Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sometimes I can't think of a better way to end my day than coming home and just strumming my ukulele for a few minutes. I mean, I joke around and tell people that it's an entire yoga session in one strum, you know?
I mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams,' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
Growing up, the ukulele was always a respected instrument. It's a big part of our culture. It wasn't until I started traveling outside of Hawaii that I realized people didn't really consider the ukulele to be a real instrument.
My advice for someone just learning the ukulele would be to have fun with it and not take anything too seriously. Some songs that I think are great for beginners would be, 'House of Gold,' 'Riptide,' and 'I Don't Know My Name.'
I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.
I love the fact that people don't see the ukulele as a serious instrument. A lot of people see it as more of a toy, and I love that because it just proves that people aren't intimidated by the instrument. They aren't afraid to pick it up.
The ukulele was the first of many instruments they had bought for me. They got me a guitar when I was eleven, which my son Morgan uses until this day. They paid for 3 years of guitar lessons; they bought me a bass fiddle, which I still play.
Now everybody's got a crazy notion of their own. Some like to mix up with a crowd, some like to be alone. It's no one elses' business as far as I can see, but every time that I go out the people stare at me, with me little ukulele in me hand.
We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche - played us like a dimestore ukulele - but we were keen to be plucked.
Most of my ukulele heroes were traditional players from Hawaii, like Eddie Kamae and Ohta-san. There may not be uke stars in popular culture, but there are certainly pop stars that play uke - George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Taylor Swift, Train, and Paul McCartney.
You go to a studio with a guitar, people are like, 'Oh this girl's going to write this song on a guitar.' Or wants to, or whatever. You go with a ukulele, people are just like 'Eh, well, whatever.' They don't really care. It's a very non-threatening kind of instrument.
I had simply been inspired by Arthur Godfrey (40's) and Ukulele Ike and Cliff Edwards (20's). In there day, they were huge in this country. I bought Godfrey's book "You Too Can Learn To Play Ukulele" and taught myself. It's a very romantic instrument. You can take it on a canoe.
Bill Gates recently picked up the ukulele. And Warren Buffett is a huge ukulele fan. I even got to strum a few chords with Francis Ford Coppola. It blows my mind that these people, who have everything in the world they could want, have picked up the ukulele and found a little bit of joy.
I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.
I was done with my second major label deal, and I was doing a lot of urban sessions, and I had an acoustic itch. And you know, I picked up a ukulele. I always wanted one. And it just resonated with me. I would wake up with this uke in my hand. For me the ukulele just opened this door in my heart.
Elvis came along when I was 10. My father gave me a bass ukulele. I taught myself how to play from a book to play some chords, so I was laying down 'Hound Dog' and things like that when I was 10 years old in 1955. That's the way I was. My ear was glued to the radio. I knew right then what I wanted to do.
I play guitar, the ukulele and the piano. I grew up on a mountain in Tennessee, and we had 'The Mountain Opry,' where anyone could just get up on stage to perform. It was just about the soul and heart of music. My upbringing was less about being great and more about just doing what you love. It was always for joy.
I'm an American songbook guy, though I've got eclectic tastes. I really love the American songbook. I've taken up the ukulele, and so you can play 'Five Foot Two' and Hawaiian music, but you can also do some of the great tunes, like 'You Go to My Head,' 'I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,' 'Taking a Chance on Love.'
When I was in Toronto shooting 'Hemlock Grove,' I'd spend a couple of hours in the makeup trailer every day because my character had all these tattoos. I was telling one of the artists how bored I was - I didn't really know anybody - and he said, 'Pick up a ukulele and start playing. They're 30 bucks for a cheap one.' And I did!
My Portuguese uncle had a Portuguese version of a ukulele. The family would pull it out after dinner and play Portuguese folk songs on it. I couldn't wait for him to finish so I could get my hands on it. I was seven or eight years old. And he used to have a Fender amp in his house and an electric guitar. I would spend hours making sounds.
I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.
