Recently the Times Online (that is, the London times) featured this article on the ukulele. While it's true that it doesn't break any new ground and there are a few confused "facts" in it, I was flabbergasted by the response it got in a certain ukulele forum.

Just about everybody (that bothered posting) was bitching about it!

"Blah, blah, lazy journalists, blah, blah, the guy with the uke shop must be paying for this, blah, blah."

Kids, it's time to shit or get off the pot.

Some of you have posted (repeatedly) about the "ukulele revolution" and are happily evangelizing our little four-stringed friends to all and sundry. You brag about how you got this or that person hooked on the cuddly little bonsai guitar. Another notch in your fretboard for the revolution!

So how come you're all pissy about this article?

Is it because it doesn't tell you anything you don't already know?

Well, of course you know this stuff. You're already uke-phreaks. But what about the proverbial "average Joe?" It's an axiom in the marketing racket that you have to present a new idea, product or whatever a number of times before it catches ol' Joe's attention. So what's wrong with a number of different news outlets running similar articles?

Personally, I couldn't care less if "everyone" plays the uke or not. In fact, I'd really rather they didn't. I like being one of the few ukers that perform regularly in my neck of the woods. Fortunately, nothing enjoys that wide a fan base.

As for the rest of you... decide which side of the fence you're on and stay there. All of this trying to keep track as you hop back and forth is giving me whiplash.

Yesterday Dean (the bass player with my band Snake Suspenderz) and I played a gig at the Challenger Ridge Vineyard & Cellars. We were the first half of the show with the Anarchists Union - Local 360 being the rest.

We opened once before for the Local 360, up in Everett at the Anchor Pub.

Challenger Ridge is out in Concrete, WA, about a two hour drive from here. As you can see from the pictures, when I say we were in the vineyard I meant in the vineyard. We were set up at the edge of a lawn facing a half dozen or so picnic tables and were mere feet from one of the patches of grape vines.

Too bad we didn't look around a bit more. Perhaps we would have noticed the nice bottle of Pinot Noir and two glasses that had been left for us before we broke between sets. It was yummy. We sipped it during the second set and afterwards while eating the nice barbecue that the folks there supplied.

We played two 40 minute sets with a 10 minute (or so... you know how musicianers are) break between them. The weather had been so threatening that there was some discussion before we started as to whether we should set up outside or not. But the clouds broke up enough that we played under at least partially sunny skies.

Local 360 wasn't so lucky. It started raining on them a little bit into their first set. The three of them had to pack up quickly and move to the front porch of the house where the tasting room is. It's at least covered though it meant they were now playing strictly acoustically. Troupers that they are, they went ahead and did it.

All they brought to this gig was their core group. Jenny on ukulele, banjo, washboard, guitar and vocals (whew!); Robert on guitar and vocals; Luke on fiddle, upright bass and vocals.

Jenny owns, and is playing the hell out of, my old, all-mahogany Harmony Roy Smeck ukulele. We're hoping to get together this week and record a duet of Tonight You Belong To Me for the August Ukulele Cosmos Open Invitational.

Here's a great pic of Dean keeping the bottom end going and playing "mouth trumpet" at the same time. He really does sound like a trumpet!

(As with most pics in my blog, you can click on any of these and get a popup with the larger image.)

One of the cool things that happened was we did a "trumpet" and "trombone" duet -- I do a passing fair mouth trombone -- as part of the "solo" section on a tune. We'd never tried anything like that before and it worked out well. Plus it was fun!

While we were saying thanks and goodbye to our hosts we may well have made a great connection for Snake Suspenderz. Seems that the lady there (I've spaced her name and need to get with Jenny to find it out again) also runs a catering business and does parties and weddings and such. She has our contact info and it may just turn into some nice private party gigs for the band. Cross your fingers for us!

A good time was had by all and we got wined, dined and paid a nice chunk of change for our efforts.

More days like that, please!

