Let Me Hear Your Ukeleles Ringing Out . . .

Jake Shimabukuro played Joe's last Friday. I had just come back from Richmond that afternoon to catch him and Junior Brown's one-two punch.

Jake's a ukelele virtuoso which might be two words you never expected to see sitting next to each other, but life is full of surprises. He's a gentle force of nature on the stage and has a following of people who approach him as if he walked here from Hawaii.

Also, he's a Beatles geek--he covered While My Guitar Gently Weeps and In My Life--which endears him to me. George Harrison used to be a big ukelele nerd. I read an interview with Tom Petty once where he talked about having dinner over at the Harrison's and leaving with a prized ukelele and Paul McCartney played Something on the ukelele as a tribute to George on the tour he did after Harrison died. All of which is to say that the space in my heart for best cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps has grown to two, and that now, in addition to Prince's amazing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute where he upstaged everybody (which is no longer available at YouTube), it includes Jake's Central Park strum-fest. You can download an mp3 of his version here.