Todd ‘Brother Sonny’ Baio: Interview

If you’ve been paying any attention to the Saturday UkeTube at all, you’ll know I’m a big fan of Todd. With him putting out a new CD, Odd Hill Music, it seemed the perfect time to pump him for more information.

What can we expect from your new CD?

“Odd Hill Music” is a collection of 21 folk and old-timey songs (with one original thrown in there :) . Some of the tunes are the lo-fi mp3s from my you tube channel and a handful of the songs are from some time spent in my office recording with a little more attentiveness to mic placement, etc. It’s a very “uke-ccentric” collection replete with soprano, concert, and baritone ukulele, but it also includes tracks with harmonica, washboard, 3 string cigar box guitar, and the 12 string guitar (which i affectionately call the ‘boom stick’). i’d say it’s a bit quirky, very simple, pretty lo-fi, pretty fun, and a bit punk….even though it’s folk :)

You mentioned on your blog that the ukulele has inspired you to write more songs. Why do you think that is?

*i’ve got a new blog by the way that i promise to post more consistently on….because it’s focus is scattered like me www.brothersonnysblog.blogspot.com

I think this is a great question. Quite honestly, i think it’s partly because i’ve been playing the guitar for 20 some odd years and have become a little too comfortable with it’s voice and tone….(another reason i’ve recently picked up the 12 string guitar and been messing around with alternate tunings). Another part of the equation would have to be the unique voice and feel of the uke….even the baritone (gasp). The re-entrant tuned ukes just breathe fresh life into chord patterns/riffs (which is usually how i start making/writing tunes) and the baritone uke has a simplicity to it that I believe is a good fit for my voice.

Which of your homemade instruments is your favourite?

I’ve got two right now. one is a modification i did on a crappy grizzly kit uke. The Uke-Cimer. I pulled frets off to give it a diatonic scale/dulcimer fretboard and i put the 1st and 2nd strings close together to make them one course….i think i have it tuned to DAD. the other is a 3 stringed box guitar i made out of an old art supply box and a plank of pine….it’s got natural overdrive when you strum it hard enough!

You often play for kids. How do you find they react to the old songs?

They’re absolutely super! They get very involved, many of them are pretty familiar with some of the old folk songs I do (probably thanks to Dan Zanes’ family music empire), and they’re pretty forgiving if i chunk a verse here or there….

You’ve got a new YouTube channel for family, singalong songs. Do you come from a musical family?

Yessir. youtube.com/sonnyssongbag is my start up channel to promote singalongs and internet porch music. I come from a family that appreciates music, but not many players….it’s neat though, my 3 year old son is already messing with the uke, percussion, and my homemade creations, and my 4 year old daughter seems to have a knack for song and dance.

How can people get hold of your CDs?

I’m still a technical Luddite. folks can get ahold of me through my Youtube Channels or e-mail me at folkster.todd@gmail.com (you can see logistics here). Until I can’t maintain it, I actually prefer doing transactions via the e-mail and postal service because I’ve made a lot of great friends that way….it’s a bit more relational. I’ll do the whole paypal thing when i hit folk star status ;)

Visit Todd on YouTube and on his blog.

Wisdom Tooth: Monday Exposure

Wisdom Tooth – Twenty Sixty Four (MP3)
Wisdom Tooth – Cathedral Park (MP3)
Wisdom Tooth – I’ll Be Around If You Want to Talk (MP3) Via CLLCT

I featured Wisdom Tooth a while back but, with her having a Google-proof name, I’d given up on hearing anything from her again. Luckily, Tinyfolk Tweeted to let me know she now has some stuff up on CLLCT.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know from those five letters that Wisdom Tooth makes witty, honest lo-fi pop. And you’ll also know that I love it. And if your soul’s not out of tune so will you.

Visit Wisdom Tooth on MySpace.

Warning: The MP3s are tagless so remember what they are.

Arborea: Monday Exposure

Arborea – Beirut (MP3)

One of the most pleasing aspects of the whole ‘New Weird America’ genre is that it’s made it okay to play instruments that aren’t guitar, bass or drums. It’s still labelled ‘weird’, of course, but there are an increasing number of bands stretching out the instrumentation. One such band is Arborea. They use banjos, dulcimers, a combination of the two, and ukuleles. And they were kind enough to let me share the ukulele track from their new album House of Sticks.

