JUMPIN' JIM DOWN-UNDER!

Jim & Liz Beloff from Flea Market Music (www.fleamarketmusic.com) were recently in Australia on a promotional tour. I caught up with Jumpin’ Jim after a well-attended ukulele workshop in Sydney…

What do you think of the Australian ukulele scene?
It’s extraordinary. Liz and I have been in Sydney for five days, we’ve done three events, and I don’t think we’ve gone to every uke club. I’m frankly blown away by the interest here. There’s a commonality to a lot of the songs people seem to like; a lot of clubs share a core repertoire. I think somehow this new movement has tapped into some unused genetic strand that we all carry around – this joy of personally making music and sharing it with others.

Considering the success of the Fluke and Flea, have you got any other instruments in the works?
That’s really a question for my brother-in-law [ukulele designer Dale Webb]. The one innovation we’ve just started to offer are these unique Peghed tuners on our Flukes and Fleas. They’re custom-designed and look like old-fashioned wooden tuners, but they’re engineering marvels. They have all these tiny gears in them, they’re lightweight, and I think they’re going to be popular.

You recently released a new CD with Leapin' Liz called "Rare Air". Tell me about that.
We’d never made a CD that just featured the two of us, so because of this tour, we decided to make one. It’s got some covers and a lot of originals that were either written by me alone or with Herb Ohta and Lyle Ritz. I’m so thankful and happy to have been able to write with these two legends. Some people think of them strictly as virtuoso players, but they’re also fine composers.

Will we see any new Jumpin’ Jim songbooks in 2010?
Two books for sure are going to come out in 2010. One’s a bluegrass book done for us by Fred Sokolow, who did the "Blues Ukulele" book for us – classic bluegrass tunes arranged for the uke in a couple of different ways, with a CD. The other big project, which we’ve been working on for years, is a book that will have close to 400 songs in it. This will be the kind of book that you find at uke clubs, with a big spiral binding and easier arrangements so everyone can play along. So that’s going to keep us busy next year.

The full version of this interview will appear in the forthcoming second edition of "The Strummer" magazine. For updates, see www.twitter.com/SydneyStrummer.