I got dragged to the music shop a couple of weeks ago to be "supportive" of my boyfriend's banjo obsession. On what we considered at the time to be a silly little whim, we dinked around with ukuleles for a second before walking out the door. We spotted a gorgeous banjo uke made by a local (seattle) artisan and fell in love. The sound was awesome and we kind of just giggled about it and continued out the door. A week later (after my own obsessive fit) he took me back to the music shop and I agonized for a while until I eventually picked out a lovely little Lanikai concert uke, nixing (for now) that fantastic banjo uke (don't you wish you could buy them all???). I've been playing for exactly four days now and having a grand old time with it. We'll see what happens.
My dad was a beautiful slack key guitarist before he passed away, and the official family legend is that he taught himself the ukulele, then went on to guitar, finally broaching the gap to slack key. I grew up around strings, and since I was always surrounded by my very musical extended family Hawaiian family, I've always felt a bit odd that I never bothered to take up an instrument. My pipe dream is to follow in Dad's footsteps with the uke > guitar > slack key gig, though I'm quite content with the ukulele I have now. She's really quite a peach and I hope I can give her a good home with lots of love and attention. <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_smile.gif" border=0 alt="Smile">
Also, my boyfriend's banjo should be arriving on Monday. He's been seriously jealous of my little Lanikai beauty, though.