Which is just one reason why you should support their Leaves of Life project which brings together the toppermost alterna-folkies – including Devendra Banhart, Alela Diane and Rio En Medio – to on one album to raise money for the UN’s World Food Programme and Not on Our Watch.

You can buy it on Darla, on iTunes, on eMusic and on Amazon. Essential Tracks: Alela Diane’s Cuckoo, Rio en Medio’s Mary, Denise Dill’s Work, Work, Work.

Visit Arborea on MySpace and buy House Sticks on Amazon

Lulu and the Lampshades: Interview

Crowdsourcing is the hot thing nowadays. So when I had to come up with some questions for Lulu and the Lampshades whilst laid up with a cold and with their PR guy giving me the bums’ rush, I tasked it to my Twitter followers. The response: I should ask them the Proust questionaire. Which is why I’m asking the country’s finest new ukulele band for their opinions on military history.

Reasons to love Lulu and the Lampshades:

- They write great songs.
- Their list of instruments includes ukuleles, yoghurt pots and nipple-tassels.
- They’re buddies with Peggy Sue.
- Luisa (vocals, ukulele), Jemma (guitar, bass) and their flatmate (background historical knowledge) were game enough to answer these questions.

What’s your present state of mind?

Luisa: Fuzzy
Jemma: Fine, ok, alright.

Which natural talent would you like to be gifted with?

L: I’d quite like to be bendy, but on second thoughts a really good memory would be very nice.
J: Flying.

What’s your favourite virtue?

J: In general or my own?
L: I think they mean your own
J: Depends what you think is a virtue is, err…
L: Mine is the ability to sleep anywhere/anytime, not really a virtue but it’s very handy.

What’s your chief characteristic?

J: My nose.
L: An inability to make up my mind.

What do you most value in your friends?

J: Honesty
L: Play-fighting skills

What’s your idea of happiness?

J: When I feel like a cat on a windowsill.
L: Yes! I second that, basking in the sun with outstretched paws, they do happiness better than anything, if I’m half as happy as my cat looks I’m doing well.

What’s your main fault?

L: An inability to make up my mind
J: I’m a bit cynical sometimes
L: That’s not a fault

What characters in history do you most dislike?

Jemma has left the room.
L: What, aside from all the Dictators and Imperialists and their ilk? It’s too much … pass.

Who are your heroines in world history?

J: Joan of Ark? A suitable martyr.
L: These are really hard questions to do on the spot. Emily Pankhurst? Sophie Scholl? Actually yes, I just watched a film about her, I’ll go with Sophie.

Which event in military history do you most admire?

J & L: Ukehunt we have a question. Is this a military/history/feminist/ukulele website? [UkeHunt: I like to think it's more intellectually diverse than most uke blogs.] This based on the fact that we’re asked to like heroines in history, but we can hate anyone regardless of gender, but more to the point, ukehunt … sounds a lot like … is that intentional?[UH: I'm far too pure of thought to have any idea what you're talking about.]
But flatmate says: What about King Harold, when he marched his army to the southern front to meet William’s troops, thousands of soldiers, they must have run.
J&L: That’s very impressive.

How do you wish to die?

L: I might live for ages.  My Great-Grandma just died at a 107, when she turned a hundred they threw her a big party in her village in Colombia, and counted 100 great-grandchildren alone, 100! That’s an army not a family … so I’ll have one of those, the massive family and the big party bit, and die when they’re all gathered to celebrate my century, probably of consumption, or a stray firework.
J: I have no intention of dying now, anytime soon, or ever for that matter. Hopefully they will have invented a way for me to stay alive in the foreseen and unforeseen future.

What’s your motto?

L: Nowhere is that far away – but I definitely don’t mean that metaphorically. I just cycled to Florence with a friend and it was a simple conclusion we were pretty chuffed to arrive at. We also discovered that there is no such thing as a flat road (also easily misinterpreted as a life metaphor), and we discovered escargot butter, it should be used in all cooking but goes particularly well with fire-cooked snails.
J: I don’t have a motto but I have a theme tune.
L: How does it go?
J: Naaaa na na naaaaaaaa na.

