Music

Uke Punk Trio say Small has it All!

Three brawny gentlemen categorising themselves as barefoot, bindi lovin’, uke punk, Coversheets hail from Penrith and list their personal interests as beer, scotch, chips, gravy, pizza, and ukulele.

James, Evan and Stevie have played headlining sets at the biggest uke fests in Australia, including in 2017 the Blue Mountains Ukulele Festival. Sane By A Thread’s Corin Shearston invited the band themselves into the radio studio to discuss their tastes.

Stevie says ”Well I picked up the uke a few years ago and got bored with it pretty quick and decided what we needed to do, to make this ukulele band run a lot faster, was to scream this out, shout it from the top of the hills, and make everyone...”

Evan interrupts “Stand up and listen, I guess. We kind of figured that, with our influences (mainly punk), our backgrounds, and obviously our musical appreciation, let’s play our ukes as fast and as loud and as hard as possible and make it as energetic as we can. It’s definitely an eye-opener for people who wouldn’t expect ukulele music to sound like that.”

I think the ukulele might have been a bit unfairly viewed as being inferior to the guitar, like it’s a less serious instrument.

“I think that’s a bit of a miscon-ception,” says Evan. “Because as you mentioned Jake Shimubukuro, you’ve also got people like James Hill, and these musicians are almost virtuosos on the instrument. They play as much on a ukulele as what most virtuoso guitarists can play on a guitar. So in no way, shape or form is the ukulele inferior to a guitar. It’s just a lot more compact, it’s a lot easier to carry around, and obviously you don’t need to worry about dragging amps and things like that.”

Bassist James explains, “Normally I play what’s known as a U-Bass. It’s built out of a baritone ukulele but it’s strung with traditional bass strings that gets the full bass register that a normal bass does, just in the compact size of the ukulele.”

There’s pictures on the Coversheets Facebook page if you wanna check it out, also some live footage, and a very nice cover of Soul To Squeeze by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Evan says “The video was filmed entirely in Warragamba.”

Nicely done, you could have done DAMmit by Blink 182 “Maybe that’s the next project coming up, then” laughs Evan.

You can listen to Coversheets and Sane By A Thread on Facebook, and catch the full two-hour ‘Coversheets ’N’ Sam’ episode on mixcloud.com