Even with the cost of air travel and my busy schedule, I still manage to return to my native Chicago for the really big holidays: Christmas, Easter, and the Fest for Beatles Fans. Producers Mark and Carol Lapidos take this incredible event to several cities annually, but even attendees who never miss a show from coast to coast say the same: Chicago is the Fest to attend. Concerts, speakers, auctions, contests, video rooms, a huge memorabilia marketplace, and singalongs at random locations throughout the hotel that never seem to stop...is it any wonder I've been there consistently since 1994? So, to my fellow Beatles fans, mark your calendars: next year it's at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare August 8-10, 2008. (Make your room reservations now or you won't be able to get one...and no, I'm not kidding. I'm already booked for next year and so are many, many other people!) This year had some special highlights for me personally...
On Sunday, August 5, I made my ukulele debut with members of the Oak
Park
Ukulele Club at the Fest for Beatles Fans in Chicago, IL! Several
thousand
of the sweetest Beatle-freaks on the planet were in the audience
cheering us
on as we played "All Together Now" at the Battle of the Bands. The ensemble (pictured above, from left to right) included GiGi of
Wonderwall Music, leader of the ukulele club...our lead singer,
3-year-old
Katy...Katy's mom, Lorelei...and myself. (Photos from the Battle of the
Beatle Bands by Alvin McGovern at www.alvinmcgovern.com - thanks, Alvin!)
Given that I only received my ukulele on Thursday, August 2, there was
a
part of me that wondered at GiGi's choice to invite me to perform with
them,
but I found that the ukulele is indeed mercifully similar to the guitar
but
on a smaller scale, a perfect 4th higher in pitch, and with less
strings.
Add to that the fun of getting dolled up in our "Hari's Uke-In Honeys"
t-shirts, leis crafted by Lorelei, and authentic straw hats from
Hawai'i,
plus the joy of singing with a toddler who already knows a nice (and
very
age-appropriate) set of Beatles lyrics, and this actually turned out to
be
possibly the sweetest imaginable way to appear on stage and share my
budding
ukulelemania.
The instrument I was playing, and which sits beside me as I type
practically
begging for another chorus, is also a true artistic joy in itself.
It's a
George Harrison-themed uke, hand-painted by Liz Gaylord of the Harrison
Works Gallery in Oak Park. The front
alone
is enough to bring a smile to most faces, sporting a psychedelic sun
motif
around the sound hole and the Dark Horse logo at the base of the body.
The
back is graced with a hauntingly beautiful portrait of George around
the
mid-sixties. George Harrison adored the ukulele and was known at times
to
wake his wife Olivia and son Dhani in the morning with the sweetly
playful
sound of a Hoagy Carmichael jazz standard being noodled out on its
little
nylon strings. The uke can also be heard on multiple tracks on his
final
album, Brainwashed.
Once in a while people ask me what got me interested in playing guitar in the first place. Well, in the summer of 1994 a brief but powerful series of events led me to the conclusion that I wanted to pick up some instrument; I had thoughts of several instruments ranging from piano to sitar, but my first Fest for Beatles Fans honed my focus, particularly when I saw the Sound-Alike Contest, or as host Martin Lewis more aptly calls it, "Beatle Opportunity Knocks." This is a contest for solo or duo acts...which right away ought to tell you that nobody has a shot at sounding like the Beatles, of whom there were four. The idea is to capture the spirit of the music and present it in one's own way...seeing so many people present so many songs in so many styles inspired me. Seeing everybody and his brother playing a guitar made me think it was perhaps a skill I could learn given time and good instruction...and the fact that so few women stepped on stage for the event told me there was a need for someone like me there. Well, by the following summer I stepped onto the tryout stage and thus started an annual tradition for me - giving back in my little creative way to the competition that first inspired my musical journey.
What interests me in addition to the opportunity to share my love of the Fabs is the psychological journey. In time I've gone from a shy teenager wracked with such stage fright that strumming chords while singing "Oh! Darling" became a challenge, to an ambitious college composer playing strange modern-acoustic renditions of George Harrison solo tunes to...who I am now. This year, when I sat down to choose a song for the contest, I realized that the choice was simple; Paul McCartney's "Jenny Wren" was tenderly entreating me to let it dance through my fingers on stage. It's a truly lovely fingerstyle tune - sort of a "daughter of Blackbird" - with a curious wistfulness which still brought it to mind for me months after I had last listened to the CD.
I really enjoyed the experience of being on stage sharing the song with
an
appreciative audience. In the end, music really has no purpose except
for
love; entertaining, as the word suggests, really is the art of creating
something between oneself and the audience...so performing music for a
group
like this is paradise if you're blessed enough to be aware of it.
There's
nothing like giving love to someone who is ready to openly receive, or
like
getting love when you feel ready to accept and experience it. This
contest,
and the whole of the Fest for Beatles Fans, is basically an embodiment
of
that ecstatic experience of loving unity; this is how music ought to
be.
