Juneau Jambusters say anyone of any skill level is welcome to the weekly ukulele jam.<\/p>\n
Even if the last time someone picked up an instrument was in high school while slowly picking out AC\/DC power chords, they can join in with the group that meets 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at TK Maguire’s restaurant in the Prospector Hotel.<\/p>\n
I know because that’s my exact level of proficiency, and I recently went to the jam with my wonderful fiancée, even though I am objectively terrible at ukulele and most other forms of music making.<\/p>\n
A groggy pirate waking up from a rum-induced slumber required for a double amputation and hook installation would play circles around me.<\/p>\n
I am bad.<\/p>\n
But I was welcomed and lent one of the spare ukuleles the group keeps on hand for interlopers or the otherwise curious.<\/p>\n
On any Sunday, the number of musicians fluctuates between four or five to over a dozen depending on work and play schedules. Gray skies tend to drive more group members to the Prospector for the jam.<\/p>\n
The number of instruments almost always outnumbers the musicians, said Rhonda Jenkins-Gardinier, who helped found the group almost a decade ago.<\/p>\n
That’s because many people may dabble in ukulele and run into the group by chance, or play a different string instrument and want to join in the group music fun.<\/p>\n
“It’s a very approachable instrument,” Jenkins-Gardinier said.<\/p>\n
That’s sort of how longtime Jambuster Reid Tippets ended up joining on.<\/p>\n
He was at Echo Ranch and saw Amy O’Neil Houck, another one of the Jambusters founding members, playing ukulele.<\/p>\n
“I said, ‘Oh, I have one in my attic,” Tippets said.<\/p>\n
He’d bought it years ago when visiting Hawaii and jamming “So Happy Together” by the Turtles with a shop owner but mostly had forgotten about it and favored the guitar.<\/p>\n
“It was kind of this synchronicity of meeting Amy,” Tippets said.<\/p>\n
In part because just about all the members are multi-instrumentalists, there are many types of ukuleles at the weekly jam — some play more like a more familiar instrument and some cover different ranges of sound.<\/p>\n
Some of the instruments aren’t even ukuleles.<\/p>\n
There’s a four-stringed, Venezuelan instrument called a cuatro, which John Lager makes sing with string-bending playing, a twangy banjolele played by Jessica Breyer and a plugged-in bass ukulele played by her husband, Rodney Breyer.<\/p>\n
Rodney Breyer said the bass ukulele is exactly like a normal bass, but “more compact.”<\/p>\n
The group dynamic of the jam creates a firing squad effect that means it’s never clear who issued a fatal errant note or mistimed strum.<\/p>\n
However, unique contributions to the sound, like Lager’s solos or rumbling bass do stand out and add texture to the pleasant sounds.<\/p>\n
Hearing the group break out into “500 Miles” made famous by Peter, Paul and Mary, it’s hard to not catch choral vibes with every individual voice adding a vibrant thread to a grander tapestry.<\/p>\n
The jam approach also means, if you’re total dead weight and clumsily strumming the same C string over and over whenever you recognize it on one of the sheet of tabs shared among the group, you don’t drag things down.<\/p>\n
And, in between songs, someone will probably show you a new chord.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact arts and culture reporter Ben Hohenstatt at (907)523-2243 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
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