Here on the Westside we are lucky to have two very ukulele-friendly music shops/venues, McCabe's in Santa Monica and Boulevard Music in Culver City. In addition to selling ukuleles, both shops offer instruction and often feature ukulele performances.
Friday night, the Sweet Hollywaiians played at Boulevard Music. All the way from Osaka, Japan, the Hollywaiians are a string band of multi-instrumentalists playing both covers and originals of 1920s-1940s era music. The show was fantastic, as I expected it would be - I had seen them perform once before at a ukulele festival in Hawaii and knew it would be a great show. If you missed Friday's show, you still have a chance to catch them tonight at Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo.
I first learned of the Hollywaiians several years ago, when my uke instructor told me about the Japanese-issue Ukulele Mozart CD and accompanying book of tab. While the book is long out of print (I am lucky enough to have a photocopy!), the songs can be downloaded from Amazon at the above link. The songs are performed by Kenji Kondo and Tomotaka Matsui, and both are amazing players. I got curious and Googled both, and it turned out both are also in bands. Mr. Matsui's band is the Hollywaiians.
Sunday, December 8, 2013 at 9:37AM 