N'Ukefest Ukulele Gathering Line Ups Are Finalised!

Well, not quite a Got A Ukulele post, but news that the ukulele gathering being hosted by our band The N'Ukes is now booked up for performances! N'Ukefest is GO!

N'Ukefest is a charitable ukulele get together on 16-18 May, that is free to attend and now in its third year. This year though we thought we would go a bit bigger, providing two full days of ukulele open mic performances and a special evening programme of some of the UK's biggest uke performers on an indoor stage. Let's take a look at the evening programme first. We are delighted with these acts!!

Phil Doleman

We are well and truly delighted to get this act to N’Ukefest. Phil Doleman is extremely well known in the uke world and one of the highest regarded performers on the circuit.

Phil has been at the forefront of the ukulele revival for over ten years and is hugely in demand as a performer and workshop teacher. He plays beautiful instrumental uke, some standards, some self penned and has performed at more festivals than we can shake a stick at. Ken Middleton of Ohana Ukuleles called him ‘one of the most talented players in the UK’ and we would fully agree. Fresh from the Ukulele Festival Of Great Britain AND the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival we are delighted to have him with us.

This is a real treat! Did we also say that he is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet as well? He is!

Chonkinfeckle

Chonkinfeckle are a Wigan trio made up of Les Hilton, Tim Cooke and Peter Byrom and we are absolutely thrilled they are playing for us.

They are extremely well known on the ukulele circuit, having performed at both the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain and this years Grand Northern Ukulele Festival in Pontefract. They perform unique self penned tunes on ukulele, gob iron, percussion and keyboards that stay true to their Lancashire roots. They tell tales of everyday life, work, local characters and often including the local dialect. Beltin!


Krabbers

Krabbers hails from Surrey, and is a well known face on the ukulele circuit and was most recently seen running the ‘open no mic’ and the ‘Unplugthewood’ sessions at the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival.

He is the founder and host of the ‘unplugthewood' open mics and jams and has performed ukulele all over the world including the Ukulele Festival Of Great Britain. He is with us at N’Ukefest as a solo act, performing a range of his self penned material. A fabulous performer with a real songwriting skill and we are so pleased he has agreed to play!


Dead Mans Uke

 Another addition to the N’Ukefest line up is a duo we were not sure we could get, but it all worked out good in the end!

Tim and Jake Smithies have been playing together for a while now, and are a father and son duo who play in the mighty Anything Goes Orchestra. Dead Mans Uke is a stripped down, simple and stomping ukulele and bass combo that plays blues, Americana and anything else they darn well please on reso uke and double bass. Having played most of the pubs and clubs in their native Yorkshire Dales, including the odd festival (including the Ukulele Festival Of Great Britain) they are now heading further afield, stomping all the way. You have been warned!

The N'Ukes

That'll be our band then! The N'Ukes are hosting the event and performing their high octane set on the Saturday night.

The N’Ukes play an eclectic mix of rock, soul, blues, folk and country in their own style, accompanied by keyboards, drums and bass. Never ones to lean on lamp posts or tiptoe through tulips, they prefer to rock things up a little. We will look to throw some surprises into the mix on the night and of course you will get to know us as we will be rushing around during the day to make sure the event goes well!


Ooty And The Cloud

Ooty And The Cloud are a Chester based three piece making their return to N’Ukefest! Ooty comprise Stephen Fowler (vocals, uke, bouzouki), Rekha Fowler (Melodica, whistles) and Sally Gallagher (vocals, uke) and make some lovely music, much of it self penned with some inspired covers thrown in. Guaranteed to give us a dreamy set. Did we add they are also lovely people too?

And, that is just the evening programme. All day on Saturday and Sunday we are delighted that the following performers, bands, clubs have agreed to perform for the crowds on the outdoor open mic stage.

SATURDAY

11.00 The N’Ukes - introdcution, welcome and song

11.20 Jan Hough - Wigan
11.40 Bridgnorth Ukulele Band
12.00 Marc Gallagher - Nantwich
12.20 Congleton and Biddulph Ukulele Clubs
12.30 Ray Welch - Reading
12.40 The Splintered Ukes - Liverpool
13.00 Bluddy Hell - Wigan
13.20 Clarice Wokes - Leeds 
13.40 Stockport Ukulele Players
14.00 Surprise Event announcement!
14.10 Ukulele Club Liverpool
14.30 Bolton Uke Group
14.50 Rob Collins - Hebden Bridge
15.10 Aldridge Uke Group
15.30 Beer Of The Infantry - The Wirral
15.50 Macclesfield Uke Group
16.10 Pete Shurmer - Chester
16.30 Surprise Event and book on the day slots
17.20 Michael Adcock - Tenbury

