When it comes to learning how to play an instrument, Waukegan resident Jessie Hughes says there’s no easier place to start that wrapping your hands around a ukulele.
“I’ve been playing the ukulele for five years now and originally heard the instrument being played by Tiny Tim with ‘Tip-Toe Through the Tulips’ and I’ve been in love with it ever since,” Hughes said Sunday at the seventh Aurora Ukulele Festival in Aurora. “I currently own about 17 ukuleles of different scale lengths. We have a term that we use in my online group called ‘UAS’ which is Ukulele Acquisition Syndrome. That means once you buy one you just keep buying them.”
This year’s Aurora Ukulele Festival featured a number of changes, including a new venue – Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora. Previous festivals were held outside at Water Street Mall in downtown Aurora.
“We had a lot of feedback from people with weather issues whether it was just too warm, too hot, too windy and it was something we had been discussing for about three years now,” event co-chairman Mark Strausberger said about a change in venue. “The Roundhouse was very generous about letting us have this festival here this year. We decided to throw it out there and give it a try, and I know a lot of the ukulele fests throughout the Midwest are also moving indoors. We all work together, and it seems to be working for them and so we’re giving it a shot.”
The timing of the festival also changed, he said, as it “moved to May this year instead of our usual time in August, because then we were competing with some of the really big festivals in the towns around us, and now we don’t have any competition at this point.
“We put this together each year based on feedback from people,” he said. “They’re just fun-loving and caring and really enjoy what we do and we take that feedback to heart.”
Vendors this year were reduced and featured more “ukulele builders and sellers.”
“We actually only have four but they are either builders or related to the music industry,” Strausberger said.
A total of eight workshops were offered during the day with topics like strumming techniques, songwriting and improvising.
Eight different performers appeared on the stage at the festival, which at the end featured a jam session with all the artists coming together to perform.
Aaron Baer of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was one of the scheduled performers Sunday and said he has been playing “since the mid-1990s.”
“I perform a couple times a year. I was drawn to this after a friend of mine played it,” Baer said. “I was doing rock-n-roll music back in the ’90s and saw this guy play something on a little, tiny four-string instrument. He was rocking it and I was like – OK – I have to learn that. Some people think this is a gateway to the guitar but they wind up staying with it (the ukulele). It’s a little happier.”
Indeed, joy and happiness about the instrument were echoed by those who attended the event including Victoria Lopez of Chicago who, like Hughes, admitted she had a growing collection of instruments.
“I have about 10 ukuleles and I’m looking at a couple more,” she admitted. “You need more because you start out with one and they’re like pistachios.”
She said individual ukuleles are “so different.”
“Each has its own personality and look,” she said. “As soon as somebody sees a ukulele, everybody is happy. You don’t even have to play it.”
Hughes admitted she was likely going to buy yet another ukulele to add to her growing collection.
“I love the sound of this instrument. It has such a light, bright tone to it and it’s the instrument of the people, really,” she said. “I don’t know anybody who has ever picked up a ukulele and wasn’t happy. It lifts my mood and makes me very, very happy.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
