FriendBurst Blog

“Aren’t you Jock-o?” the lady asked me in the lobby of the Thumbnail Theatre tonight, “or is it Joe-ko?”.

“Why, yes I am Joko.” I replied smugly.  It’s always a little bit of an ego boost when someone you’ve never met before comes up to you and knows your name, even if she doesn’t know how to pronounce it.

I was there for the weekly Friday night open mic, and although I didn’t recognize the woman as one of the regular attendees, if she’d attended at all in the last six months, she probably knew me from that.  Ukulele performers are still rare enough that we get remembered.

“I saw your picture in the paper and brought a copy of it with me, hoping I’d run into you.” she continued.

Oh.  Right!  I remembered the photographer from the Everett Herald coming down to our first dress rehearsal for the play we just wrapped.  She took a lot of pictures.  It’s pretty cool that a picture of me and the costume designer ended up on the front page of the “Local” section.  The online version of the article doesn’t have my picture, so I just took a snapshot of the hardcopy.

Now, the topic of the article itself is kind of depressing.  The college president wants to cut the drama department from our local community college.  Really bad idea.  This could be the last time a performer from an Edmonds Community College production gets seen in the paper because soon, if the bad guys get their way, there won’t be any more EdCC theatre productions!  Booo!!!

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“Ukulele’s are like puppy dogs, aren’t they?” the emcee asked the crowd while introducing me tonight. “They just make you want to smile.”

Nice sentiment, but this comment upset me, however true it may be.  See, nobody takes puppy dogs seriously.  Same thing with the uke.  Oh, it certainly is a “joyous” instrument, but that’s not all it can be.  It can do sad songs too.  It can do serious stuff.  I can do serious stuff!

Last time I was at the open mic, I performed my rendition of “Homegrown Tomatoes” which got the folks laughing and happy.  Then, I tried to entirely switch gears and perform Blue October’s “Hate Me”, which as you might imagine from the title, is not a very happy song.   Get this:  People were laughing at it!  OMG!! That song is about death, loss and never being able to reconcile with someone you loved because they’re gone forever.  If anything could be played on a ukulele that would be taken seriously, it would be that song.. Yet still people laughed. That bugged me.

So, tonight, as I explain to the emcee after he set me up with that “Ukulele’s are like puppy dogs” line, I started with my serious song first.  An original of mine I wrote a couple years ago, but never got around to performing live until tonight.  Enjoy.  But don’t laugh!! This is serious stuff here!

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Well… I can’t seem to get the video embedding to work.  I posted something in the forums, looking for an answer.  In the meantime, please click here to see the video in a new window.