SUNDAY
11.10 Carlisle Uke Club
11.40 Blue and Beyond - South Wales
12.00 Dylan Kennerall-Walters - Stone, Staffordshire
12.30 4ukesake - Skipton 
13.00 Stuart ‘Pockets’ Crout - Edinburgh
13.20 Wirral Uke Orchestra
13.40 The N’Ukefest raffle draw - hosted by Mary Agnes Krell
14.20 Mighty Flea - Wirral
14.40 Peter Moss - Alsager
15.00 Acoustic Milkfloat - Wirral
15.20 Zahra Lowzley - Edinburgh
15.40 Ukulele Union - Halesowen

What a ton of music for you! And don't worry if you are not booked in - keep sending us applications through the website as we will be keeping a reserve list for the open mic, and having some slots available for day visitors.

All details are on www.nukefest.com. We do hope you can come along.

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Got A Ukulele Interview - Manitoba Hal Brolund

I am delighted to be able to introduce my first ukulele interview of 2014 with a real star of the international uke circuit. I was lucky to see this guy headline the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival in 2013 and having had a chat with him whilst he was there, came away knowing that as well as being a sensational player he is also a really interesting and charming fella too. Say hello to Manitoba Hal Brolund!

Manitoba Hal - Credit Jessie Buchanan

Hal hails from Canada and is a guitarist, ukulele player and songwriter. He plays fresh and inventive originals mixed with arrangements of traditional blues, in a mixture of fingerpicking and strumming styles. Trust me, if you have a chance to see him live you should jump at the opportunity!


Hello Hal and thanks for speaking to Got A Ukulele! First up, tell me about your earliest musical experiences – how did you get into playing?

I began playing music when I was 18 years old. The bug bit me when I was sitting at a friends house as he was jamming on his acoustic guitar to some record. I have no memory of who the artist was but I clearly remember the music. It was the blues. I knew right then I would play music the rest of my life. Only one problem though...I didn't play anything right then! That moment was my 'Road To Damascus' moment. I began learning to play guitar and writing songs knowing what my future would hold if I put the work in.

And what musical instruments did you start out on?

I began on steel string folk styled guitar. I played Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens, The Box Tops, John Cougar Mellencamp, The Beatles and some Fleetwood Mac.

That is quite a range of styles! When did the uke first fall into your hands?

I got my first uke in 1995 when we were moving my grandfather into an assisted care home. He had an old 1955 Martin Uke in his basement that he'd inherited. He offered it to me with the condition that I learn to play it. I said I would and set about learning songs he would know. Of course in 1995 there was no YouTube and internet resources for ukulele were much scarcer than today. I bought a bunch of old sheet music and had to learn to read it to play the songs of his day. In the end he gave me the gift of music and helped my find my true path.

Tell us about the origins of the moniker ‘Manitoba’, I must say, it’s a cool handle you have there.

In 1998 I was hired to play at a blues festival in Regina, Saskatchewan. The fancy themselves as a national Canadian blues festival and would introduce their artists by telling where they were from right before their name. In my case I lived in Winnipeg Manitoba at the time and they would introduce me by saying "ladies and gentlemen from Manitoba, Hal Brolund".  Now up until this point I'd had trouble with people misspelling my last name. I would get all manner of strange spellings so I knew I wanted to fix that and Manitoba Hal sounded like a good stage name. So in 2000 I adopted it officially.

Well I think the name certainly fits the style of music you play! What is your take on ‘the blues’?

This is a tough question to answer. I actually took three days to think about this before giving you my answer! Son House described the blues as that which consists between a man and a woman. That's it, that's all. It may have started there but it has grown to include all ranges of human emotion. There are happy blues, low down blues, sad blues, playful blues, sexy blues...you name it. Some believe you have to be black to play the blues. Or that it has to be played on an old guitar with a bottle neck and learned at the crossroads at midnight. I believe "the blues" are simply the human spirit communicating through song. Every person has experienced troubled times, happy times, love, heart break, betrayal, friendship. These are the subjects of the blues. It is the raw emotion that is communicated that give the blues it's legitimacy though. It's not enough to use a blues musical form or rhyming scheme. It's not enough to use coded language, tales of the devil or to play it on this instrument or that, there MUST be real emotion involved or it's just a song and NOT the blues.

