Ukulele Hero T-shirt no more!

Aw, crap: TorsoPants.com, the makers of the fine fine Ukulele Hero T-shirt, has apparently closed up shop. Which is a shame, because that shirt is a fine, fine shirt. Not just well-designed, but very sturdy; it's not one of them wimpy thin American Apparel shirts. And it always gets approving comments whenever I wear it. Some people actually ask me if I *am* a 'ukulele hero. And of course I answer an emphatic "Yes!"

Oh, and: hello to 2009. Our Christmas performance at Chicago's MSI was a good one; hope you made it there. This year will be spent in preparation for the 2009 Hula Conference in Honolulu. More on that as the time approaches.

Chicago Trader Vic's opening in October...?

If you check out Trader Vic's news page, you will see an item from last week indicating that the new Chicago Trader Vic's will open in October; i.e., in three months. That's a pretty surprising turn of events, given that it's been years since the original location in the Palmer House Hilton closed. You'd think that Trader Vic's would be drumming up the publicity about the impending opening. So maybe it's not a completely done deal yet.

At any rate, it'll be very interesting to see what happens in October. Hopefully the opening will not be the weekend of October 10-11, because that clashes with the annual convention of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association in Joliet, which I suspect I may be attending in some fashion. More on this later. (Ooh, exciting!)

New Year

Not much going on here. Our Christmas performance was so-so; we didn't do so well on some of the numbers, but from what I heard afterward the audience heard us pretty well. So that was okay, I guess.

Our teacher is planning out the next couple of years for the ukulele and hula groups. It sounds like we'll be going to at least one uke conference/festival per year, so that should be a fun time. The plan right now is to re-visit Southern California in October, hopefully with a performance there to make the visit more interesting. I have to dig through my two-year-old emails to get back in touch with the fetival contacts, so we don't miss the short application window this year. If you're in the SoCal area, come by and see us there. More details coming up.

Garage sale on Friday

Chicago's fantastical music school The Old Town School of Folk Music has its annual garage sale of used instruments and great this upcoming weekend. A little bird told me that they'll have some ukuleles available for purchase, and there should be a number of Fluke and Flea models available. Strangely enough the models with the decorative designs on the front (such as the Cowboy model and the (now out-of-print?) Surfer model) don't sell as well as other models, perhaps because they're too kitcschy, even for beginning ukulele students.

The newest trend

According to NPR, it's ukulele clubs. Gee, why didn't I think of that? Seriously, though, one of the people featured in the story, Andy Andrews of the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz, was the very first person that we met when we arrived at last year's Southern California Ukulele Festival.

Aloha, Trader Vic's

The Trader Vic's restaurant in Chicago is closing up shop at the end of this week, and our ukulele group will be stopping by the place Thursday evening for one final round of expensive fruit drinks. The hula branch is also coming along, so there might be some drunken dancing in the aisles! Stop by the restaurant (17 East Monroe, at the Palmer House Hilton; look for the giant tiki head) Thursday night at 8:00, and just look for the big group of uke players.

Update: we didn't make it into Trader Vic's! The management was allowing only people with reservations into the restaurant, and we forgot to make reservations. The tiki at the door was about as close as we got. Oh well, maybe when Trader Vic's re-opens in a new Chicago location, we can plan another night out.

Aloha Ukulelia readers!

Hello to all you ukulele fans who may have seen this very site mentioned on Ukulelia. Here's a quick recap to get you up to speed:

• Although I'm a Windy City strummer, I'm not a Windy City Islander. I'm actually part of a Hawaiian ukulele and hula group called Ke Kula Kupa`a O Ka Pakipika, which is a group of musicians and dancers who occasionally perform in Chicago and elsewhere. Our main annual gig is currently at the "Christmas Around The World" celebration at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Pictures of our recent performance are posted on Flickr.
• My instrument of choice is the Martin soprano ukulele, but I have been known to take a Fluke out on the road.
• The name "fleajumper" was thought up by my chiropractor, who plays the mandolin.
• Next performance will probably be at the end of January, when our group will be performing for a convention of alumni from the Kamehameha Schools. Next public performance will probably be sometime in May, during the celebrations of Asian/Pacific American History Month here in Chicago.
• If you are in Chicago and want to learn how to play the ukulele, you'll want to sign up for the classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music, which has classes starting January 2nd. I guarantee that you'll feel like a true rebel walking through the hallways full of guitar-strumming college kids. Do not be embarrassed by this feeling. Show the kids that you can play "Pay Me My Money Down" the same as they can. And you don't need no guitar strap!
• I worked out the chords to "Hooray For Santy Claus" from the classic badfilm Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, and I hope to get that posted sometime this week in time for Christmas.
• Ha`ina ia mai ana kapuana.

Have we got a video?

There are at least two different ukulele documentaries that have been produced in recent years: The Jumping Flea and Rock That Uke. Both of them are coming soon on DVD. Personally I'm more excited about Rock That Uke, since it appears to have interviews of more people. I've been keeping my eye on the DVD page at Elderly Instruments, waiting for it to appear. As of right now, it's supposed to be shipping at the end of January. But the date's changed several times over the past few months, so I'm not putting much credence into that date.

One documentary that is out right now is the PBS documentary "American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai`i", which is a fascinating look at some hula teachers on the mainland, and their separate approaches in teaching Hawaiian dance and how they adapt it. It's available at Netflix, and I'd definitely recommend it if you want to see some amazing Hawaiian dancing.

When the other two uke DVDs come out, I'm definitely going to have to have a viewing party at someone's house, and invite all the uke students from my class.

Welcome!

Welcome to Flea Jumper, a brand-new weblog devoted to the ukulele. Among the information that I want to post here: information on upcoming ukulele festivals; links to mentions of the uke in the news; pointers to uke players and musicians; and notes on my own personal ukulele learning, which may include MP3s and sheet music. There's a lot of stuff happening right now in the uke world, believe it or not, and I'll be posting as much stuff as my fingers can stand.