John Kavanagh, Ukulele - UkeTalk Interview

John Kavanagh: I was lucky - Halifax, Nova Scotia had an excellent school music program when I was a kid; its director was J. Chalmers Doane, who began a school uke program that eventually involved tens of thousands of students. The uke came first - in grade seven, everyone taking classroom music had to also be in a performing group. I didn't want to sing in the choir (though I learned to like choral singing in high school), and the only other option at my school was the uke group. I also started playing string bass in high school, and took private guitar lessons.

My father had been a professional musician - he put himself through law school playing jazz - and we played at home. He'd taught himself the guitar; often I played uke and he guitar, or me on guitar and him on clarinet. Later, we played in an 8-piece jazz group with him on saxophone and me on bass. That was big fun. Lately, I've played in some groups with my son as the drummer - I'm sorry my dad didn't live to know him.

UkeTalk: Did the ukulele remain an important instrument to you throughout all those years?

John Kavanagh: Oh, yes. It started with the uke in about 1972, when I was 12. I played it a lot throughout high school, then I went to university as a guitar major, and later switched to gamba. I've always played uke, but there have been times when the guitar or the gamba got more time. Until recently, most of my professional playing has been as a bass player.

UkeTalk: Is there one artist or genre of music that kept bringing your attention back to the uke?

John Kavanagh: Well, Mr. Doane was the man. He started us all. (He had lessons with Roy Smeck, so I've got some of that at one remove). The school group did a lot of performing and recording, and toured twice while I was in it - great experience. We were always working on new arrangements. One of the other kids in that Doane group was Jamie Thomas, who is a music teacher now and was James Hill's first uke teacher. Doane's a big mover in the Canadian uke scene. If Hill is the Bela Fleck of uke, Doane is the Earl Scruggs, at least in Canada.

If you're going to ask what one album changed my life, it was probably my first Django Reinhardt disc, "Swing '35" on vinyl. I'd heard my father's jazz records and liked them, but that string-band jazz sound... oh, yes...

Around the same time I got a record of James Tyler playing a Baroque sonata on an old gut-strung mandolin, tuned in fourths. I thought it sounded great, and I wondered why there wasn't more classical stuff with a plucked soprano lead. That led me to recordings of Beethoven's mandolin sonatas, and I thought that someday I'd like to play them on the uke.

John Kavanagh: I'm pretty monogamous. My father brought back a cuatro from a trip to Venezuela in 1977, and I strung that as a tenor uke (replacing the top string with fishing line), and sold my Harmony tenor. In 1980 I met my lovely wife, who had an old Harmony baritone in the closet which her parents bought new for her in the late '60s and she hadn't played it much. I strung it as a tenor and it's been my main uke since.

In 1991 I had a local luthier, Nick Tipney of Vector Violins, put a new spruce top on it, and I've upgraded the tuners and the nut and put an armrest and fingerboard extension on it - so it's not really a Harmony baritone anymore, it's a Harmony/Vector long-scale one-of-a kind tenor uke.

I just love it, but I've played it for so long that I don't really know what it sounds like any more - it's like hearing my own voice. Anyone who plays it comments on the tone, so I guess it's pretty good. It's really loud, too - I've played it at jams with three or four steel-string guitars and it holds its own. I've played twin leads with a mandolin player and it balanced fine.

John Kavanagh: I own three ukes, if the cuatro counts. The third one is a Suzuki standard I bought for $25.00 in a second-hand store. I keep it in high-4th C-tuning - what much of the uke world now thinks of as standard. In the Doane program, we always used low-4th D-tuning, but the high-4th has its own vibe and I like playing with it. It's not home, though. I also think that C-tuning is better with a high-4th and D-tuning is better with low-4th - it gives you a more useful range, and the low-4th string works better in the higher tuning, even on a big uke.

John Kavanagh: For my purposes, in my tuning, and with my hands, I think the extra-large tenor works. (I also have this pathetic hope that it makes me look smaller...) If I got another uke, I'd like to try an 18-inch tenor, with a wider neck than I have now, so the strings are parallel nut-to-bridge like a classical guitar. When Chalmers Doane had his first custom uke made, it was patterned on his Martin tenor, but with a wider neck, and I really liked it. A shorter neck would make some things easier but I think the high notes sound better with a longer string. A cutaway might be nice, but perhaps it's a good thing to be discouraged from spending too much time way up there - I've always wished fiddlers would stay off the second octave. I really appreciate 14 frets to the body, though.

