John Kavanagh's Page

I was lucky enough to start the uke in junior high school in the mid 70s - I was 12 or 13. By '77 I was in Chalmers Doane's "A" group, and we toured and made records and so on - the Langley Ensemble is sort of patterned after our group, but they're better.

I spent a few weeks on a junk uke of my dad's that someone sat on, then got a Harmony tenor(concert) that I played until he brought a cuatro back from a trip to Venezuela. Met my good wife in 1980, and part of the dowry was a 1960s Harmony baritone which I immediately tuned like a tenor (low 4th D, the "Canadian" tuning). That's still my main uke, though it's been hot-rodded, especially with a new spruce top.

I started guitar lessons a few years after the uke - I remember how huge that neck seemed, and getting key vertigo until I sorted out that business of the seventh and fifth frets. I did a music degree in classical guitar, play upright bass professionally, and started (but never finished) a masters in viola da gamba and musicology. Gamba is just a big bowed ukulele - strings 5 through 2 (of seven) are Gcea.

I never stopped playing uke - it was always my first choice at jam sessions if I wasn't needed on bass. I've always enjoyed arranging, and using the uke as the soprano voice in a string band or guitar ensemble. I'd been trying to work out some Joplin rags as guitar solos, and finding it frustrating, and finally the light bulb went on to play them as duets, with the uke doing the right hand and the guitar the left. Duh. That was the start of what became my "Parlour Music" album.

I spend a lot of time playing pop and jazz songs like everyone else, but my other life playing chamber music also made me try a lot of Baroque and classical things, using the uke as the treble-clef lead instrument. I think this works, and it's fun. What makes the uke the uke for me, though, is the right hand, the strumming rhythms and the solo techniques. That's where the future is.