About Fireball Ukulele

One summer when I was a kid growing up in Austin TX, my sisters had all been enrolled in a girl scout day camp. I got (had) to go along with so my Mom could keep us all together, it was assured to me that there would be boys there too, somehow allowed to enjoy girl scout camp life… ? Skeptical, I was at least happy the camp was held at Zilker Park one of my favorite parks which held creeks to explore and trees to climb.

Day one of Lone Star Girl Scout day camp and I was sent to the boys group huddle, not much organization, and certainly no uniforms. We were definitely the fringe society, allowed to make our own agenda, or slack the day away. We could see groups (troops?) of girl scouts scurrying off to do activities. We went into a forested creek bank and made a circle.

“Time to choose your camp name.” Said the boys group leader. “Let’s start with you.” He was pointing to the kid right next to me, I think the kid blurted out “Rex!”. Woah, I thought, camp name? What the…

“OK, and what is your camp name?” the group leader looked right at me. Out of my mouth shot some words, I do not know how they got there, I blurted out “FIREBALL!!” thinking, that would be a campy kind of camp name maybe?

Nobody else chose to try a superhero style camp name, opting for “Tommy” and “JoJo”.

I had a great time at camp though, possibly more fun than I should have. I learned I was allowed to try all of the activities. I did archery, arts and crafts, wood burning with a magnifying glass… (I torched a piece of paper and got banned from wood burning activities). I found swarming nests of daddy longleg spiders in the old main building that could be activated with a long stick, a tiny poke into the center of the nest and spiders fell like rain, cooool!

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Long story short, my ukulele building is a bit like my camp days, I am not an industry insider. I do not have the finish skills of the seasoned veteran luthier. I am an artist, working on developing fun instruments that can be enjoyed as visual art and enjoyed as a musical tool.

I build ukulele’s because “Every step of the way there is something pretty to look at”.