Credit - Missie D'Eon

You had me totally caught out when I reviewed one of your blues CD’s as I was convinced you had used more than just the ukulele – tell me more about that!

One of the goals of my CD Flirting With Mermaids was to make a CD that wasn't an obvious ukulele CD but was filled with ukulele. I wanted to take the ukulele into places it doesn't often go so in the studio we put it through a Leslie speaker (which is most commonly used with a Hammond organ), through distortion and other effects to show that as a small instrument it is only limited by your imagination. The plan was to make a CD that if you weren't a fan of ukulele you could listen to and enjoy and if you were a fan of ukulele you would enjoy the variations of tone that the ukulele created. The end result came out so beautifully that people often mistake the organ sounds for an actual Hammond organ or the distorted lead solo lines as being performed by an electric guitar. Of course the uke is featured in a pure acoustic form in several places on the record as well.

I am increasingly seeing people scoff at the idea that the uke can or should work with such a wide range of styles. It’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed your approach so much. Clearly you don’t agree that the uke should be pigeon holed?

I think the ukulele is a musical instrument. If you can imagine it's sound in a context then it belongs there whether or not it's been there before. The instrument obviously works well (maybe better) in certain styles but why not try it out everywhere?

How much time do you spend recording to get a CD just as you want it?

This depends a lot on the material and production style. Usually I stick with a "live off the floor" aesthetic which to me means playing the song all the way through without mistakes and recording that as a single take. So a big part of my "pre-production" of a record is simply practicing and deciding the arrangement of a song. Then I'll spend a day getting the sound right. i.e. where the mics should be placed, how I'll capture the sound etc... Then I just go for it. My CDs Huckster, Little Box of Sadness and Devil On The Wall were all recorded this way over 2 or 3 days. Flirting With Mermaids was a little more involved because of the large cast of musicians and singers that appear on the record and all the extra production tricks. This CD took almost 2 weeks in the studio recording and another week of mixing and finalizing the record.

And do you always perform solo? Any plans for touring with some of the other players you have worked with?

I do mostly tour solo because it's costly to carry more than one person on the road. Also I don't have a regular band so I am often picking up people as I go for specific jobs. I'm not ruling out touring with some other players but I haven't found that right fit yet musically or personality wise.

Talking of touring, you are certainly a busy man in that regard! What have been some of the highlights, and what is the down side?

This is so hard to answer. Every tour has it's high points and truthfully it's hard to compare them because they are all special and unique. From 2013 I'd have to say the highlights for me were playing a festival on Vancouver Island with John Hiatt, James Burton, Amos Garrett and Albert Lee ... touring in Australia and the UK and of course sailing up the coast of St Marrten in February on a Brigantine sailing vessel. I love to be in motion. My life makes more sense to me when I'm on the go. Of course with this carrot comes the stick. It means being away from loved ones and friends for most of the year. Living out of a suitcase. Not having your own space. I'm a solitary individual in many ways and I really enjoy my peace and quiet. That's hard to get on the road. I cherish my winters for this reason because I stay home between November and February. This is when I do most of my writing, recording and planning of the coming year.

Tell me a little more about your ukulele collection - my readers will be interested to know!

I'm not really a collector of ukes. I tend to acquire a uke and then play it for a while, then retire it and move on to another. After a while I get tired of looking at an instrument gathering dust when it should be played so I sell it off. Currently I have two tenor ukuleles (one Mango aNueNue signature model uke and one Ohana TK-50G), one soprano (no name) and my custom double necked uke made by Fred Casey (a tenor and a concert scale neck on the one body). I am also in the designing phase of building a tenor cigar box resonator uke and a concert scale tin box uke. That's it for the uke collection right now.

I ask this of all my interviewees – what is your best advice for new players?

This is a hard one to answer because I don't think people want to hear the answer. There is a lot of emphasis on the current ukulele resurgence to just play songs. I think that is great but the one thing that is lacking at nearly every ukulele club I've visited is true skills development. There is lots of emphasis on repertoire (learning songs) but not very much on learning chords and scales. So my best advice to new players is to practice skills every day. Spend 15 minutes a day working on chord shapes up the neck, learning scales, which chords belong in which key etc... then when you get together with your group to play songs you are equipped with the skills to really play them accurately and this will increase your fun. Practice makes better!

And finally Hal – I was thrilled to hear you are heading over to the UK later this year to do some workshop sessions – tell me more.

