Throughout my twenties and thirties, I enjoyed a pretty good run as a freelance drummer, first doing session work mostly for TV and radio jingles and then backing rock and roll "legends" of the 1950's and 60's at major concert halls in New York. I had a lot of fun and my friends and family all treated me like a celebrity because I was always gigging at either Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, or some other world-famous place. Unfortunately, I wasn't making a heck of a lot of steady money. By the time I was 34, I was done. Not only was I physically tired, I was also burnt from the stress of paying my mortgage when the gigs were slow for weeks or months at a time. I put down my sticks in 1996 and never played drums again.
About ten years went by and I had a grandchild or two and I wanted to make my time with them special and memorable. I also wanted to share the magic of music with them, but banging on drums wasn't going to cut it. I thought about an innate
"feel" I'd had as a kid for strumming rhythm on guitar, even though I only knew three chords my whole young life. Wouldn't it be cool if I could revisit the guitar as a way to make music for my grandchildren, without the pressure of having to be "good" or having to make money at it.
Before I could get up the guts to pull the trigger and buy a guitar, I saw a YouTube video of George Harrison playing the ukulele and passing ukes out as gifts to his friends Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and others. "Hmm, that looks like fun." I thought. "And it looks easier than playing a guitar, too." It took me about six months, but I finally got up the courage to invest $40 in a Johnson beginner uke. I don't want to exaggerate my skills (because I'm no virtuoso), but from the minute I took that instrument out of the box, I felt like it was meant to be in my arms, to release all the music that had built up inside me for the decade I was completely away from making any. For the first couple of years, I couldn't put the uke down, and I felt magical every time I picked it up. As an extra added bonus, my family, especially my grandchildren, began to treat me like a celebrity again, because now I was the enormously fun papa who brought music to every family get-together - music without stress and without self-consciousness.
Eventually, the grandchildren reached the age where they preferred to grab the uke from me and bang on it with spoons and rocks rather than just sit and watch me play it. I soon stopped bringing it out when they were around and I think, as they got to be around 7-8, they forgot all about it. The uke still hasn't really come back as the big attraction it was for them when they were toddlers, but just the sight of it on our couch (where it rests once again) reminds them that music is important in Papa and Nana's house. I may not play it (or any of my other ukes) as much as I used to, but I will always be grateful for the life-changing purpose it served when I needed it to release the backlogged musical energy in my body.
What a great investment for forty bucks.