Visit Lulu and the Lampshades on MySpace. Their debut single is out on 26th October and catch them supporting Peggy Sue at the ICA

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain: Will Grove-White Interview

It’s been quite a year for the ukulele, but nothing so far has signalled the uke’s arrival quite like its acceptance into the The Proms (the UK’s most famous annual series of classical music concerts). Who could have imagined that the Proms would include a performance of Teenage Dirtbag on the ukulele? The only group that could pull that off are the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

The Ukes have a well deserved place at the forefront of the current uke revival and quarter of a century of playing has slowed them down. As well as the Prom (with a DVD due out before Christmas), this year has seen them providing music for silent films with Ukulelescope and for wartime dreams with Dreamspiel and releasing two live albums. The most recent is Live in London #2 displays their humour and talent perfectly. It features my UOGB favourites Shaft and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. If you don’t have any UOBG CDs in your collection, get the two live albums without delay.

I caught up with UOGB’s Will Grove-White to discuss this year and what’s ahead.

The live CDs seem to convey much more of what the UOGB are. What’s at the heart of what the UOGB are all about?

I agree, the live CDs do capture some of the real energy of a Ukes concert, with the roar of the crowd, the exuberant vim and the authentic bum notes that you get when we play to a live audience. The people that come to our concerts really do seem to have a good time, and I’d say that’s much of what lies at the heart of the Ukulele Orchestra ­ making different kinds of music fun, interesting, accessible, and moving, through the lens of a ukulele. When we walk on a stage armed only with our ukuleles an audience can feel anything from baffled, sympathetic or amused, to totally horrified. It’s only once we start playing that they can relax and understand what it is we’re doing.

Which are your favourite songs to play live?

I’m really enjoying playing Danse Macabre, which we performed first at the Proms, partly because it’s a new one, but also because we’re just wrestling it into shape at the moment. As a rule I think we all enjoy playing new stuff, but there is a great comfort in playing the old set, Anarchy in the UK, Wuthering etc, and an audience can hoot along with it – some tunes have become people’s personal anthems, people feel very close to them.

How do you build up the arrangements?

Rehearsals these days have become a bit of a luxury as we’ve become busier and busier, but we are still managing to get new tunes together – as a group we’ve learnt how to develop new arrangements quite quickly. I think we all know when something isn’t going to work (the ukulele often does that by itself ­ exposing a badly constructed tune within seconds), and we doggedly plug away with songs that have potential. As a rule one of us will bring a song in and the rest of us will pull it apart and play it again and again until it begins to work. Each person brings a particular element to the arrangements ­ Dave’s tremelo, Peter’s fingerpicking etc etc. George is the musical director and is a real virtuoso musician – he has the uncanny ability to reduce a huge symphony (or pop epic) to a bunch of chords, melody and countermelody. Once you start with something like that, then the rest of us can bring our particular skills to bear on it. Playing as a group is very different to playing a tune on your own. In Miserlou, for example, I play only one note for most of the piece. This sounds great when we all play together but rubbish when I want to play it on my own around the campfire! Undoubtedly the best way to get a tune working properly is to play it in front of an audience, and not getting put off if it doesn’t work first time. America, for example, took a while to get right, but is working really well now.

How on earth did the idea of a ukulele prom come about?

It’s funny because it’s something we’ve always talked about but wondered if it would ever be possible to pull off. If anyone is really responsible it’s Roger Wright, the head of Radio 3 – so any complaints on a postcard to himŠ He saw us playing at a festival a few years ago, really liked us, and thought it would be a bit of wheeze to get us on at the Proms. He gave us a very open brief ­ do your thing ­ and we got some new tunes together to give it all a Proms flavour.

What sort of reaction did you get from the traditional Proms audience?

It was hard to see where the traditional Proms audience were amongst all the ukulele players, but the response was so overwhelmingly positive that they must have enjoyed themselves. Apparently we were the first ever late-night Prom to sell out, and I hear we sold out before even the Last Night of Proms (a great example of the growing power of the humble ukulele)! We were all really overwhelmed by the experience ­ something like 7000 people came, and about 1000 brought their ukuleles with them for the Beethoven play-along which was a great moment. I think any Doubting Thomases there were touched by that moment, even if they didn’t appreciate Danse Macabre being reduced to nylon and plywood.

