I love the Ukulele!!!!
I have been playing guitar for almost forty years and the ukulele for about five, and I am simply absolutely head-over-heels in love with the Ukulele. I consider it my primary instrument these days, and, as Sabicas said of the guitar, it is an instrument of infinite mysteries. It is my hope that you the listener enjoy the music that I discover as I try and unlock some of those mysteries.
Make no mistake: the Ukulele is an instrument to be reckoned with!
Anyway, here is the brief guitar back story:
Stories need beginnings, as do journeys, and so this one starts up in Michigan. A small town and a small boy---the seeds of a thirty year love affair with the guitar. That affair has taken me far afield, and over the years I have known the joy of living in Chicago, Los Angeles(twice), Seattle, New York City(twice, again!) and Spain. In Spain I discovered flamenco and it turned out to be just the right ointment for my Gipsy blistered life, a music that would open up my playing and ultimately change my life.
In the states I led punk bands and jazz groups; wrote for a Tango ensemble and played steel guitar in country groups; worked Electro pop shows; played with world beat fusion bands; taught some; sweated at weddings; played some big shows and lots of small ones; released some records, got some good reviews, banged out a living. In Spain I worked with all manner of jazz duos and trios, Spanish rock bands and collaborated with members of La Orquesta del Principado de Asturias. It was also in Spain that the wheels fell off the proverbial cart, and one day on a beach I ran smack dab into the questions I had been begging.
I quit playing.
I put away the guitars, headed back up into Michigan, picked up a fly rod and went fishing. I drove up the back roads and bounced down the two tracks, blasting Nirvana while I sniffed out the trout streams. That seemed to work, and, as in all good love affairs, a little separation did wonders. When I picked up the guitar again after nearly five years, sounds appeared in a way that allowed my fingers to duplicate them. I found myself speaking through the guitar in a manner I would have never imagined back ‘in the day’.
Now, after a fishing trip that has lasted almost fifteen years, the guitar and I have rediscovered one another and some of the conversations we have been having can be heard on my CDs. It is my hope that this music is at home in the waning light of a child’s room as it is in the candlelight of the dining room.
The future is ever pained but always bright, and ever filled with music.