The Great Ukulele Resurgence is upon us: An Interview with Jonathan Coulton

Yeah.. I mean, it’s been everything really. It was my first endeavor as an official.. professional musician, you know? It was what I started doing immediately after I quit my day job to pursue music full time. When I started I had a few fans here and there but nothing that could support me...

From the Jonathan Coulton Wiki:

Jonathan William Coulton (born December 1, 1970, in Colchester, CT), affectionately known as JoCo to his fans, is a musician best known for the geeky subject matter of many of his songs and the nontraditional licensing and distribution of his music. His most prominent accomplishments include his Thing a Week project and his songs Code Monkey, Still Alive, Skullcrusher Mountain, and The Future Soon. Jonathan is largely associated with the folk rock genre, though he occasionally experiments with other styles. Jonathan's primary instrument is the guitar, but he also plays each other instrument in most of his recorded songs.

The Thing a Week project consisted of Jonathan composing and releasing on the internet one song per week for an entire year. The project started September 16, 2005 and ended on September 29, 2006 and it yielded the four Thing a Week albums comprising the Thing a Week box set. It was during this time that people from all over the world found Jonathan via his website and it's this network of fans that allows Jonathan the freedom to explore his musical whims.

Jonathan Coulton (with Paul and Storm) is playing a show at the Park West in Chicago on 10/10/09 @ 8:00PM. From experience, it's an event that definitely should not be missed! You can buy tickets for the show or demand him in your town if you're too far away from Chicago to make it. If you're a fan of bands like They Might Be Giants and/or Flight of the Conchords you'll definitely dig the show (plus a little birdie told me that something particularly special will be going on at the concert). I spoke with Jonathan earlier today and he was nice enough to answer a few questions we posed to him:

For our readers who haven’t yet had the pleasure of listening to your music, can you tell us a little about Thing a Week and what impact that has had on your career as a musician so far?

Yeah.. I mean, it’s been everything really. It was my first endeavor as an official.. professional musician, you know? It was what I started doing immediately after I quit my day job to pursue music full time. When I started I had a few fans here and there but nothing that could support me – over the course of that year I got lucky with a couple of hits and things that went viral. People started blogging about it and podcasting about it.. By the end of that year, I had amassed enough fans and followers to at least break even by the end of the year. At that point we started touring and playing live and all that good stuff. It was really the beginning of everything for me.

Great, so that was the breaking-off point for you as far as music as a career choice.

Absolutely. Without it, I’m not sure that people would know who I am – you know? I’m not even sure that I would have written any songs if not for that arbitrary deadline I had set up for myself.

You use the Creative Commons license for your music, which means that people can use your songs in their own non-commercial works – was this the plan from the beginning with regards to the licensing?

It was, yeah. By the time I had gotten around to doing Thing a Week I had made the decision to start releasing everything Creative Commons licensed. It was about a couple of different things; it was about declaring my intentions and making clear what I thought music was about here in the 2000s, it’s just the natural thing that we do with the stuff that we love.. we take it and we use it to make something else. More and more that’s the way that we consume art these days. It seems silly to not allow that to happen and I even try to encourage it. For me, that’s been a big part of my ability to reach lots of people is the fact that it’s not just the stuff that I create that brings people in – it’s the stuff that other people create. There are some YouTube videos using my music that people have made that have received literally millions of views and that’s the kind of exposure you couldn’t buy.

Sure, that’s a great answer and I’ve seen a lot of those YouTube videos myself. I think that the fans have really picked up on that vibe and gone with it, and that’s good for you too – it definitely promotes your music out to all kinds of other venues.

Yeah, it does.. and on top of that it’s just so gratifying – to see that this little thing that I did inspired somebody to do something else.. and that’s really what it’s about I think.

Right, right. A number of instruments that you don’t often hear in rock music are scattered throughout your songs like the ukulele and the accordion – in fact there is somewhat of an army of ukulele players who perform covers of your songs on YouTube. Do you think that America is ready for this Great Ukulele Resurgence? Is it already upon us?

[Laughs] I think it’s already upon us, in fact, there may be a ukulele player hiding in your house right now! [More laughter] Yeah, I was reintroduced to the ukulele through this process when this woman who was in New York, Kristen Shirts, won the “Code Monkey” Remix Contest that I was having by submitting this remix of my song “Code Monkey” that she had made using ukulele. It was just the most beautiful thing and I was just so charmed by it.. of course then she started playing with me and I started seeing other people doing ukulele covers, and I picked up a ukulele myself and started playing it. The great thing about it is it’s extremely portable, it’s a very charming and I would even argue versatile instrument – you can actually do some really interesting fingerpicking stuff with it – plus for me, there are only 4 strings on it [Laughs] and I can’t really think my way through all 6 strings on a guitar.. I really need to know what I’m doing. On the ukulele, if I’m playing a chord on 4 strings I can kind of almost figure out which notes need to change to move to the next chord. I can almost find my way on the ukulele because it’s only 4 strings, and that makes me a better musician – by a factor of 2. [Laughs]

Wow, that’s an interesting answer – yeah, you have those guitars out there now that are 8 and even 10 strings.. they must be mind-bogglingly difficult to play.

Yeah, you kinda need 2 brains, if you’re gonna do that. [Laughs]

In the song “Still Alive” from the popular video game Portal by Valve you’re writing from the perspective of a passive aggressive AI named GladOS. I’ve played the game through, reaching the song at the end – how easy or difficult was it for you to write this song in character, and was the cake your idea?

[Laughs] No, the cake was already in the game – but they recommended strongly that I reference the cake in the song and I’m glad they did. Actually, it was pretty easy for me to write from the perspective of that character – I don’t know what that says about me exactly, but that’s one of the things that I loved about the project. From the moment that I sat down to play the game – I played an early version of the game before it was released to get a feel for it – I noticed that GladOS kept talking and emerged as a character over the course of the game that I fell in love with because it’s the same kind of character that I end up writing about all the time anyway. I’m always writing about these passive aggressive, monstrous personalities who the rest of the world sees as evil, but they of course don’t see what the problem is.. they’re just being themselves, you know? I find that kind of funny and heartbreaking at the same time. So, it was pretty easy to get there with GladOS and that’s a credit to the writing that they did with that game – I felt like I knew who she was immediately.

I’m looking forward to seeing your performance at the Park West in Chicago on Saturday, October 10. Before we wrap this up, can you tell us about your plans for next year really quickly – do you have any new songs in the works, new ventures or.. world domination?

[Laughs] Well.. world domination is sort of a background goal [Laughs] that’s always going on but currently I have this concert DVD out called Best. Concert. Ever. and that’s the latest product. I have a number of songs piling up on the website that are probably due to be put on some sort of a CD that should be coming out sometime next year I would imagine.

Alright, well thank you Jonathan for your time and best of luck on the tour.

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