Ukulelescope and Dreamspiel both contain original material. Are we going to see more original tunes from the Ukes?

That’s the plan. I think I can say there’ll be an ‘originals’ album out within the next year or so. We’ve always had a few original pieces on the studio albums, but we’d all like to do a dedicated album ­ there are plenty of ideas around. But that’s not to say we’ve finished playing other people’s music,­ we’re an Orchestra after all.

Are there any plans for a DVD of Dreamspiel?

Not at the moment, but we’re talking about doing a CD, hopefully we can start recording that later this year. It’s a ukulele opera written by George with Michelle Carter, an American playwright, which we’ve only performed once at the Grimebourne alternative opera festival in London. It’s a fantastic piece, about people’s dreams in Germany during WWII, with beautiful music. And when we’ve cleared our desks we can get on with thinking about the DVD! At present most of our energy is going into planning 2010, which is the 25th (!) anniversary of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. We’ll be doing our ‘Silver Jubilee’ tour across Britain all next year, as well as releasing some new DVDs, re-releasing some of the old back catalogue, and I’m busy starting to assemble Live in London #3 at the moment.

Visit the UOGB website and listen to and buy Live in London #2.

Related Posts
Live in London #1
Will Grove White and the Others
How to set up a ukulele group, club or orchestra

Miss Jess: Interview

When I first ran across Jessica Graves’s YouTube channel her lusty vocals immediately brought to mind Christina Marrs of the Asylum Street Spankers (she also has a hint of Neko Case at times). What I didn’t know was that she was one of the original members of Shorty Long together with a number of former Spankers (including Pops Bayless) and she provided the vocals for their superior version of I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper.

After taking time out of the music biz (to follow a career signing for the deaf), she’s recently hooked up with Bayless again and recorded an EP Jammin’ At Jackson’s. She sent me the tracks and I was completely knocked out by them. The musicianship on it is fantastic. But they’re obviously laid-back and enjoying making music together. It’s my favourite record of the year so far. Yes, it’s better than Blood Bank. Yes, it’s better than Horehound. Yes, it’s even better than Brooke Hogan’s The Redemption.

How did you first get together with Pops and the rest of the guys?

I met Pops at a jam on the porch of Flipnotics, a coffee shop in Austin, TX. It was in August of 1999. I had just pulled my great-grandmother’s ukulele out of the closet, re-strung it, and learned a single tune. If memory serves, it was “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” That one song Pops was gracious enough to lend me his ukulele to play at the jam that afternoon. When I told him that was the only song I knew, he offered me lessons. When I showed up for my first lesson, two young men from Philly were already socializing in Pops’ living room. I never got a lesson. We jammed, and that was the beginning of Shorty Long.

What brought you back together to make this record?

The only one on this record from Shorty Long other than me is Pops Bayless. He’s the guy who made it possible for that recording to happen. He lined me up with Rob Jewett, and I brought in Jimmie Dreams and Evan Kolvoord. Having players of that caliber performing my tunes is quite possibly the greatest thrill of my life. Evan’s harp has more finesse than most men’s lips can muster to merely speak, much less make a harmonica sound like that. Rob Jewett has prestige oozing out his finest pores. Jimmie Dreams’ stylings cannot be matched. Pops was the one keeping us all on track, and let us not forget that he plucked out some mean ukulele solos.

The record sounds very organic and relaxed. How was it recorded?

The five of us met up at 10:00pm at a fine little house in South Austin, TX. By 10:30pm, we were all situated around a single microphone. We had knocked out all five songs by 1:30am. These four players had never all been in the same room together, much less had they played these tunes together. I tossed charts on the floor next to the microphone stand, called out the starts and stops, and it didn’t take us more than three full takes per song to turn out those five tracks. It’s such a great pleasure, working with professionals.

Are all the songs on the album your own? They feel like songs that have been around for decades. Who influences your songwriting?