With the help of Mary Agnes Krell and the gang at GNUF I'll be doing a “workshop” tour of ukulele clubs in the UK in May 2014. The tour starts May 24th in Bournemouth. Full dates will be posted shortly but I expect to be around for almost 3 weeks and travel all over the countryside.

Hal at GNUF 2013 with his twin neck Fred Casey uke (credit Ed Sprake Photography)

Hal - I will be sure to get the dates on this site when I know them - I am sure it promises to be extremely popular. Hope to catch up with you when you are over too! For now though, thanks for taking the time to talk!

http://www.manitobahal.com

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Ukulele News - 19 January 2014

Been a while since the last ukulele news feature on GAU, so lets now have a look back over the last two weeks.

The Booming Business Of Ukuleles

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Hello to the Soberton Strummers!

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UOGB to play the Isle Of Wight Arts Festival

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'Apparently' the uke is popular in the UK (yes I am irritated. Plus Formby alert....)

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OK, that Johnny Depp Story... again.... It is now being syndicated all over the place and isn't going away. Seeing as it all stems from an unknown source speaking to the Daily Star (hardly a bastion of journalism), I remain of the view its false...

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More news soon!!

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A Ukulele Has A Happy New Home!

You may recall that before Christmas I ran a ukulele giveaway competition to win a Moselele bamboo concert uke. Many congratulations went to Tobi Abel in Dublin who scored the prize!

Anyway, the postal service overseas has not let me down and was delighted today to receive a mail from Tobi to let me know it had arrived safely. He also included a picture of it next to his Makala uke!

Tobi's prize on the right!

When I advised Tobi he had won he was absolutely thrilled (and shocked!) - he has not been playing all that long and is now the lucky owner of two instruments. Hope you enjoy it Tobi, and thanks again to Moselele for sponsoring the prize.

Watch this space as I am working on some more competitions on Got A Ukulele during 2014!

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N'Ukefest Ukulele Gathering 2014 goes LIVE

Well it has already been in the planning stages for a couple of months, but the annual N'Ukefest ukulele gathering is now well and truly live!

This is the third year that the event has taken place, each time hosted by our band The N'Ukes. This year it takes place on 16-18 May at the Cotton Arms pub in the heart of leafy Cheshire UK. It is free to attend and all taking place in aid of Macmillan and The Wingate Centre charities. The backbone of the event are the open mic performances from uke players and clubs all over the UK, and on the Saturday night we have a real treat with a range of professional performers giving their time for charity.

Open mic slots can be booked in advance, and whilst we are holding some back for the days themselves, you ought to be quick if you want a guaranteed slot as most of the Saturday slots have already been filled. Are you a solo performer, in a duo, a band or a club and want to perform? Then please head over to the APPLICATION FORM right away!

The general schedule is a follows

FRIDAY - informal evening get together

SATURDAY - open mic day until 5.30pm with lots of surprises. In the evening we have a gig programme comprising Phil Doleman, Chonkinfeckle, Krabbers, Dead Mans Uke, The N'Ukes and Ooty And The Cloud.

SUNDAY - open mic, and grand raffle draw.

The raffle is being kindly organised by Mary Agnes Krell, Director of the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival!

Camping is available on site (details on the website) and we would love to see you there. We think this is going to be the largest informal and free gathering of uke players in the UK during 2014!

http://www.nukefest.com

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Zahra Lowzley - Inception

This is just magical - and it's only a work in progress. Inception by Zahra Lowzley.



And this surely serves as a lesson to anyone obsessed with getting their tuning pegs right!

Zahra has a Youtube channel of wonderful uke pieces including classical and I would highly recommend you check that out HERE

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John Daniel Pixie Sopranino Ukulele - REVIEW

What better way to kick of 2014 on Got A Ukulele than with an instrument review. Say hello to the John Daniel Pixie Sopranino.

I have been hankering after a pocket sized ukulele for some time, and that desire grew a little more after the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain in the middle of 2013. At that even everyone seemed to be walking around with tiny iUke instruments  and they intrigued me. But.... not in a good way. I have to say it - I really don't like the feel or sound of the iUke at all, but most of all I don't like the feel of the neck. It is however priced a little more keenly than the Ohana SK21 I was looking at, and quite a bit more keenly than the Kala Pocket Uke.

Then another festival came along. I was at the Grand Northern Ukulele Festival when one of the performers, Phil Doleman called me over to show me what he had bought from the Southern Ukulele Store stand. He took out a John Daniel Pixie and I knew I had to have one. I enquired at the stall and they told me that when they had more in they would let me know. And they did! This came to me for a little over £100.

