Bret McKenzie uking it up with his old group, sweetafton23, Taimane, Des O’Connor and plenty more. Read the rest of this entry »

The latest edition to the Flea family is out: Bark Cloth Flea ukulele. The uke was designed by Tiki King, so no prizes for guessing the style of decoration.

When I first saw thiselectric Gibson ETU3 ukulele, I assumed someone must have screwed the pickup to as some sort of ill-judged adaption. But, apparently, it was designed like that. According to the item’s description, there were only six of these made; I can see why. Having said that, being built in 1949, it has to be one of the earliest electric ukuleles ever built.

There are a couple of interesting antique ukes around this week. One is a uke from Leonardo Nunes (son of Manuel Nunes and inventor of the ‘Teeny’). The other, even more interestingly, is a Weissenborn ukulele. Weissenborn are best known as the leading manufacturer of lap steel guitars and don’t, I think, make ukuleles any more. But this one was a bit a beauty and takes some of the features of the lap steel design – most notably the binding pattern going all the way up the neck.

But, cutest ukulele of the week has to go to the SpruceHouse IS-0 Island Style Koa Ukulele.

If you’re a hardcore Twitterer, you can keep up to date with my latest blog posts on the Uke Hunt Twitter feed.

My preview of the Ukelution T-shirts stirred up some interest, and now they’re available to buy. There are also some rather nice iPod cozies.

Bushman Ukulele are hosting a Ukulele Luau at the end of May with performances from Julia ‘jaaaaaaa’ Nunes, Rachel Zapen and Narciso ‘Seeso’ Lobo and other uke related shenanigans. That makes it two uke festivals going on at once.

Ukulele Review’s Play It Forward Contest is taking of well. There are already plenty of entries including a mammoth four part lesson on Something from Dominator. There’s still plenty of time to enter if you fancy getting your hands on a new Flea and, much more importantly, a full set of my ukulele ebooks.

Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse on Uker Tabs.

Now that you know how to read tab, you’re ready to tackle learning to read music with Uke Thingy.

Silent screen legend Clara Bow on ukulele.

SweetAfton23 has been uploading he pick of the comments she gets on YouTube. One of them has her kicking against the uke haterz, but most are just hilarious perverts.

Well, what would you expect a Flea to look like in Bette Midler’s shop at Ceasar’s Palace?

How to play Beirut on the trumpet.

The Dubliners and The Pogues – The Irish Rover

As well as his song writing, Shane MacGowan is to be commended for taking traditional music from the British Isles and making it exciting again. I love English folk music, but I do wish there was someone around who could inject this sort of excitement into it.

MacGowan often cites The Dubliners as one of his biggest inspirations. You can tell he’s really enjoying performing this traditional Irish song with them. At the start of the song he has a fag in one hand and drink in the other, but by the end of the song he’s copying Ronnie Drew’s hands-in-pockets stance. It’s so cute, like watching a five year old boy and his dad.

One thing to note in this tune is that the chord progressions are slightly different for the verses sung by Ronnie Drew and those sung by Shane MacGowan. The difference occurs in the last line of the verse. In MacGowan’s verses, there is a G followed by a quick D then G on ‘Rover’. In Drew’s verses, the chords go straight to D and holds it until the G at the end of the line. The instrumental verses also mix it up. The first instrumental verse follows the MacGowan chords and the second Drew’s.

Make sure you change the line, “There was awl Mickey Coote who played hard on his flute,” to, “There was awl Mickey Coote who played hard on his uke.”

I’d be happy to be proved wrong on this, but it seems like there isn’t much of a ukulele scene in Ireland. I don’t know of any ukulele clubs in Ireland. It might be due to the strength of their traditional music scene and traditional instruments. Nevertheless, there are tabs for a few traditional Irish tunes knocking about on the web.

Akulele has a number of Irish tunes: Sally Gardens, Drowsy Maggie, Another Jig Will Do, Kesh Jig and The Star of County Down.

The site Irish Ukulele has tab for The Battle of Aughrim and their own version of Another Jig Will Do, as well as a couple of other tunes.

Curt Sheller has a tab of Irish Washerwomen.

And here are my contributions:

Whiskey in the Jar/Kilgary Mountain
Streams of Whiskey
Irish Rover
Father Ted Theme
Fairytale of New York

I’m sure there are others knocking around the net. If you’ve seen any around, let me know.

For a St Patrick’s Day tune, what could me more Irish than a song from Kent born, London public-school educated Shane MacGowan?

Regardless of what you think of his conscious aping of Irish stereotypes, there’s no doubting he’s a fantastic songwriter. Just watch the performances by Christy Moore, Sinead O’Conner and Nick Cave on this documentary on Shane MacGowan on Google Video (Warning: May contain traces of Bono).

Like most of MacGowan’s rave up songs (and indeed most Irish rave up songs) it’s a simple I-IV-V progression. Add in some fast strumming and you’re away. The banjo riff in the intro words pretty well on the uke too:

Midi

Peter Delaney – Pariah Chimes (mp3)
Peter Delaney – If You Become Impossible (mp3) via MySpace

As a kind of pre-St Patrick’s Day celebration, this week will be Irish week on Uke Hunt. And to kick this off, Ireland’s favourite ukulele troubadour, Peter Delaney.

Peter Delaney started out with his brother Neil as part of the indie band Red Eskimo. During a band hiatus in 1995, he picked up the ukulele and started writing songs. He takes much his inspiration from Hawaiian music. The song Pariah Chimes takes its name from Hawaiian tunes such as Moana Chimes and Maui Chimes (although it doesn’t use the chiming harmonics that gives those tunes their names). His songs have a similar lilting, delicate tone as Hawaiian music, but the tunes are certainly not Hawaiian imitations. The act he reminds me of most is Scottish traditional singer Alasdair Roberts. They have a similar way of drawing you into the story of the songs and infecting you with their mood.

Delaney has released an EP, Duck Egg Blue, but good luck getting your hands on one if you don’t live in Ireland or Oslo.

UPDATE: You can now buy the EP on his MySpace.

In the Night Garden (midi)

It’s just my luck that the biggest ukulele news of last year came during Uke Hunt’s Christmas hiatus. It was revealed that the ukulele player with Liverpudlian slow-core octet Ella Guru Nick Kellington was spending his days playing Iggle Piggle from the kids’ TV show In The Night Garden. It’s probably even more surprising than Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies being fired for being too gay and being unmasked as a comedian whose website you have to be 18 to enter.

In honour of Nick Kellington, I’m putting up a tab I did of the main theme of In the Night Garden. Yes, I already had one done. I’ve tabbed out the main theme and kept the tab as simple as possible in case there are any kids out there wanting to play it. The arrangement is in two parts: the chords and the melody. The chords can be played as simply as you like. They’d work well with just one strum at each chord change.