Sunday, March 17, 2013

A Last Hurrah with Tippy Canoe


Michele Kappel-Stone writes: 

I'm not sure if you knew this, but I retired (alter ukulele ego) Tippy Canoe last June as a performing act and stopped teaching back in the Fall. 
By special request I'm doing one last hurrah for Tippy on Tuesday, March 26 at an Art Beat Foundation (Oakland, CA) hosted reading and signing for Seattle author Andrea Savar. 
Here's the link to the Facebook Event page with the full details:https://www.facebook.com/events/476230249097386/ 
I know what you're thinking, "how can we miss her, if she won't go away?" 
I'm doing a set by special request of the author and really don't have any plans to pick things back up since I've moved on to other bands. 
Andrea was inspired to write her book after visiting her old hometown of Pt. Townsend, WA when accompanying my friend Antonette G and I there on tour, so we're revisiting the magic of that time and sharing this wonderful book with the Bay Area. It'd be great to see some uke friendly faces in the crowd. 
Thanks! 
Cheers,
Michele

2 comments:

Ron Hale said...

Michele rode the mighty third wave while it was sky high, Gary. Now that it's a mere ripple of it's former glory she's jumping off. And she's not the only one reading the writing on the ukulele wall.

And what does that writing say? "Same old, same old, same old, SAME SAME SAME OLD OLD OLD!"

The wave grew from Jake's "Gently Weeps" video but even the Beatles wound down and broke up.

The uke world desperately needs a new Jake, a new "Gently Weeps" to awaken it from its stupor.

The ukulele revolution once was cutting edge. Now that edge is so dulled it wouldn't split the thinnest of soprano strings.

In fact the revolution is over and the lean and hungry rebels have morphed into the new fat bourgeoisie. Jake included. UOGB included.

Sucking up dollars from the complacent consuming class they've nurtured.

Time for some new ukulele street fighters to once again 'Rock That Uke'. Remove the rot. Recreate. Regenerate.

Or it's all over...

Gary said...

Interesting thoughts, Ron.

I've always savored the uke's underclass status. What worries me most is how uke players will be perceived after the current wave passes from the popular scene again. Can we maintain our pride and strum on as stalwarts or will we be seen as people who just didn't get the memo.

I see a lot of young people come into the music store, start ripping up a Jake arrangement that they learned off of YouTube. First I feel really outclassed, because I've never worked on any of Jake's stuff. Then I find out that that's the only thing they can play, and really have no idea what they're doing.

 
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