It’s quite possible that my biggest musical influence is Bagpuss. I was completely insane for Bagpuss when I was little – particularly the music. Songs in general had a really big emotional impact on me as a kid. I had to ban my mum from singing the Spaghetti variant of On Top of Old Smokey because it would make me cry. I couldn’t work out why I cared that a meatball had rolled off a table and it wasn’t until years later than I figured out that it wasn’t the lyrics making me feel sad but the music. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I was massively influenced by the music I heard as a kid and I still love the music in Bagpuss (provided by Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner).
It’s a really simple little tune to play. Despite the strumming directions, I’m actually fingerpicking and doing fake strums (picking each string in sequence to sound like a strum) to accentuate the melody notes on the A string. You could just use normal strums but I’d recommend using your thumb to give it a warmer sound.
Plenty of ukuleles this week to make me wonder whether it was a good idea to send all my money to the Palin Political Action Committee.
More of MGM’s NAMM finds this week including a seriously sexy spalted curly mango pineapple ukulele from Pono and Orcas ukulele strings (big in Japan apparently).
If you’re bidding on this “beautifully made and wonderfull tone” ukulele on eBay UK, be careful. It looks like an Antoniotsai which usually go cheaper than the current bidding price and have a pretty poor reputation.
Warren Buffett discusses the possibility that Obama’s election is a turning point in the struggle against ukuleleism, teaching Bill Gates to play the ukulele and how the ukulele is the new stimulus package. Someone give that guy a million cool points.
It’s the summer hit of the winter. “Coz it’s a lovely sunny day.” No, it ain’t.
To be fair, he did originally release it last summer but it’s only made a splash on its re-release on the back of the album Love, Ire & Song. The album is full of neat little lyrical twists (and lesssweary than previous stuff) which makes you wonder why he spent so much time making hardcore punk with kneejerk where you couldn’t hear any words.
The chords for the song are fairly straight forward (except for the dreaded E) and there’s a nice strumming pattern in the verses:
A very deserving winner in my opinion: instantly catchy song, fun video, singalong chorus. And it’s easy to play on the ukulele: there are chords for Same Old Lines here.
I got in touch with Rod to ask him a few questions, and not only did he do that, he also recorded a ukulele version of his song Your Love Is A Tease just for us (you”ll be able to get the original versions of Same Old Lines and Your Love Is A Tease on the forthcoming mini-album Until Something Fits).
When and why did you first pick up the ukulele?
I’ve always loved the sound of the ukulele. I’d gone on a little spree of buying slightly twee instruments (glockenspiel, melodiker) for a live set, and then bought a ukulele on ebay. Then I loved playing it so much I bought a better one, and now my uke with a pick up for playing bigger gigs with my band.
How did the sock-puppet/kids’ TV theme of the Same Old Lines video come about?
I’d been talking for ages with a video director who was meant to do ‘You Get Goodbyes‘ but didn’t. I played him ‘Same Old Lines‘ and he got back to me straight away with the kids’ TV show idea, which I loved, so we worked on it together for a few weeks, and then I turned up at the studio to find this amazing set all built and painted, it was amazing!!
Have you ever been told, “It’s not you, it’s me”? And have you ever used it yourself?
I think everyone’s probably used it to some degree. Yes I’ve been told it! Although in the song it’s not about one particular time, more the line as a palm-off in general.
I heard you were supposed to be on the Today Programme talking about making a living as a musician but got bumped. So what advice would you give to someone hoping to make it in the music business?
Yeah I didn’t realise the show got bumped until I saw the other interviewee – Keith Jopling – blog about it. Advice … well not to expect anything to happen very quickly. Work as hard as you possibly can, explore as many avenues as you can for being creative, be resourceful and I guess set yourself a goal and just keep working at it. I’ve been working really hard at this for years now, and set up my own label to put stuff out. It’s taken a long time and a lot of re-working my live set (from solo acoustic, to band, to solo with loop pedal, to loop pedal plus band) to get people to take notice.
How’s the debut album coming along? And how has it been working with Boom Bip?
The debut album is coming along well! First though, there’s a limited run mini album (first 4 singles plus bsides and remixes) out on March 2nd called Until Something Fits while I finish off the debut album proper.
Working with Boom Bip was amazing. He’s an incredible producer and musician, and I’d been following his work for years, so getting chance to spend over a week working with him and swapping ideas was just great. We’re both really happy with the two tracks we did together. I can’t wait to put them out!
What can we expect from you in 2009?
I’ll be doing a little UK tour around the mini-album release, then I’m playing at SXSW in Texas, which I’m so, so excited about. There’s a Welsh theatre tour in May with Devon Sproule and probably a coupe of festivals come summer. And the proper album will be finished. Maybe even a few more ukulele versions if there’s the demand for it… So quite a lot I think!
I think moving, separation from friends, love of life, acceptance of death, and the strength of love all play out through these songs. All of them, to me, are driven by our move from hectic Providence, RI to pastoral Rochester, VT. Home to Be was the first song I wrote since moving — we have a river right out our front windows, and the wind whips through the valley in winter, so it felt right that we were borne along to our new life on the back of the north wind.
Other songs like Bear Cubs, Orion’s Belt, and Bird on the Wing are pretty much open appeals for people to show their better rather than their worse sides.
Kansas James is the spookiest one for me. I had a (remarkably coherent) dream one Friday night that John Wayne was in “my cabin” (what cabin??) somewhere out west and he told me his story (that is, the one of the cowboy whose sister is killed in the song). I immediately wrote it down when I woke up and it became the song, complete with the chorus that references /Big Rock Candy Mountains/. Well, a few hours later, a friend calls us up to tell us another friend’s brother has been murdered in Boston. Sometimes I get the feeling that overtones are channeled via people who know one another over long, long distances.
