What’s better than a big role in one of the most popular sitcoms of all time?
Preaching the Gospel according to Uke, of course.
Heidi Swedberg, who will perform on Saturday in Whippany with partner Daniel Ward at the Seventh Annual New Jersey Uke Fest, forever will be known as Susan Ross, the ill-fated fiancée of George Costanza on Seinfeld.
But for the last decade or so, Swedberg has devoted herself to teaching ukulele to people of all ages. She sings and plays at libraries, nursing homes and festivals like this one, which is anticipated to attract upwards of 125 people for concerts, workshops and jam sessions from Aug. 23-25, 2019.
It’s a world she prefers to acting.
“I like the people more. They’re a lot more fun, and kinder,” Swedberg says.
Swedberg appeared in 29 Seinfeld episodes from 1992-96. Her character famously was killed by licking toxic glue on cheap wedding invitation envelopes purchased by the penny-pinching George — who then appeared relieved that his bachelorhood would live on.
Pretty nasty, for a “show about nothing.” So were interviews afterward by Jason Alexander, who played George. Susan was killed off, he said, because Swedberg’s chemistry never meshed with the show’s stars.
Over an acting career spanning 20 years, Swedberg appeared in Murder, She Wrote; Matlock; Thirtysomething; Quantum Leap; Brooklyn Bridge; Northern Exposure; Touched by an Angel; and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, among other series. Film credits include In Country, Kindergarten Cop and Galaxy Quest, her favorite.
Esquire magazine recently came to Swedberg’s defense, calling her Seinfeld episodes “an absolute delight to watch.”
“Swedberg was the straight character so she wasn’t given punchlines—but whoever she was playing against was often gut-busting. As a foil, Swedberg let her castmates shine, playing up the funniest, most ridiculous aspects of their characters.”
Regretting his comments to Howard Stern, Alexander recanted, tweeting in 2015 that Swedberg was “generous and gracious” and blaming his own insecurities and immaturity for any problems.
Swedberg’s take on all this?
“I tend not to like to say unkind things about anyone. So I’ll leave it at that,” she says. “That’s a good reason why to play ukulele instead of working in television.”
Not that TV is all bad. Appearing in a series Rolling Stone ranked fifth among television’s 100 greatest shows has its benefits, she acknowledges.
Though she didn’t become uber-rich like Seinfeld‘s stars, Swedberg says the residual income from reruns is handy.
“It doesn’t pay my rent, but I couldn’t pay my rent without it,” the Los Angeles resident says.
And the role of Susan has opened doors.
“Basically, I’ve already been in everybody’s house before. It makes me familiar to people. And I think, perhaps because I’m familiar to people, they feel less intimidated by the idea of the ukulele,” she says.
‘AN AURA OF FRIENDLINESS’
This weekend’s artist roster at the Ukrainian American Cultural Center includes Gerald Ross, who blends jazz, blues and swing; singer Rachel Manke; and Christopher Davis-Shannon, known for re-creating the musical atmosphere of old-timey jazz clubs and speakeasies.
In addition to performing, they will give how-to workshops. Some also may drop by the Morristown Green around 10:30 11:45 am Sunday to play with the Morristown Uke Jam to conclude the festival.
“The ukulele is one of the only instruments that makes it easy for players at all different levels of proficiency to play together,” says Pam Robinson, who organizes the festival for the Folk Project.
Although Robinson is not a ukulele player, she shares Swedberg’s passion for the four-stringed cousin of the guitar.
“Ukuleles create happy people, and I love to surround myself with happy people,” Robinson says.
“It’s about people taking their own fun into their own hands,” adds Swedberg, who views entertainment as secondary on the festival circuit.
“It’s not about, ‘you watch me.’ It’s about: ‘We make music together.’ Or, I hand you the tools so that you can make music.”
Video: Heidi Swedberg and Daniel Ward ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’
Ukulele is easier to learn than guitar, it’s more portable, and it “creates an aura of friendliness. I love how it can carry a song within itself. It’s a little song machine. And because it’s so un-intimidating, it welcomes people to join in,” Swedberg says.
She will give workshops for beginners and children, while her partner, Daniel Ward, who is classically trained in flamenco guitar, will teach fandango techniques to advanced players.
Swedberg and her three older sisters got their first ukes as kids, growing up in Hawaii.
She never took music lessons, but her father, a scientist who worked on the “Star Wars” missile defense system, loved to sing, and the family sang Girl Scout campfire tunes and rounds during road trips. Her mom still belongs to a ukulele club in New Mexico, where the family moved when Swedberg was a girl.
A singer-songwriter role in a 1992 TV pilot got Swedberg reacquainted with her uke. When Swedberg had children, she used it to sing her daughters to sleep. (One now is studying English at Yale, the other is in high school.)
Around home in Los Angeles, she performs with The Smoking Jackets, for grownup audiences, and the Sukey Jumpy Band, for kids. She takes the kid stuff seriously.
“The songs that we learned when we’re young are really important to who we are, and we take them with us into older age. When we do performances or music programs with older adults, who have memory challenges, Alzheimer’s, we find that people remember the songs they learned when they were very small children when they remember nothing else. It’s truly powerful.
“Honestly, that’s part of why I think children’s music is so important. It’s putting something in there which you’ll be glad to have back in another 70 years. Because the more beautiful the songs are that you learn when you’re small, the more you’ll have later. And I think there’s a real responsibility with children’s music to instill something of value,” says Swedberg, a contributing editor for Ukulele Magazine.
Her acting nowadays consists of commercial voice-overs. Her favorite job ever, she says, was being the voice of Cisco Systems.
“I would go into the studio, and I would say ’This is the power of the network’ about five times, and that would be my day. That’s what I liked about it. It wasn’t about me.”
She met Ward in college back in New Mexico, then went off to the Actors Theatre of Louisville. They reconnected years later. “It was a kind of a romance that took a while to bloom,” she says.
Touring and recording together since 2009, they bring complementary skills to the partnership. Ward is a gifted musician and instructor with a broad background in world music, says Swedberg, who has a knack for languages and dialects honed during her acting days.
Their repertoire includes songs in Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Bengali and Spanish. Invariably, when words fail, notes prevail.
“When I try to speak even the simplest phrases in Mandarin Chinese, people do not understand me. But when you sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, they sing along… that’s the magic of music,” says Swedberg, who played a Shanghai festival in 2012.
Video: Daniel Ward plays ‘Aloha Oe’
The magic happened again during a visit to Haiti. At first, she says, local people regarded the duo like creatures from another planet.
“And then we would start singing a song that the children in the orphanage taught us, a call-and response song. And people on the street who were standing and staring at us would start singing with us, and everything would change.
“We go from being an oddity to a friend. It was really nice.”
MORE FROM THE 2019 NJ UKE FEST
The Seventh Annual New Jersey Uke Fest runs from Friday-Sunday, Aug. 23-25, 2019, at the Ukrainian American Cultural Center, 60C North Jefferson Road, Whippany. Prices for concerts and workshops range from $20-$122 if purchased by Thursday, and from $25-$132 at the door. Festivities conclude on Sunday with a free 10:30 11:45 am jam on the Morristown Green; all are welcome.
Glad to hear she is doing something she loves! I think her comments about children’s music are spot on, too.
Thank you, Marianne.
Nice article!