The Volcano Brothers

[MagicElliott]

As most of us will have seen from his website, Richard Bennett has been playing as part of a Hawaiian steel trio recently called The Volcano Brothers.

He plays ukulele and the founder of the trio, Steve Dawson, has posted a few videos of them playing together recently.

Here’s a link to one and the others can be found on his YouTube page. He also interviewed Richard recently which was great.



I shouldn’t have been surprised by this but Richard has some serious ukulele chops. I mess around on guitar with basic chords but as I’ve posted before, I am far more serious about ukuleles and ukulele playing. What really struck me about his playing is that you can tell he’s a stringed-instrument player. I think lots of the great ukulele players (the guys in the Ukulele Orchestra of GB, Andy Eastwood, Jake Shimabukuro, Peter Moss etc etc) are phenomenal ukulele players but in my opinion, by Richard’s handling of the instrument, you can tell he’s a great stringed instrument player. Obviously we knew this already but his touch struck me as being very different to some of my favourite ukulele players.

Enjoy.

[quizzaciously]

Wow! Thanks for sharing, that's a lot of fun indeed. Reminds me of all the vintage meet-and-greet videos and Mark kicking an ukulele

Well, Richard has got amazing guitar chops and the ukulele is practically a guitar with a capo on the 5th fret and without 2 bottom strings.

[MagicElliott]

Wow! Thanks for sharing, that's a lot of fun indeed. Reminds me of all the vintage meet-and-greet videos and Mark kicking an ukulele

Well, Richard has got amazing guitar chops and the ukulele is practically a guitar with a capo on the 5th fret and without 2 bottom strings.

Absolutely. It really reinforces what we say about Richard being so professional-a Nashville legend who gets paid to play 4 chords on What it Is.

[MagicElliott]

Well, Richard has got amazing guitar chops and the ukulele is practically a guitar with a capo on the 5th fret and without 2 bottom strings.

I’ve been thinking about this. I do find though, that a ukulele does need a very different touch to a guitar. Yes I know the tuning is the same albeit in a different key but I still find them very different. I’ve also found that different sized ukulele are very different to play. I own four different sizes of ukulele and each one is different.
When I bought my Strat replica ukulele (solid body Flight tenor ukulele,) I was testing it in the shop. The first thing I played was Sleepwalk by Santo and Jonny. It’s one of my go to instrumental ukulele pieces and I think that the original is one of the greatest instrumentals of all time.
One of the guys in the shop told me that he thought I was a natural playing it and I was getting used to it faster than most people. I argued that he said that to everyone and that it was part of his job, he came back with “no I really mean it. Most people try and strum it like a wooden ukulele or play it like an electric guitar. Neither works. You have a nice, light touch.”