There's not much you can do with a ukulele that doesn't sound happy.
On the good days, my mother would haul out the ukulele and we'd sit around the kitchen table - it was a cardboard table with a linoleum top - and sing.
I started writing once I got the ukulele.
Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically.
I mostly play old period songs, as they suit a ukulele more. I bought it when I saw the tribute concert to George Harrison. Joe Brown came on and sang 'I'll See You In My Dreams,' and there wasn't a dry eye in the house.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.
If I could play the ukulele like Zooey Deschanel, I would find my own personal M. Ward, and we would do a side album; but I don't, you know?
The ukulele is the instrument of peace.
