdom in the lyrics — along with the album’s standout musician- ship — will strike a familiar chord with her listeners.
... made for the cold”; the ultra hopeful ditty Just A Little Bit, which was written for her nieces caught in the middle of a parental battle, and who she encourages to “sing just a little bit sweet- er, close your eyes it gets a little easier”; the smooth empowerment anthem You Got This Girl, in which Fuga reminds those caught in an abusive relationship that “you’ re strong, you’ re beautiful ... and I believe in you”; and the album’s lead single If Ever, a bittersweet duet with Johnson in which he muses about the loss of his father while both he and Fuga (whose father passed away in 2019) cry out to
To her credit, Fuga chose to stick around despite the sticky situation.
Reflecting on that first summer in Hawai‘i when round-the-clock efforts by her grandparents to control her fussiness were often in vain, Fuga says, “I’ d sleep for a little while but then wake up screaming bloody murder because I was so hot. My grandparents would wipe me down and take me outside in the breeze where I’ d fall asleep, but then they’d bring me back in the house and I’d do it all over again.”
“I just told myself, ‘Calm yourself down, Mary!” re- calls Fuga, chuckling at her moment of self-reproach. “‘You’re going to be in the shower in 10 minutes. Just be nice. You’re fine.’”
“I think that this album really shows my growth and maturity in the songwriting process,” says Fuga.
Truth is, she’s always been this way. Even as a child, her temperature ran uncomfortably hot.
Among the tracks she showers fans with on Rain on Sunday are the reverse lullaby Too Hot Mama, in which she croons about her aversion to heat and how she was “born in the winter
Born in Fort Polk South,