SWAMPSCOTT — Swampscott Public Library held its first pop-up ukulele class this week, and is now inviting new members to join, with the ukulele band Red Rock Ramblers, that plans to perform at community events and community centers around the town.
The ukulele class got its start in 2018 when Matt McConeghy, who had been teaching the ukulele at the Lynn Senior Center reached out to the band, and asked if he could teach a class on the ukulele. The library made an announcement that if you want to learn to play the ukulele, you just need to show up.
“You just need to show up with a ukulele,” said one of the organizers for the class, Librarian Jennifer Runyon, about the announcement.
The library bought some ukuleles and suggested renting them to the participants or renting them first and then buying them out, if the participants end up taking a liking to the ukulele. At that time, the library had two sessions with six or seven people each.
After the class ended, McConeghy said that the group needed to continue practicing if they wanted to retain their skills, and that was how the Red Rock Ramblers band was born, who performed on two occasions – an event at the library’s Children’s Room, and at the Swampscott PorchFest in 2019.
“It was a community celebration, and you would walk around the people’s porches, and somebody would play music, and we were playing on the steps of the ReachArts,” said Susan Korper of Swampscott, who participated in one of the groups.
She said that for some reason, although a lot of people liked it, the group was not invited to the next year’s PorchFest, but they had plenty of fun and continued to practice. With the pandemic, the practice meetings were held on Zoom.
On Zoom, said Korper, it is impossible to play together, because “it gets mixed up,” due to the transition time differences on different users’ devices. The participants decided to mute their microphones, and have only one person play, to set the rhythm, and the others would play along by themselves. So, they all played together, but only one person could be heard by all.
Korper said that there were around 10 people in the group, and that the group is now meeting once a month with occasional additional events such as their first pop-up at the library this week. The weekly schedule had to be changed, because people weren’t able to come in at the same time. A survey is now being conducted within the group to find suitable times for everybody to get together and practice.
The band is open to all, and the current participants say that it’s very easy to play the ukulele in comparison to other instruments such as the guitar. Runyon said that at this point the participants could show new members the basic chords, and that anyone who wants to teach others how to play the ukulele is also welcome.
“It’s very easy compared to guitar because it’s four strings, and once you know two chords you can play a lot of songs,” said Runyon.
Korper said that she taught herself guitar her senior year of high school, and that’s why now she’s interested in finding songs with more complicated chords. All of the participants bring songs they find to the group, and Runyon uploads them to the group website that she created.
The group mainly plays old songs from the 1940s and 1950s, such as “Let It Be,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Slow Boat to China,” and “Crazy.” Korper said she liked playing “Crazy” and “Slow Boat to China” most of all, although the last song was “on kidnapping,” ironically.
The next meeting of the Red Rock Rambles ukulele band is Tuesday, July 19 at 5:30 p.m. with a Zoom/in-person hybrid. The cost of the ukuleles are approximately $50, Runyon said, and all levels of experience are welcome!
For more information, please contact Swampscott Public Library or visit the Red Rock Ramblers website at https://www.swampscottlibrary.org/ongoing-groups/.
Oksana Kotkina can be reached at [email protected].