It's a summer straw porkpie. I've been wearing my old porkpie (made of paper, believe it or not) for several years now and it's developed little brown specks on all its upper surfaces from sunlight fading it and getting wet several times. (As usual, click the pic for a popup with a larger version.)

I had a little extra money (this is not an expensive hat... but I like it) and so on Friday instead of taking a lunch break I walked over to Byrnie Utz (a terrific, old school hat store in downtown Seattle) and bought this one.

It can be worn like in these pics, with the front of the brim snapped down or with the brim up all the way around. The fella at the hat store tells me that in the fifties you'd wear it to work with the brim snapped down -- the "classier" fashion -- and then, when you punched out for the day and were going to meet the boys for a brewski or two, you'd wear it with the brim up -- the "classic" fashion.

The Fallen Angel told me she liked it better with the brim snapped down. I looked at it while driving to yesterday's winery gig (the subject of my next post as a matter of fact) and noticed it had sort of a "Rat Pack" vibe to it. Dean says it has all sorts of Sammy Davis, Jr. going on. So it's no wonder that she likes it better this way, she's a huge Rat Pack fan.

This pic shows off the spif cockade that came with it. My paper porkpie has no feather.

The FA took these photos last night after I returned from the winery gig. As usual, you can click on them and get a popup with a larger version.

She also made the spif necktie I'm wearing. It's made from a piece of spendy Oscar de la Rente silk.

It's very lightweight and the sides of the crown are open weave, letting a lovely breeze through so that you can wear it in the warmer weather without suffering a meltdown.

So, what do you think? Good hat? Bad hat? Whatever?

And damn my procrastinating ways!

Yesterday was International Ukulele Day. It was on August 23, 1879 that the bark Ravenscrag landed in Hawaii carrying a load of Portuguese immigrants. After a journey of 123 days one of the passengers was so damn happy to hit dry land that he got off the ship and presented an impromptu concert to the gathered populace on his machete de braga. This small relative of the guitar became the ukulele.

When I first heard of it I conceived of all sorts of groovy events that would not only celebrate the day, but would also serve as perfect "events" to get Snake Suspenderz some press. But I had work and rehearsals and home life and my continuing adventure with the King County Superior Court and...

Side note here: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself, especially in Washington state. The woman here doesn't have to do anything but say "golly I'm awful scairt of him" -- whether there's a reason or not -- for you to be launched into years and years and fucking years of official hell.

Worst part? I haven't seen my kids in many years yet I'm still being dragged through "the system" at every opportunity. And, of course, made to pay so that the ex and her lousy, lazy new husband don't have to work. Fuck a bunch of feminists! Fuck a bunch of politically correct asshole voters too.

Where was I? Oh yeah...

I may just be getting old. Doing the daily work along with the nights where I gig is leaving me tired.

Thanks for putting up with the rant. Please return your stewardesses to their original upright positions and continue with your lives.

Last night's Snake Suspenderz gig at the Pink Door was the best so far.

We had several more tunes in the set(s) that Thaddeus took lead vocals on. We had a great crowd, including a half-dozen that came in just to see us. Claudia and Andrew who work at Pike Place Market showed up, Andrew with a nice lady named Liz. Two folks folks from SUPA who's names I can't remember were also there. And Larry, who was the original jugista when I first joined the Emerald City Jug Band, also turned up.

About mid-way through the second set -- we play three 40-minute sets each time -- a young lady approached the stage, looked confusedly at it and then just dropped several dollars onto the apron.

We said "thank you."

Almost immediately after that a guy came up and dropped a fiver on the little pile.

We said "thank you" again and I said, "Hmmmm... perhaps we could put a tip jar out." We had one -- a beer pitcher -- out for the third set. By the end of the night we had $48 in it. And we'd sold 3 more CDs.

Thaddeus made vague threats of putting out a tip jar on our first night there. Why none of us followed through on that idea is a mystery.

I mean, half of us have busked for a long time. So it's not like we weren't aware of the whole tipping for music concept.