I wrote all five of those tunes. You are not the first person to say that they sound familiar. One of my best friends and fellow song writer, whom I greatly admire, balked when I told her I’d written Finally Mine. She thought it was 80 years old. I guess that’s what happens when your family brings you up on live music, and you never listen to pop radio. My parents didn’t take me to church on Sundays, but we’d go every Wednesday to Sittin’ Singin’ & Supper at Threadgills, every Monday to Bummer Night at Artz Rib House. The songs that informed and inspired my life were songs by people I’d grown up listening to and loving. Most of the world outside of Texas has never heard of Uncle Walt’s Band, The Flatlanders, or Toni Price, but they’re among the greatest of my heroes. We would drive an hour out of town to see a show at Gruene Hall, we were such dedicated fans.

I’m fascinated by sign language interpretations of songs. How do you go about conveying the mood of music in a purely visual way?

It requires intense study, and a lot of creativity, not to mention fluency and finesse with both languages. English and American Sign Language have vastly different rhythms, so matching up concepts to beats can be pretty tricky. What English uses many words to say may be expressed in ASL with a single sign, and vice versa, which makes it doubly difficult. There are few who do it truly well. I can give you a fantastic example by Tiffany Hill. A song that made me want to turn off the radio any time I heard it, she transformed into a touching, vital, heart-breaking miracle.

What have you got planned next? Are you back in the music game for good?

In December, I’m moving back to Austin. I’ve been in Washington, DC for seven years now, and as much as I love it here, I have some great musician friends back in Austin with whom I’d like to be playing all the time. I’m in a group of songwriters who meet every week, but participating remotely just isn’t as satisfying. I held a fundraiser that started a ukulele choir at an Austin elementary school, and I want to participate in their first year. I have my own band I’d like to start, plus a side project in mind—an all female band I call the Songbirds of Prey. In short, the answer to your question is that I have an awful lot planned, and you can bet your sweet bippie I’m in it for good. And thanks for asking.

Visit her website. Buy Jammin’ At Jacksons on CDBaby

Hailey Wojcik: Interview

I first heard Hailey Wojcik when she did a session for Midnight Ukulele Disco. I got so excited Craig Robertson told me to calm down. But I still haven’t. So when I found out Hailey was releasing a new album, Diorama, I took the opportunity to fire a few questions at her.

What can we expect from the new album? How’s it different from Jealous Sees?

The new record, Diorama, is very different from my previous one. First of all, it has full band arrangements, and is almost exclusively electric guitars (aside from the songs on which I don’t play guitar, of course) – so it is louder! But I also feel like it is more eclectic and much more mature. It was produced by Dan Romer, (who produces Jenny Owen Youngs, Ingrid Michaelson, April Smith) and he is just fantastic and brilliant. It’s a much stronger, more thought-out record I think. I made a diorama to represent each song (hence the title), and pictures of these are the album art. Also though, I like to think of the album itself as a diorama of my life at a particular moment. So conceptually it feels like a more complete record to me as well.

How did you come to pick up the ukulele?

I randomly got a ukulele while in Hawaii (I thought it fitting), but I completely fell in love with it, and it is now one of my favorite instruments.

Your songs are very individual and original. Who are your inspirations?

Thank you! I am inspired by a lot of artists – both musical and otherwise – so it is hard to pick. I try to be as omnivorous as possible. Literature and film often inspire my songwriting; some of the songs on the record reflect this (”Holden Caulfield“; “Samsa Morning” – referring to Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis). While working on the record I was reading Infinite Jest and a lot of other David Foster Wallace stuff – I’m not so sure that’s reflected at all in the music, but maybe on the next record! I’ve been listening to a lot of Mountain Goats and Neko Case lately. I’m also a huge fan of Jack White (and Meg White!), and I find I can always go back to artists like Tom Waits and Patti Smith. I’m always trying to compose a Top Five Songwriters of All Time list in my head, but I can never quite get myself to agree on anything.

What’s in your ukulele collection? You had a fantastic banjolele on Midnight Ukulele Disco.

I play an Oscar Schmidt at shows and on the record… I also have a Lanikai and a beautiful old banjolele from the ’20s.

What plans have you got for the future? Any plans to resurrect the dinosaur outfit?