John is a private luthier who builds in small quantities and is based in South Wales (making this my first ever Welsh instrument!). The Pixie is completely hand made, and is constructed completely from solid mahogany. I am told that it is wood that has been taken from old furniture hundreds of years old (in this case, an old lab cabinet) which seems a very nice resourceful idea to me!

The uke is in traditional shape with a double bout, but it is quite subtle in its curves which I like. The body is extremely well put together with no gaps and the whole thing is finished in a hand rubbed oil finish. The top is quite plain apart from the fabulous dots decoration around the sound hole in white.

The grain on the sides is in line with the wood, and the back is flat with perhaps a slight curve. The top and back (being a small instrument) are single pieces of wood.

The bridge is a standard tie bar affair with a white trim and a bone saddle. The  bridge is made of rosewood. Inside all looks very tidy, and shows the use of un notched kerfling holding the top and back to the sides. It also holds the John Daniel label, with serial number and the proud claim that it is 'Hand Crafted In Wales'.

The neck is a particularly fine element of this uke for a couple of main reasons. Firstly the profile is nice and flat which is what I want on a tiny uke, but the nut width is really no different to any other soprano. That is a very good thing in my book. With a  smaller uke, things are going to get cramped as the frets are closer together, but if you narrow the nut as well, then things get quite difficult. The iUke suffers here. This comes back to the common misconception people have that bigger ukes are easier for beginners to play as they have more space. Nonsense. I have sopranos with wider nuts than concerts and they are the ones with more playing comfort. What is interesting to note is the headstock seems to be made of two pieces with a slightly visible joint at the top end.

The other nice element on the neck is the fingerboard - it is a made from rosewood with 12 nickel silver frets, but it is finished beautifully. The edges of the fingerboard are 'rolled' meaning they have a curved outer which makes for real comfort on the hands. You really only tend to see such detail on ukes at the upper end of the price range.

Fretboard markers are at the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th and 12th and are inlaid in white plastic. It is a little disappointing not to see side markers, or at least a single one for the players benefit. Still, with a neck this short, it is not hard to get lost on it!

Beyond the nut, the headstock is crown shaped with no outer facing, and is decorated with three small dots mimicking the detail from the sound hole and are the Daniel logo. These are set a little off centre, but this is not a factory made uke and I like the fact it LOOKS handmade.

Tuners are friction pegs (naturally - geared tuners on a uke this size would look ridiculous), though they represent my only gripe about it. They are bottom end friction tuners, that use plastic on plastic to hold. I found them extremely jerky and sticky and pretty quickly swapped them out for a slightly better set I had lying about which work much more smoothly.

I am not sure what the strings are that it came with (clear fluorocarbons of one brand or another, STOP PRESS - John has advised they are his own strings, and are indeed in flourocarbon) but SUS also shipped it with some Aquila Piccolo strings as used on the iUke to allow me to tune it a full octave above. I spent about ten minutes playing that way before being totally convinced that I had now found another thing I dislike about the iUke - the fact it is tuned so high!! So back on went the original strings and I started playing with tunings before deciding that F tuning suited my ears (that is to say, CFAD).

So how does it play? Well it is as light as a feather as you would expect, extremely nicely balanced and despite the diminutive size, actually quite comfortable to play and hold.

The setup is spot on with a very nice action and no intonation issues anywhere on the neck. The nut is cut well and the fingerboard is incredibly comfortable to play on. I love the nut width and don't find it particularly cramped at all, even with my large hands. It is a joy!

It also has a ton of volume when you give it a heavier strum, but also sounds delightful when picked. I would suggest if you get one that you too should play with other tunings to suit your own ears. DGBE tuning for example may be another alternative. Heck, that is part of the fun of owning one. I think it has a nice balanced sound and has become a uke I tend to keep very close to wherever I am sitting as it is a joy to just pick up and play. I've also jammed with it along with instruments of all other sizes and it fits in the mix quite well.

In short, I am delighted I got hold of it, and if you get the chance to own a John Daniel, I would give it some serious consideration. Check out the scores and a video review further down the page.

FOR

Good price for a hand made uke
Tone and volume
Sublime neck
'different' detailing such as the sound hole

AGAINST

Not much - cheap friction tuners

SCORES


Looks - 9
Fit and Finish - 8.5
Sound - 9
Value For Money - 9

OVERALL - 8.8

To understand my review scoring and see this result in context - visit my review page at

http://www.gotaukulele.com/p/ukulele-reviews.html

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