As I said, a mystery

• We got an inquiry about booking us for a party.
• A nice fella that was sitting at the bar came up after the show and allowed that he was a photographer and would we mind if he came back next week and took photos? The answer to that, of course, is "hell no!"
• For several songs we had not one, not two, but three couples dancing to our tunes. We love having people dance to our music. When Chris (the manager) noticed what was going on he just smiled and moved through the small room, sliding empty tables around to make more room for the dancers. You know that will get reported "upstairs" and will certainly help when we ask for a little letter of recommendation.

This past Wednesday Snake Suspenderz did the third of five nights we have booked for our first ever quartet gig. The next night (last night) we did our regular rehearsal. As a change of pace, we're starting to have a bit of an "agenda" for the rehearsals. I thought I might start a record of these rehearsals, both for the edification of any of my readers who might be interested in such minutia and so we could have a clear record of what we've been working on. I've also made a 'Rehearsal Diaries' tag for the blog and will be using it both for the Snakes and my solo stuff.

Right now the Snake Suspenderz rehearsal agenda is a three-fold thing:

1) Add more original songs, especially those written by Thaddeus (we're already doing several of mine).

2) Add more songs for Thad to take lead vocals on (besides his own tunes).

3) Add some tunes where I switch off from playing ukulele to playing harmonica.

I like blowing harp. It's the instrument I've played the longest (44 years now but only about 34 with any "seriousness"). The problem that the greater majority of that time I've only played blues harp. Nothing wrong with that... I just want to challenge myself. So we're going to concentrate mainly on playing the jazzier tunes when I'm on harp.

So here's the tunes we worked on:

The Lady Is A Tramp
St. James Infirmary Blues
Beginning To See The Light
Troubled In Mind
Back Home In Indiana

Beginning To See The Light is something Thad and I did as a duo. We went for stripped-down minimalism with it. All I do is strum the uke. Thad sings, then picks up the 'bone and blows a solo and finishes out by singing. As a quartet we were mainly interested in coming up with the "Canonical Snake Suspenderz Arrangement" for it. Having the road map to fall back on will (hopefully) make it easier to stray around if we feel like it, knowing that we have a basis for starting and ending it cleanly.

St. James Infirmary Blues came off of the master list that Andrew (our drummer) has been jotting down at rehearsals. It's basically everything we've ever fooled around with, even once, as a group. I surprised myself by moving into the upper range of my harmonica, something I rarely do and consider a bit of a failing with my playing. It sounded ok, though this is one of those straight ahead blues tunes. I used to do it a lot when I was playing guitar and harp-on-the-rack on a regular basis.

Troubled In Mind is from the same school as above. Thad brought it up mainly because it was an example of a basic blues that wasn't a plain ol' 3 chord wonder.

The Lady Is A Tramp was my favorite bit of last night's rehearsal. Thad just sort of launched into it and Andrew and Dean jumped right on in. I thought I'd give it a go and, after 8 or so bars of feeling around for it, caught it! I blew some pretty decent jazz harp. I want to work on it a bit more (maybe we'll try it out on the folks at the Ballard Sunday Market when we busk there this weekend) but I think it's almost ready to go into the set lists.

Back Home In Indiana is my biggest challenge. Much of the stuff that we do is two-part (A and B) and mostly arranged in the classic AABA format. This song actually has an A, B, C and D part and, while I copped some good solo licks for some of it, other bits sounded, at best, lost. Lame even. Need to really go over it at our next one or two rehearsals before I'll feel comfortable doing it in public.

All in all it was a successful session. Stay tuned for more progress reports like this one.

Maybe I should put a sign like this in my case when I'm busking.

"Please do not annoy, torment, pester, plague, molest, worry, badger, harry, harass, heckle, persecute, irk, bullyrag, vex, disquiet, grate, beset, bother, tease, nettle, tantalize or ruffle the ukulele player.

Tips are still hip.

Thank you."

One of the big discussions arguments I had with my last band was on the subject of using fewer microphones and no direct in stuff. The current band is a bit more prone to simplification, but I think could still could use a bit less in the sound equipment department and still work out ok.

