Uke-Rock: Jake Shimabukuro

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"LITTLE GRASS SHACK," "Beyond the Reef," "Twelfth Street Rag" — there are some tunes that just about everybody who picks up the uke aspires to play. But Jake Shimabukuro is stretching the instrument past all previously agreed-on limits. With a fistful of albums to his credit (and now his first film score, "Hula Girls"), the 31-year-old Hawaiian finds music of great beauty and daring hidden among those four small strings.

» EXPRESS: You've got the chops to play anything you want. What's special about ukulele?
» SHIMABUKURO: It's such a welcoming instrument, and that's what I love most about it. If you see a violin player, after the show you don't think about going up to the violin player and saying, "Hey, can I see your violin?" You would never do that. But with a ukulele, it's so friendly.

» EXPRESS: More technically speaking, is there also something about ukulele tuning: GCEA with the G up an octave?
» SHIMABUKURO: What I've always loved about having the high G is that when the first string and the fourth string are only a whole step apart, you can really get into some unique-sounding voicings.

» EXPRESS: You've mentioned wanting to avoid the classical-guitar sound.
» SHIMABUKURO: Since I already have those two high strings -- one on the bottom and one on the top -- without having to overstretch my fingers or really kill my hand, I can get these really close voicings, almost like piano voicings, that if you were to play on the guitar, you would probably need two hands on the fretboard. And then you'd need another hand to strum the chord.

» EXPRESS: You're playing two solo dates in Annapolis, and then you're joining the United States Air Force Band in D.C. How will the shows differ?
» SHIMABUKURO: Definitely with the orchestra you have to play differently. The music is all pretty much set, as far as the amount of measures in every song. It's huge [with] the orchestra behind you, when you play certain things, when you all hit certain punches together, it's very powerful and moving. Solo is very different, because when I'm up there by myself, I'm free to improvise and play however I want, and I can really be spontaneous.

» EXPRESS: On your recent covers EP, "My Life," you adapt everyone from Cyndi Lauper to Led Zeppelin. How did you approach "Going to California"?
» SHIMABUKURO: I try to bring out all the parts that I especially love about the song -- certain melodic ideas, maybe something I hear the guitar doing, or a little kind of a groove. Or most of the time it's just the energy of the song. When the song starts building and then I feel something inside of me, I try to create that again with the ukulele.

» Rams Head OnStage, 33 West St., Annapolis; Thu., 9 p.m.; Sat., 1 p.m., $25; 410-268-4545.
» DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW; Sun., 3 p.m., free; 202-628-4780.

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon

Photo courtesy Michael Bloom Media