Exclusive: Jake Shimabukuro’s Greatest Day

Ukulele master talks about his newest album

Photos by Debra Rothenberg

Probably the world greatest ukulele player, Jake Shimabukuro has come out with a bold new album The Greatest Day (spoiler alert: it’s a day at the beach), on mp3, CD and vinyl. We spent some time talking to him about the album and its inception.

For me, I always hope that every project is different, it’s moving in a new direction or making progress, but this one—especially with the sounds that we captured and all the different kinds of instrumentation that we have—this one was the biggest production. What I love about it is even on the studio cuts it still has the raw energy of live stuff. We recorded basically as a trio, and then we started to add other elements after that, so I felt like I had more freedom to explore and just try things that I have never tried before.

With this one, I really wanted to start off with a cover tune, a song that is recognizable—”Eleanor Rigby”—and besides “Time of the Season,” that’s my favorite song. There is something magical about that particular song, I felt. Every new album becomes my favorite album, but this time both my Dad and Mom said this was their favorite.

We record tracks one at a time, and then we go back and go back and decide which one should be first and which one should be second. For me the first four songs are so important on a record, but I don’t always know how to present a record, so I tried to get a lot of outside opinions. Today, people are buying individual tracks, they can make their own playlists, so I don’t think an album structure is as important as it was before. A lot of people don’t listen to the whole album, and that is why I think putting out the vinyl is so cool.

I can’t really play those instruments, but I compose on piano and guitar as well as the ukulele, because it gives me new ideas. When I think of my ukulele, I tend to go to the same voicings and the same licks, but when you pick up a different instrument, like a guitar, your fingers have to work a whole different way because of the size and the tuning. The interesting thing about a ukulele is the tuning: it has re-entrant tuning, so when you start with the first string you have an A, and then it gets lower to an E, and then drops down to a C, then you go the fourth string, and it goes higher, to G, so your high strings are on the outside and the low strings are in the middle. So when I play another instrument, I find myself thinking more melodically, and going, Hey this is kind of cool! The way you phrase the melodies is completely different, especially on the piano, because on the piano you can hear a whole bass line, for example. The range of the ukulele is two octaves, about that much [hold his hands a foot apart] of a piano.