Imagine my joy when I ran across a link to one of my ukulele heroes, Del Rey, and she was talking about the whole concept of one mike stand.

I don't know that we can get down to any less than 5 mikes (or 4 mikes and one DI/amp for the bass) but that would still be three less than the jug band used for the same number of musicians.

And there just might be the occasional room where we could get down to one mike stand. Or a house concert type situation where we could just do it straight acoustic.

Less really is sometimes more.

I'd like to introduce you to Jack, our new kitty. (As is more or less usual, click on either of the pics in this post to get a popup with the full-sized version.)

We adopted Jack from the animal shelter. Actually, my Fallen Angel did.

She told me a couple weeks ago that she'd found a possible new playmate for Yuri. We had to put Yuri's brother, Neil, down in early June and he was missing him terribly.

When my FA first told me about Jack, I was less than enthused. I know it's a personal failing, but I really do get a squicky sort of feeling dealing with animals -- or people for that matter -- who are missing bits. See, Jack only has one eye.

He was picked up as a stray and, at some point in the time he was on the streets, his right eye got damaged beyond repair. When the shelter got him the choice was remove his eye or have it go infected and kill him.

In any event, some time passed and a few days ago she came home from work and said how she wanted me to go out and meet this cat.

While I still felt grumpy about it, it was obvious that she really wanted me to see him. So we trekked across the lake to Bellevue and met him at the PetCo in the Crossroads Shopping Center. PetCo displays animals from the shelter that need homes. Good corporation.

The FA wanted him. So I, still somewhat reluctantly, said "Ok, let's fill out the paperwork."

By the next evening we'd found out we were approved and the day after the FA went out and picked him up (I was at work at the time). All the people involved were very happy to hear he was being adopted. Turns out that the day we picked him up was scheduled to be his last day on earth.

It's nice to know that I can sometimes make the right choice, even when I'm otherwise being my usual asshole self.

It's been several days and, after a bit of standoffish behavior from Yuri at first and lots of "c'mon, let's play!" from Jack, the two are starting to wrassle and chase each other. There's still a bit of the "we have to decide who's king kitty" about it, but they'll settle down soon.

It's a nicely felined place around here today. I'm looking at Yuri on the bookshelf by the door, Jack on the couch and Sabrina, a neighbor kitty who often visits, over near the dining room.

Must be time to scritch one or more of them.

Last night the newly-expanded-to-a-quartet version of Snake Suspenderz played our first gig. We had the extreme pleasure of performing said gig at a Seattle legend, The Pink Door.

We went down to an open audition there a month or so back and, apparently, passed.

It was a tough crowd for the first set since they were still in the "dinner crowd mode" but by the end of the evening we had people dancing and lots of nice applause (sometimes led by "La Padrona" herself, Jaquelina Di Roberto).

There were a few rough spots, but all of us have a sufficient pro background to get around/through them. The worst moment is when we suddenly had a blaze of feedback and, since we weren't in charge of the mixer, couldn't figure out what had changed. As it happens, it was Thad's guitar amp. You can't see it in the pic, but it's just behind his chair.

Speaking of the pic, you can click on it for a popup window with the full-sized version. Many thanks to my Fallen Angel for taking the pics and movies (one of the latter should be appearing on YouTube real soon now).

The stage is quite tiny but we managed to fit us all on there. I'm thinking that I'm going to have to acquire/make a multi-uke stand though. I have a design for one that'll hold three or four in about the same footprint as one uke case.

Afterwards we were treated to a huge bowl of pasta and meatballs, an even larger salad, a basket of bread with a bowl of flavored olive oil to dip it in and a carafe of the house red. Plus, of course, they paid us.

All in all we were quite pleased and are looking forward to the rest of the Wednesdays in August (since that's the extent of our booking there).

I'll close up by introducing the band. L to R: Howlin' Hobbit (yeah... like me, eh?); Andrew Hare; Thaddeus Spae; Dean Hedges.