Out Californee-Way

TGaucho

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Hullo, hullo! :) My name is Tony, and i play the ukulele.

[Hi Tony!!]

I'm a born-and-raised Northern Californian, currently living in our beautiful state capitol of Sacramento, center of the gold rush, junction of the Sacramento and American rivers, home of The Kings, and The Rivercats, and future proud home of an MLS franchise (fingerscrossed), situated where I-5 meets I-80, roughly halfway betwixt San Francisco and Lake Tahoe, and the world's second-most forested major city (the first being Paris), which is why our fine metropolis has long been nicknamed The City of Trees.

I've always been a little obsessed with music, the making of it, the theory of it, the structure of it, why people like what they like and dislike what they dislike, the special magics of live performance, the sheer indescribable joy of turning the radio up REALLY SUPER-LOUD, etc.

In grade school i picked up the tenor sax, which i played in various symphonic and jazz bands and combos from the 4th to the 12 grades. For those last five years, i was lucky enough to be a part of a string of truly top-notch jazz ensembles, and we won the 1st Place prizes at every festival we entered, including the historic Monterey Jazz Fest, the Santa Cruz Jazz Fest, and the Reno International Jazz Fest, year after year. In that final year, our high school AM jazz ensemble (of which i was a member) was awarded The Best High School Band prize (1998) by Downbeat magazine.

Along the way i took lessons, and i participated in honor bands, and i attended summer music camps of various sorts, and i was schooled by a handful of incredible music teachers, and i had the fortune to play-with and befriend a plethora of ridiculously-talented musicians, some of which have since gone on to earn music degrees from top institutions (Northridge, UPS, Berklee, New School, whathaveyou), and even become pros (lucky bastards). Along the way i learned a fair bit of theory, and i was exposed to a silly range of different musics and styles and all that, and -ultimately, more than anything else- i was inspired.

I ought to mention at this point that i am not a particularly good musician, nor have i ever been. I'm that guy who was juuuuuust good enough to play second-tenor, or first-bari; the guy who was often the rustiest cog in the gearbox, and who never felt or sounded quite adequate in the midst of the stellar talent that surrounded me. And so it was that when i turned 18 i decided that i just wasn't good enough, nor passionate enough to keep-on with jazz into college, so i sold my sax (for a pathetically-small return), and bought a cheapo no-name classical nylon-string guitar at a big tent sale for $20, and resolved to never put a reed in my mouth-hole ever (EVER) again, a promise that, blessedly, i've upheld. For all the camps and school days and private lessons and rehearsals and festival performances and recitals, i'd reached a point where i just couldn't see myself continuing on as i was; my tone wasn't getting any better, my scales had become stale, theory wasn't coming to life for me, and -after all- how can you sing (badly) and play pop/rock&roll with a sax in your mouth? So i started teaching myself and taking myself in a new direction on that dirt-cheap guitar.

And it went surprisingly well! All those years of theory and practice started to make some sense after all, and it wasn't long before i was stealing my mom's intro-model Yamaha (believe me, she wasn't using it anyway) and taking group lessons at my university, UC Santa Barbara. And of course all of a sudden whole new worlds of guitar-based music made so much more sense to me! Where once they'd lay somewhat dormant and flat in the background of my musicverse, they started popping out in technicolor-3D and absorbing every spare inch of my imagination. Hendrix! Clapton! Django! Floyd! College was a fun time.

Skip forward a decade or so and i was loving it more than ever, buying a nice new Seagull for myself, and snagging my first electric + 15w amp at christmas, and a Blue Snowball USB mic, plugging-in and fiddling around with Audacity and learning how to record, and playing at holidays and camping trips and every other day of the year, and trying to write songs, and spending nights messing about with a good friend (we called ourselves Salacious Crumb), and going to as many shows as i could afford every summer, and generally loving still having living music in my life. Goodtimes.

Then, a little over a year ago, i'd built-up some extra guitar center monies from left-over gift cards, and i decided it was time to get myself a uke. Bob's Burgers and Jake Shimabukuro were in the air, and it seemed like well-past time. So i looked at the GC website and scouted-out what they had on offer, and then proceeded to scour the internets for info about the ones that looked like my style. A shortlist was crafted, a fair bit of info was acquired and digested, i discovered UU and perused its many "What Uke Do I Buy" threads, a chord chart was downloaded and printed, and -armed with all of this- i went down to GC to see what there was to see, fully intending on walking out with my first ukulele.

As i'm sure some of you can attest, what i found when i got to the actual brick-and-mortar was, well . . disappointing, to say the least. Not surprising, i suppose, but disappointing all the same. I sat there by their display with my tuner and my chord sheet, fiddling with this uke and that, plucking and strumming and examining, digging boxes out from under the display that they hadn't bothered to put out properly, and really not finding anything that i'd been looking for. And of course the sales staff was as uninformed and helpless as usual; same-ol' same-ol'.

Down but not defeated, and with a stack of GC gift cards still burning a hole in my proverbial pocket, i vowed to do further research and come back, possibly to order the exact model that i wanted (which model that was now escapes me). A day or so later i was having a chat with my mom, and it came up that i was about to buy a uke, and in fact that i'd have bought one already if GC hadn't been so poor at everything they do (SO POOR). Her reaction was unexpected:

"Oh! No, no, no, no, no! I'm so glad you said that! Don't do that! Umm, errr, there's . . something in the works in that department that i can't really talk about yet, but . . yeah. Don't go back. Spend that money on strings or whatever else, instead. Ok?"