I'd also like to have a concert with at least 15 frets, so I could play John King's arrangements. They exploit the re-entrant tuning beautifully, but my only high-4th uke is the Suzuki, which has just 12 frets.

John Kavanagh: I buy singles, for a custom set - the bottom three are Pyramid PVF (fluorocarbon), sold as single lute strings, and the top is nylon (D'Addario). I have to do this because I'm tuning about as high as you could with the 19" neck - both Nylgut and PVF top strings break at that tension. I like the sound of Nylgut, and would try them on another uke. I'm fussy about strings - I keep a little log book to help me figure out the perfect string set for each instrument, and I think a big part of getting the best out of any instrument is finding the strings that suit it and the player.

UkeTalk: Congratulations on your new release "Parlour Music--Ragtime and Classical Duets for Uke and Guitar". Tell us about the process of making this project come to life.

John Kavanagh: Thanks. It's been a long time coming, and I'm very pleased with how it came out, and how well it's doing. I've always liked ragtime, experimenting with arranging rags for guitar, and I've always played classical music on the uke - we did some easy classical things in the Doane groups, arranged like the old mandolin-orchestra settings, and then I would try to read books of violin and recorder music on the uke to help my sight-reading. A few years ago I started working on my version of "Maple Leaf Rag" and it just came to me that it would be a nice project, doing intimate settings of light classical and ragtime. I could play keyboard music with the left hand part on guitar, or solo music with guitar accompaniment, and play both parts myself.

It was just a thought at first, because I didn't have spare money to go into a studio. Then my friend Craig Wood asked me to come into his studio, Jazzland, to record some bass and uke tracks for his solo album. I asked if, instead of studio fees, I could be paid in studio time and that was how I got started. I was very lucky to make the deal - Craig is a former CBC producer, he's recorded Bill Evans, Stephane Grappelli, all kinds of great players, and more importantly, he's got ears of gold and lots of patience. I've only recorded in maybe half-a-dozen studios, but I have learned that the producer's ears are more important than anything else..

John Kavanagh: ...Is that considered odd in the real world? When I was growing up, my dad was always playing jazz on the recorder - he had a nice alto lying around, and it was less fuss to get out, and quieter than his clarinet or saxophone. I was in my twenties before I realized that most people don't consider the recorder a jazz instrument. Same with playing whatever on the uke. I play the uke, I like the music, I play it.

What I wonder about is what happened to small plucked instruments in our tradition, and why there aren't more plucked instruments in mainstream classical.

My wife and I often make music together at home -this is still possible, if you don't have cable. One of our favourite combinations the last few years has been Baroque sonatas, like the Abel on the CD, with uke and clavichord; a very sweet, quiet sound - real parlour music. We also sing raucous novelty songs - variety is everything.

The thing about the uke for me is that it brings all my musical experience back together. I feel comfortable playing all the kinds of music I like on it - jazz, rock, blues, hokum, pop, folk, traditional, classical, Baroque, whatever.

I think everyone's playing sounds different because they've been different places musically and been affected by different things. I still use the first things I learned on the uke, but also my classical guitar and lute feeds into it, and a lot of banjo playing transfers to the uke. Banjo taught me a lot about playing finger styles without thinking about the bass register, and mixing clawhammer-style down-picking into melodic playing and up-picking.

When I saw the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at the 2005 Ukulele Ceilidh, I remember thinking that a part of their shtick was just the novelty and comedic value of doing a variety of stuff on ukes - the "Hey, they're playing (Rod Stewart, Mozart, whatever) on UKULELES!". Playing for a uke crowd, they couldn't expect that reaction, so they concentrated a little more on instrumental music and some interesting back-drawer repertoire. It was a great show, because they have a great act and it doesn't depend on that novelty reaction.

It's nice to get past that initial reaction - what I call the "Tiny Tim effect" - and hope to maybe get listened to as a musician whose chosen axe is a high-pitched plucked instrument. My other main instrument, the seven-string bowed viola da gamba, is also a novelty to many people, and sometimes after shows I think "enough of the show-and-tell - sure it's a nice instrument, but did you like the music I played with it?" Not that I ever mind showing off my toys, really.

UkeTalk: Do you also have your own home recording studio, or do you always record at someone else's facility?

