Joy in Mudville

Okay, where did this guy come from?
Luckily for me I was checking out the blog Ukulele & Languages and an interview with Casey Chandler was featured. He sounded like an interesting guy, and as I played his music I knew that this was the uke gold I'm always looking for. I contacted him and found out he is a very interesting guy and this is what he had to say:

My parents bought me a Schmidt Washburn concert uke for my last birthday probably because I kept talking about this great band I saw when I visited Texas called Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele - it's funny but the song that inspired me to want to get a uke was this song I'm An Alcoholic by them. I remember singing that song the whole rest of the trip and I still play it at every bar show since. They are by far my favorite ukulele band. My parents know me very well, so I'm sure they knew I was gonna end up using it for good. I actually didn't even take it out of the box until a month after I got it. I just kept it in the packaging for a whole month just sitting there collecting dust. Maybe I was just secretly afraid that we were soon gonna be bff's after we were introduced to each other.

I have to say the "wow" moment that I had with my ukulele was definitely over the summer when I went to North Carolina for a week for vacation with my family and my girlfriend. It was about 3 months after I had gotten the ukulele,and I brought it on the trip with me because I told myself I was gonna teach myself it in a week. It's only 4 strings, so how hard could it be to learn? My girlfriend asked me to serenade her to sleep every day when she took a nap and that was pretty much how I taught myself. It was one of those afternoons that I randomly started playing the progression that became Goodnight Moon. I didn't think anything of it until my girlfriend said "wow. I really like that a lot, you NEED to write a song with that." It was at that moment that I realized that the ukulele rules. (Listen)



Yeah, Goodnight Moon is inspired by the children's story, but it's actually a song that I wrote to myself as a kid. Its just about how fast I'm growing up and how complicated life is getting, yet I'm still trying to keep that little kid Casey alive in me. I'm just slowly forgetting who that person is and this was just my outlet for remembering. Lost Generation is the first really serious song I wrote on ukulele. As you can guess it's all about me being angry at how the system has really screwed over my whole graduating class and yet we're the ones who are expected to just take it and change everything.

Virginia is the only song on the EP that was not recorded in my bedroom here in Queens. It was actually written in the summer of 2008 and recorded in December of 2008. The song is actually about my dear friend that I lived with for a little while that died in a terribly tragic fire along with her entire family in the summer of 2008. Sorry for anyone out there that thought it was just a simple love song.

The song Smile is me venting my anger - the not so secret underlying theme of the EP is about where I work and all the under appreciated employees that I work with. They say to write what you know and the whole EP is all that I know about life for recent graduates, and of course longing for love songs thrown in the mix.

I don't think I'll ever get another ukulele, unless I strike it rich with my music and can fill my whole wall with different ukes. My uke plays beautifully though and I'm sure it's a top of the line one. It's also an acoustic/eletralele, which is nice for playing shows because a ukulele is a bit hard to mic since it's so small. I do secretly want the flying V uke, though. I've been eying it on Amazon for the past month. Maybe my parents will surprise me with it for my 23rd birthday.

Our Lost Generation EP available at Amazon
Casey's songs and review on Ukulele & Languages blog
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