"Uh, ok. Sure, mom. I . . sure? If you say so?"

In the coming weeks i would come to understand that she'd already been taking steps to buy me a uke through another source, you see. Some mysterious, amorphous source, guaranteed to be of a higher caliber than GC, and i wasn't to spoil it under any circumstance. Fair enough! An early birthday present, it seemed. Gift horse's mouths, and such.

When i finally got her to leak some more information on the subject (the mystery and anticipation was killing me by this point), it turned out that we knew someone, some family friend, that had a uke hook-up of some sort, but -still- it was all very hush-hush. Did they own their own store? Did they work in some instrument warehouse? Truly a befuddling situation. At one point in late-May we were all set to go to "this place" and meet up with "this person" and get "this party started", but it turned out to be a false alarm; he was out of town, apparently. Quiet, impatient, polite curses ran though my head.

Some time around mid-June the day arrived when i was finally to find out what the deal was, exactly. I got into my mom's car and she drove me only a few blocks down the street before turning onto a little sidestreet in the neighborhood. Who did we know that lived so close to my parents? What does this quiet, pleasant, suburban neighborhood have to do with a music store? I still couldn't figure it out. Utterly baffled, i got out of the car and saw the house in front of me, and began to comprehend what was afoot.

"Wait, isn't this The Wixom's? Does . . so . . he builds them?"

[my mother has a massive, goofy, ear-to-ear grin at this point]

"Yeah! Willie! He builds them in his garage!! Supposedly he's The Best! He sells them all over! Wait until you see the pictures of the ones he's built! How cool is this! Surprise!!"
 
I'd known The Wixoms since i was little. Mrs. Wixom was my PE teacher for years (my very favorite teacher throughout elementary school, by a mile; always kind, always there with a hug or a pat on the back for me, making me feel special), and their son was in my older-sister's class, and though i hadn't seen them often in the previous 20 years, we'd always been friendly. To keep it succinct: they're good people.

So we went in and i shook hands with Willie, and the process began. He showed me his workshop (impressive), and some of the woods he had on hand, and the ukes he was working on at the time, and a few that he'd already finished, and his gallery of pics of the ones he'd already sold and shipped out, and we began to talk about options.

Size, neck shape, a dizzying/dazzling variety of wood choices (all of which he was very passionate about), peg tuners or slot-head, rosettes, trim, inlay, bridge shape, headstock shape, headstock veneer, high-G or low-G, . . you name it. Clearly i had a lot to consider, so we exchanged emails and sallied forth, with an eye on trying to have it all figured out before August, where he'd cleared a spot for me.

Obscenely-long-story-slightly-less-long, there were another couple of meet-ups, and some tough decisions, and a hiccup or two, and it took a shade longer than expected (though still much, MUCH quicker than i had any right to hope for), but come the first week of October i got the email i'd been waiting for. "It's ready. Come on by, whenever!"

So there you go. That's my story :) I play guitar, acoustic mostly, and as of the last 9 months or so i also play the ukulele, just about every day. Still learning the uke-specific stuff; i mostly just use guitar chords on it 'cause i'm lazy, but that's been working pretty well for me to be honest. I was amazed at how quickly my brain started to adapt to it, actually; the two instruments are remarkably similar. And i feel like the mental acrobatics required to constantly transpose between the key-differences have done the theory part of my brain some good. Hoping to catch Shimabukuro this fall when he plays The Crest Theater downtown. Continually trying to learn, and loving every minute of it.

Here are some pics i took last October when i first got the uke. It's a custom Willie Wixom tenor, solid Curly Koa front, sides, back, and neck (cut from the same piece), with an Indian Rosewood bridge and fretboard, and a California Redwood veneer on the headstock (a special request, as those are my favorite trees). Sounds brilliant, clear and loud (SO LOUD), and plays like a dream. Couldn't possibly be happier.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151150300539123.451635.574244122&type=1&l=c789002cb6

and of course here's Willie's website, where you can see his other creations and get in touch with him if you so desire:

http://wawixomukuleles.com/
 
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Aloha Tony,



Welcome to the UU forums and the ukulele...Yes yes you are on the best uke forums online...woo hoo we have the most friendly and nicest members around offering great
advice happy strummings.. we have alot of guitar converts here too..hey I got a Wixom...thank you for the great introduction...:)
 
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Aloha Tony,
Welcome to UU and the forum.
Congrats on your new uke. Willie is a super guy to deal with. I too have a Wixom, actually 2 of them, 1 tenor and 1 concert.
I seen you around on FB too.
Have fun with your uke and on here...............................Bo.....................
Here's pix of Willie with the ukes he built for me.
Oh, Kanikapila at L&L Hawaiian BBQ on Florin Rd. on Fridays about 6:00 pm.......hecka fun.
 

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rtedlgi reason

Thanks, guys! Happy to be on here.

Also, to both of youse ^^, woowwwwwwww 0_0 Those ukes are gorgeous!! Incredible stuff; really impressive. It's amazing what he can do out of a garage, amirite?

And L&L Hawaiian BBQ on Florin Rd, check and check! Never been, but i'm way-down. Sounds right up my alley.
 
Hey Tony,

Just read your post and gave Willie a call and had a great conversation...may end up getting one of his customs.

You ever get down to San Rafael, give me a PM.
 
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