Video: Lil’ Rev jams on Green
By Kevin Coughlin
The Morristown Green is famed for its Revolutionary War history. But last Sunday, it looked more like the Ukulele Hall of Fame.
Lil’ Rev, Sarah Maisel, Craig Chee and Steve Boisen, stars of the weekend’s Uke New Jersey 3! festival in Morris Township, paid a surprise visit to the Green and jammed with local ukesters who were unwinding, so to speak, from the two-day festival.
Reaching for his harmonica, Lil’ Rev, the pride of Milwaukee’s northwest side, engaged in a no-holds-barred blues exchange with Steve Norwood, a member of the Morristown Uke Jam. (Video above.)
Maisel, Chee and Boisen also joined a couple of communal sing-alongs before continuing to Newark Liberty International Airport. Maisel and Chee were destined for Hawaii and a Labor Day Weekend wedding — their own.
The impromptu jam session capped a weekend of workshops and concerts that attracted scores of ukulele aficionados to the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship, where the Folk Project launched the festival in 2013.
“It’s getting a lot more sophisticated. The level of playing is amazing now,” said Liz Beloff, who, with her husband, Jumpin’ Jim Beloff, helped revive interest in the ukulele with a series of songbooks and DVDs in the 1990s.
Uke clubs have sprouted everywhere, including Morristown.
“It’s a very social instrument, once you find out how much fun people are having,” Liz said.
Scenes from Uke NJ 3! Please click icon below for slideshow captions.
The instrument’s surging popularity with diverse audiences may stem partly from its fading association with exotic Hawaiian songs, suggested festival performer Craig Chee, who hails from Hawaii.
“They’re doing everything under the sun with it,” Chee said. “Kids are doing their favorite pop songs.”
Case in point: Festival-goer Lukas Kolega, age 9, who showed off Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven and The Beatles’ If I Fell on his uke.
“My friends think it’s pretty cool,” said the New Vernon youth, adding that guitars are just too bulky for him.
His dad, Tony Kolega, has settled for serving as his son’s roadie.
“I don’t play. I pay,” he said with a grin.
‘BETTER THAN DRUGS’
Ukuleles also are cutting the bass down to size. “U-basses” — boasting thick rubbery strings that feel like you’re plucking strands of licorice — are removing the backache from bass playing.
“It makes playing bass approachable for people who would have been put off playing a full-size bass,” said Steve Boisen, a Berklee-educated musician and founder of the Tampa Bay Ukulele Society, who led a workshop on ukulele bass.
The workshops won over Morristown resident Cyndee Geoffrey, a college math instructor who almost blew off the festival, figuring she could master the uke from books.
“I’m so glad I came,” she said, in between music theory sessions. “I’m learning chords and patterns that would have taken months longer if they were out of a book.”
Celebrity uke jam on the Green. Please click icon below for slideshow captions.
Ability levels of attendees varied; the common denominator was a giant smile.
“There are a lot better things to do than drugs, and ukulele is one of them,” deadpanned Lil’ Rev, before revving into a song at Saturday’s concert that imagined late blues guitarist John Lee Hooker as a uke icon.
Guests paid up to $85 for the weekend. But the nonprofit Folk Project wasn’t in it for the money, said festival organizer Scooter Ferguson.
“The ukulele is a happy instrument,” he said. “Our goal is to make people happy.”
The Morristown Uke Jam meets at Anthony’s Pizza on the first Wednesday of each month, and on the Morristown Green on subsequent Wednesday nights in warm weather.
MORE FROM ‘UKE NEW JERSEY 3!’
Video: Lil’ Rev shares John Lee Hooker’s Dream
Video: Sarah Maisel is Out of Sugar
Video: Craig Chee’s ukulele wizardry
Video: Lil’ Rev & Friends visit St. James Infirmary
Video: Christine DeLeon’s ‘Quarter Past July’