I am playing with a band now – collectively we are Hailey Wojcik and Her Imaginary Friends – and we are planning a tour at the moment, as well as a music video, so keep an eye out for that… The dinosaur outfit is on an indefinite hiatus, but I am a girl who loves costumes, so you can be sure there is more where that came from. My band now incorporates some animal masks into our live show for the song “Raised in a Zoo”.

You can buy Diorama on CDBaby, visit her website and friend her up on MySpace.

Southside Cemetery Choir: Monday Exposure

Southside Cemetery Choir – Raise the Dead/Raise a Family (MP3)
Southside Cemetrry Choir – Weightlessly in Love (MP3) via Sleeping in the Aviary

How could I resist featuring a band who call their debut album If We Bury You Ass Up, We’ll Have a Place to Park My Bike?

Southside Cemetery Choir is a side project of Sleeping in the Aviary (who have the the best worst website I’ve ever seen). Once a week they’d head off to a graveyard, spend an hour writing songs and record the results.

Judging by the tracks on the album (many of which feature the uke) it’s a policy many bands should adopt. There are a few I’d like to see take up permanent residence in a cemetery.

You can download the full album for free here.

Beatles Complete on Ukulele: Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt

It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of Beatles songs played on the ukulele. But even I am impressed by the Roger Greenawalt and David Barratt’s dedication to Beatles ukulele. Their first project was a performance of every Beatles song on the uke for 14 hours straight. Of course, it was all for a good cause. They gave all the money they raised to Warren Buffet.

Their current project, The Beatles Complete on Ukulele, sees them team up with a string of guest singers to record every Beatles song, posting one song a week until 2012 along with an always enlightening essay on the song. The reworkings often give the tunes new and unexpected contexts such as the Alan Cohen Experience chanting the story of Oedipus on Your Mother Should Know and Adam Green serenading the girlfriend he drugged into a coma with I Will.

I caught up with the pair to discuss ukulele persecution, ennobled actors and why everyone loves the Beatles on ukulele.

How did the idea of playing the entire back catalogue of the Beatles in one day on ukulele come about?

Roger: Serendipity. I was uploading the Beatles catalog on iTunes and noticed it only took up 9.6 hours. I realized that you could perform every song in one day.

How did you physically manage to do it?

Roger: In reality it took 14 hours, there were 67 guest musicians and about 40 singers. Just moving that many people around wasted a lot of time. There were several bands carrying the songs behind me, because just uke would be too boring. And I took lots of breaks. We’re doing the gig again this year on December 5/6 at Spike Hill in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This time we’ll have a tough Sharon Osbourne-like stage manager to whip me in to shape and keep the show on schedule. And also this year, unlike last year, we will have about 50 original uke arrangements which to do, which you can hear at: The Beatles Complete on Ukulele

Beatles covers are very popular on the ukulele. Why do you think that is?

Roger: The Beatles can’t help but make sense on ukulele. Because the Beatles began in John Lennon’s mind. And his first instrument was a ukulele. He continued to use ukulele voicings on guitar for his entire career. His songs, and George’s in particular, are completely idiomatic and always work on uke.

McCartney’s writing is as logical as Mozart, and also translates to uke easily.

The big kick of playing their songs on uke is that it gives you a clear insight into their compositional thinking. A lot of what they did was just put their fingers on the most natural, loudest place on each instrument they used. This is good thinking. You see the logic of what they are doing, and admire how they are always sailing with, not against, the natural forces.

Which songs are you most looking forward to tackling? Are there any songs you’re dreading having to tackle?

Dave: The really bad ones are the most fun to do. We saved the embarrassing Maxwell’s Silver Hammer by recording it much slower, in minor, as a non-ironic murder song. Revolution No. 9 is improved as a heavy metal sing along.

The really good ones are more difficult. How do you better Hey Jude or Something? To improve Let It Be we would have to get Barack Obama in to do the vocal. Do you have his number?

Which guest singers have you got lined up?

Dave: We cannot be completely candid about this, as there are many stars who have said yes, but not recorded yet. We can disclose that Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian MacKellen are reworking Oh Bla Di Oh Bla Da in the style of Samuel Beckett. Ben Kweller is somewhere in Texas recording She’s A Woman. Ryan Miller of Guster is down for I’m Looking Through You.