John Kavanagh: I don't own recording gear, or even a good home computer. I will someday, but it's low on the financial priorities. If I had a stack of spare change I'd experiment at home, and post clips and stuff. But I was very happy, and very lucky, to put myself into the hands of a pro like Craig. If he said a take was done, I knew it was done, and if he said "try it again" I didn't argue.

UkeTalk: Do you regularly perform publicly, and how much of that is strictly uke?

John Kavanagh: Well, that's changing. For years I played electric upright bass in a rock group and several jazz groups, just weekends and evenings. I'm playing a lot in a duo with Jack MacDonald, a local singer-songwriter, and we have big fun. Once Jack played mandolin and I played bass in a Django-style string band, and then he hired me recently to play bass on his album, Domestic Acoustic, and I wound up playing gamba instead on most cuts. In the live act, he plays guitars and mandolin, and I play gamba, uke, banjo, and guitar, in about that order. We use three multiple instrument stands on stage, it's a hoot. I also play gamba in The Telemann Quartet, a classical group that does receptions and weddings, and recently the harpsichordist from that group and I did a duo reception - I wound up playing about half the time on uke, doing stuff from the CD with him doing the guitar parts on harpsichord.

I'm hoping to do some gigs locally promoting the CD, but one guitar player I've been working with is moving, and another player has to learn the parts.

I also have played jazz duo gigs with Craig, where we're purists; I play uke, he plays guitar, we both sing. I love that combo and it would be heaven to find a regular gig.

I do a fair amount of freelancing, recording, and jamming locally, too, and more and more I bring the uke. I'm not giving up my day job, but I'm having fun.

UkeTalk: Are you available for ukulele lessons, either in person or by other forms of correspondence?

John Kavanagh: Sure. I did a couple workshops in April, and they went well. We're talking about me doing something at the next Ukulele Ceilidh in 2007, but I'd be happy to travel farther afield if anyone asks me. I'd like to go to more uke festivals - just the jamming would be worth the trip for me!

I go on your uke forum (UkeTalk) often, and two or three other ones, and I always learn something, and sometimes I have something to offer a beginner, too, I hope. I like chatting about ukes, and I've enjoyed online discussions, and getting emails on the site and answering questions.

Anyone who knows me will tell you - and I guess I'm proving it here - that once I get talking, especially about music, I'm hard to shut up.

UkeTalk: Is there much of a uke scene going on in Nova Scotia?

John Kavanagh: There's an active group on the South Shore who were the nucleus of the 2005 Ukulele Ceilidh. The Doane program faded away here after Mr. Doane retired, but many people who went to school in the '70s and '80s do play the uke and still have one. I think people are a little more receptive to a uke at a jam session than they were ten years ago, but maybe I'm just more confident about bringing it, or more insensitive.

UkeTalk: I think I have an idea of what much of your personal collection of records, tapes and CDs consists of, but if the Music Police searched your home, what recordings would they find that would surprise us?

John Kavanagh: Well, you might be surprised at the acres of vinyl, mostly classical. Some of it's inherited, but I bought a lot of it. Remember, I was a teenager in the 1970s - which everyone agrees was the worst decade of the 20th century for pop music. We were forced to be eclectic or, in my case, a musical snob. Once I was very "oh, nothing after 1750 except for Charlie Parker and the Beatles", but I'm better now - I can enjoy almost anything that's not on AM radio… The cassettes and CDs are classical, small-group jazz and "acoustic" music (meaning Bela Fleck and David Grisman and Bob Brozman and so on) but also old bluegrass and blues - Delta blues and Chicago blues.

I love Baroque and Renaissance music (bread and butter for gamba players). I have all the Beatles and most of the Who, of course, also Sir Hendrix and Lord Zappa, peace be unto him. What would surprise you is how few uke records there are. Doane's solo album on vinyl, and "Ukulele Magic", which the school group did in 1975. I have some Cliff Edwards, more for the singing, though I like the way he uses the uke. Gerald Ross's "Ukulele Stomp" is big fun, and makes me want to do a jazz album, or at least play in a band with Gerald. I bought Howlin' Hobbit's first "Snake Suspenderz" CD, after meeting him online. It makes me want to move to Seattle so I can beg to sit in with them.

Thanks again to John Kavanagh for this interview! You can listen to John Kavanagh at EZFolk.com

You can also purchase John Kavanagh's CD "Parlour Music--Ragtime and Classical Duets for Uke and Guitar" at John's EZ Folk page.