COYLE — Can you take a ukulele player seriously? The answer is yes, apparently. Yes you can.
“I don’t think” performing on a ukelele is “silly at all,” said Sunga Rose, a professional ukelele player and half of the musical group, The Honeyville Rascals.
The ukulele duo, which also includes Michael Alexander, will perform at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Laurel B. Johnson Community Center, 923 Hazel Point Road, as part of the ongoing Concerts in the Woods series.
Admission to the all-ages shows is by donation.
Complimentary cookies and coffee will be offered at intermission.
The Honeyville Rascals, based in Seattle, are a jazz and blues inspired roots duo with the driving rhythms of tenor, concert and baritone ukuleles supporting the vocal melodies and harmonies of Rose and Alexander, they said.
Rose sings and plays a concert “paddlele” while Alexander sings and plays a 6-string tenor “liliu.”
Both take turns on baritone uke as well, and Alexander has been known to bring his banjo along.
Not a prop
“Some people have used [ukeleles] more as a prop than as a serious musical instrument, but most of us who play it today are interested in demonstrating its versatility and musicality,” Rose said.
“Look up just about any popular song on YouTube and you’ll find someone playing it on a ukulele and doing it very well. It’s exciting to see this little four-stringed underdog of the music world having such a huge presence.”
With a ukelele in hand, “I haven’t run across a song I can’t play on the ukulele,” Alexander added.
When asked why they perform on ukeleles, Rose replied, “why not ukuleles?”
Ukuleles, she continued, “are experiencing a wonderful wave of popularity these days. People of all ages and musical interests are playing them. They’re easy to get started on and you can take them to a very high level as demonstrated by musicians like Jake Shimabukuro and James Hill.”
Ukeleles, she added, are a “great instrument for teaching musicianship and music theory.”
Rose’s interest in the ukulele “began when I started playing music from the 1920s,” she said.
“The uke was very popular during the Jazz Age. If you look at old sheet music from about 1923 until the mid-30s, it all contains ukulele chords.”
Alexander began exploring music with ukeleles for similar reasons.
“I was interested in an instrument that would allow me to play early jazz, Hawaiian and Tin Pan Alley songs and the ukulele was perfect,” he said.
“It is also an excellent songwriting tool. I can use it to play sad songs, funny songs, swing tunes and murder ballads. The instruments provide an avenue for a wide range of emotions. Joy, certainly, but also longing, reflection [and] awe. The ukulele is very expressive. It’s possible to make people cry with a ukulele.”
The two musicians began seriously studying ukelele in 2008, and began jamming together after meeting at a ukelele workshop, they said.
“Before that I had played a bit of mandolin and guitar,” Rose said.
“I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. My voice was my first instrument.”
Alexander said he took ukulele lessons in fifth grade and “really enjoyed the group classes. My mom played a little guitar and encouraged me to play and sing.”
Then, six years ago, Alexander was “playing with a jazz trio and we were trying to write vintage Hawaiian jazz songs. The banjo just didn’t cut it.”
“Hawaiian music attracted me to the ukulele, but I have been able to use it for everything, including much of my current songwriting,” Alexander said.
Ukeleles are “absolutely not” just useful for Hawaiian music, Rose added.
“It’s a great jazz instrument,” and is useful for other purposes, she said.
“George Harrison used it for songwriting. Eddie Veder released a whole ukulele album of mostly original songs a few years ago. Bruno Mars, Jason Mraz, Vance Joy — all have had hit songs that featured the ukulele.”
Rose encourages the public to attend their show.
“Come to our show and you’ll hear a broad variety of music — a couple Hawaiian songs, jazz, blues, folk and lots of original tunes,” she said.
“Our fans tell us they love our vocal harmonies and how we relate to each other on stage. Our original songs are sweet and funny and sad and topical, and our covers are old friends that audiences are always happy to revisit.”
In addition to ukulele music, “Michael will be playing a lot of banjo and I’ll be playing percussion on a few tunes,” Rose added.
“Also, I play a mean mouth trumpet.”
Said Alexander: “We love playing and singing together. Music is an important part of our lives and we are eager to share it. We have a lot of great stories to tell,” and are “looking forward to playing in Coyle again.”
Norm Johnson, Coyle Concerts founder, said folks who have been burnt out on silly ukelele music will find this performance refreshing.
“After surviving through the 1970s with The Don Ho Show of Hawaiian music created for the mainland palate and then overdosing on Tiny Tim’s version of ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips,’ I had pretty much burned out on listening to anything with a ukulele in it,” he said.
“But eventually I learned about the early jazz use of the ukulele in the Roaring Twenties and that gave me a breath of fresh air on my perception of what a ukulele can do for music. After Tiny Tim all but killed the serious use of the ukulele for about two decades, it is finally gaining respect again as a serious folk instrument.”
The community center is located at the southern tip of the Toandos Peninsula and is operated by the Jefferson County Parks and Recreation District with help from area residents.
For more information about the band, visit http://tinyurl.com/PDN-HoneyvilleRascals. For more about the center, see www.coyleconcerts.com.