There are plenty of references to nature on this album how much does your environment influence the songs you write?
You’re right on the mark with that question! Environment is what focuses the sound and subject of my music dramatically. I think places and the feeling of certain places is extremely important to anchor a song in reality.
Nature figures largely in my songs because it’s lasting, tangible, and a clear signifier of “good” in the world, at least for me. Nature in my songs is often written in direct contrast to what people do to each other and the world in general — people are constantly at odds with their consciences, beliefs, and ideals just as they are at odds with what lets them live their lives in the first place. Many of my songs are reflective on these contrasts.
What connects with you about the old songs and styles?
Oh, hmm. I’m a closet historian, for one thing, so I’m always in search of older and older recorded music. I don’t consider my songs true old-time songs or folk songs, though a lot of my techniques are somewhat borrowed from old styles that I enjoy.
I think what most connects me to older American music is that the sounds and ideas you hear in it are closely tied to the landscape and people’s day-to-day struggles — which often run straight down a river of history right to our times, today.
A lot of folks think of “old-time” as a handful of tunes that’ve been played-out and a lot of old ideas that can’t make anything new. I understand that assumption as a lot of modern old-time and traditional musicians shun deviation from a few particular styles and a big box of similar tunes as if anything outside of their little house is against their “bible” — but as a student of musical history, especially early American music in various styles, I can easily say that a lot of what’s considered “traditional” now was very new and very much alive and changing back then.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I really value our musical legacy as a people and see no problem in continuing it to make new songs and interpret different styles in different ways.
How did you get into instrument repair?
That’s an easy one! I used to take apart guitars, fix them, and sell them as a hobby, and as a way to fund purchases of new gear. Arriving in Vermont, with a bunch of my grandpa’s old tools, and needing to make work for myself, I set out to make my own job doing something that relates to my different passions — music, history, and working with my hands.
What’s the best uke you ever played?
They don’t exist. After working on a zillion ukes I can say that I appreciate good, light construction, but that I’m especially excited to see how so many older makers made fantastic ukes with widely varying sound — all of them great to play and hear, and all suitable to different situations and different players. I own my favorite one: a c.1920 Regal built all out of koa, with a sweet, powerful, and bell-like tone — perfect for banjoey fingerpicking. My favorites after that, and significantly more “professional” in terms of build-style and looks, are a c.1925 Lyon & Healy “American Conservatory” concert-scale banjo uke and a c.1920 unmarked koa soprano with rope binding that I just sold recently. That last one had a very nice bright, but full sound.
You seem like quite a prolific songwriter. How do you keep the ideas coming?
Oh, yes, I have to admit I have a bad habit of writing a lot. I have a lengthy back-catalog of songs that I have on my “to be recorded” list. I think in the last couple years alone I’ve written about 150+ songs, some better than others, some half-finished and waiting. I think that for a songwriter who really loves his or her craft and respects it, one can’t help but keep writing. Every moment of your life when you interact with anyone else, bits and pieces of what can be songs eventually, fall into place. Every time you ask yourself: why do I think this? Why are things this way? What’s really going on here? — is a chance to write a song. Looking at the world with wide eyes, and coming to respect everything in it, and especially your fellow peoples’ lives and your own life, means that there’s fertile creative ground on every inch of soil around you.
Songwriting for me is also therapeutic — I tend to write songs when I’m trying to understand myself or someone else and what I’m thinking about or they’re thinking. Some people can get a little cross with me when they see themselves in a song of mine, but like as not I wrote the song about myself! Humans are treasure chests of strange contrasts — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I loved your Queen Anne’s Lace EP, any plans to do more electric stuff?
I always plan to do more electric but it hardly ever pans out. Wood and wire is where my heart’s at and inevitably songs get recorded in the manner that I wrote them. I do have a bunch of older songs collecting moss, though, and have been planning to record them in the manner that I wrote (and used to perform) them: an electric guitar, a bit of reverb, and two mics — one with some echo. I’ve even got a title I’ve been meaning to use: Jake Wildwood Sings the Songs of His Youth.
What can we expect from you in the future?
In the near future I have two albums I really, really want to work on: one will be shorter, like /Home to Be/, and entirely made up of a set of songs I wrote on a single cold night in December, each one about a particular tree, bush, shrub, flower, that I’ve come to know up here. The other one will be full of the many more recent songs that I felt didn’t fit with the feel of Home to Be. Both albums I’m planning to play a bunch of different instruments on each song, and uke will weave in and out of forefront and background. In fact, as far as the “green” album goes, I penned the tune for each of the songs on a re-entrant baritone uke, which was a nice change of pace.
When three of my favourite things – ukuleles, Scrubs and Kate Micucci – collide you know a chord sheet isn’t going to be far away. I’m probably going to have to wait months before the episode is shown over here, so it’ll have to be Screw You from the Ted and The Gooch webisode.
The song was originally called Fuck You when she did it with Riki Lindhome. I think the joke loses its bite with the clean-up. Swearing can still be beautiful.
The chords to the song are simple. But if you want to jazz it up with the picking, the intro goes something like this:
And the verses like this:
It looks like she’s using her thumb for the G and C strings and her index finger for the E and A strums (sometimes strumming up to hit both strings at the same time.
Another girl whose uke is out of tune but her soul is very much in tune: Wisdom Tooth. And she’s gone above and beyond to entertain by gluing her feet to the wall and singing sideways. Also this week is Ken Middleton being inspired by Kandinsky, Minor Constellations covering Kanye, Amber Nash’s new duo Shiny and the Spoon and plenty more.