Who would be your dream guest?

Roger: Paul McCartney singing and playing Something. I think it will actually happen.

Dave: My dream is Britney Spears and Morrissey doing A Day In The Life as a duet. Britney, of course, would be singing Paul’s part.

Lastly we would like Jane Asher to contact us directly at 347-529-6500.

Here’s a question you asked Warren: With a Hawaiian president, do you think the mindless persecution of the ukulele finally cease?

Dave: The mindless persecution of the ukulele will never cease until Roger and Dave have total political and spiritual power over every sentient being in the universe. This is what we stand for. That, and peace and love. Aloha.

Have you got any plans for the next project once this one is over in 2012?

Roger: I don’t anybody besides Dave and I who has the next three years planned out, so what’s next is not our biggest focus. The constant challenge is this self-imposed, long-term deadline every week. We will either pull it off or not. That will make or break us.

You can keep up to date with the project and download all the songs so far on The Beatles Complete on Ukulele

Shelley O’Brien: Monday Exposure

Shelley O’Brien – Generous Waters (MP3) via The Globe and Mail

I’ve had, friend of the blog, PaulC nudging me in the direction of Shelley O’Brien for some time now. And I’m very glad he did. She has a silky, jazz-inflected voice and has a way with a tune. She’s recently released an album You, Me and the Birds and caused a few members of the ukulele community to get hot under the collar with this article. So I fired some questions at her to find out more.

You spent your childhood between two ukulele centres: Hawaii and Canada. Which of those was the biggest factor in you picking up the uke?

Hawaii. Growing up in the dark cold winters of Northern BC, my family planned an escape to Hawaii every other Christmas. It was paradise to me – and getting on a plane in cold BC and getting off to the smell of Hawaiian flowers was magic. Don Ho on the turntable for the rest of the year! Also – according to my parents I was made in Hawaii… :)

How does the ukulele influence the type of songs you write?

I’ve been a piano player since I was three years old, so it had always been the instrument I wrote on. When I picked up a ukulele and started playing 3 years ago (never even having played guitar), it completely changed my world…Four strings! Beautiful sound! Strumming! I would say it led me to some really upbeat and happy chord changes and melodies. Even if the theme of the song is sad or melancholy lyrically, the Uke adds an undeniable element of hope and possibility…

Your songs have an old-school jazz sound. Who inspires you?

When I was booked in 2004 for my first pro gig at the Drake Hotel in Toronto, I was commissioned to learn a bunch of old jazz tunes (ok, ok, I suggested it). I love these old tunes from the american songbook! Following that I started getting bookings on ships, and expanded my repertoire, always with a core of jazz standards from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s – I suppose this was the inspiration for that hint on the album. Lyrically, I like to write about the comings and goings of people, things, relationships – longing for what you want, saying goodbye…on “you, me and the birds” there is a song called “emily, coming and going” which is about a 7-year-old who adapts to living with a father who persues his dreams without her on the other side of the country. another song is “with a will, margerie” which is about a love affair I have with a glacier in Alaska.

I notice you’ve worked the cruise ships. How do you approach performing for that sort of audience?

I do my best to approach all audiences with a combo of humility and gratitude. Contrary to what people may think, cruise ship audiences have been so varied and diverse. In one cruise I could get a couple in their 80’s waltzing as I played an old jazz tune, a young group of women asking me about one of my original songs, and a child sitting beside me humming along to “let it be”. Cruise ships were also the ideal workshop for me – all the songs on the album had their chance to be heard many times as I got opinions of listeners heading up to alaska.

Generally it seems people want to connect to something within you – no matter what the age.

How can people get hold of your music?

In Toronto: Soundscapes. In a few days: CDBaby. Online: iTunes, Kerf music, and, if they would like a signed copy, through paypal on my website.

What can we expect from you in the future?

More music! A tour in Ontario in the fall, a gorilla hotel room showcase at OCFF, and next year, folk festivals and another trip to Europe.

Winter is coming, and I am busy writing songs for a new album already….but also plan on frequenting the weekly Corktown Ukulele Jam as often as possible…

For more Shelley you can visit her MySpace and watch her YouTube channel.

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