Ginger Johnson’s Deep Baritone Sound is a Perfect Fit in the Hula Honeys

BY AUDREY COLEMAN | FROM THE WINTER 2024 ISSUE OF UKULELE

The first time Ginger Johnson played a baritone ukulele, she knew it was a good fit—literally. As she puts it, “I’m six feet tall and I have big hands, so I feel cramped playing other ukuleles.” But it was not just the size that felt right. “It’s a wonderful instrument and I’m able to do so much more with it than I can with other ukuleles,” she says from her home on Maui’s north shore. “It’s got a soft, deeper sound with a little more resonance.”

Johnson has played baritone ukulele in the award-winning Hula Honeys duo with Robyn Kneubuhl for some 20 years. In the ukulele community, she has also become a sought-after baritone ukulele instructor as the Hula Honeys have gained renown. But without the duo she co-nurtured with talent and creativity, Johnson might never have played the baritone ukulele at all.

Musical Beginnings

On a FaceTime interview, Johnson sat in the center of a comfy looking couch, framed by light brown plantation shutters. Through the picture window behind her, giant heliconia leaves waved in the breeze. We focused on events in her musical life that affected her later career and choice of instrument. Weaving through our conversation was the story of the Hula Honeys.

After over a decade working as a backup singer in Los Angeles, Johnson returned to Hawaii around 1992, settling on Maui. She joined a hula class that Kneubuhl was holding at her home in upcountry Pukalani. A vocalist, hula dancer, and hula instructor, Kneubuhl had grown up hearing Hawaiian and hapa haole songs her mother, Emma Veary, performed as a headliner at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and at venues on the mainland and in Europe.

Johnson and Kneubuhl discovered a common affinity for vintage hula and hapa haole music as well as songs from Tin Pan Alley, vintage jazz, and the Great American Songbook. Soon they were having a blast playing their tenor ukuleles while singing material that would become the hallmark of the Hula Honeys.

In fact, the two women had more in common than they initially knew. Both had grown up in East Honolulu within a mile of each other. On the radio, Johnson heard music from Hawaii’s pre-statehood golden age, performed by singers such as Genoa Keawe. She even heard the voice of Kneubuhl’s mother on albums in her father’s collection.

A music lover with eclectic tastes, Johnson’s father gave his daughter any instrument she yearned to play, including flute, banjo, and violin. While Johnson enjoyed the musical dabbling, she retains a painful memory of being kicked out of seventh grade orchestra because she couldn’t read the music and was playing by ear. Years later, she acquired enough proficiency to follow song sheets and instrumental arrangements.

Elementary school programs fueled Johnson’s interest in the ukulele. “When we were little kids, the teachers would tell everybody to bring a ukulele for May Day. And I never saw a house that didn’t have one. If you didn’t have one at your house, your uncle or auntie did.”

Another musical influence was the swank Hawaiian Village Hotel (later the Hilton Hawaiian Village) where her photographer father had his portrait studio. (He once did a portrait of Emma Veary.) “I was a precocious little girl and I felt like this was my hotel. In my little pigtails, I would wander around everywhere I didn’t belong.” 

During these wanderings, she met performers such as the Ali’is, backup musicians for Don Ho, who based his show at the Hawaiian Village. Most vividly she recalls a female trio “in the open air lobby, wearing beautiful Hawaiian gowns. . . (they played) upright bass, guitar, and ukulele. I could see these ladies walking around, talking to each other, having a good time (between gigs), having fun playing music, and I thought, I like this.”

By the time she was a teenager, Johnson had replaced her ukulele with a Martin guitar to accompany the folk songs she performed “on Saturday nights at a coffee house around the corner.” Later, she spent about ten years as a backup singer for vocalists in Los Angeles.

Hula Honeys

Back to Johnson and Kneubuhl having a blast singing and accompanying themselves on ukulele. After about three months, Johnson reminded Kneubuhl that they both had families. “I said, ‘You know, we’re going to have to get a gig to justify all this time we’re spending on the couch playing music.’ She nodded. There’s a saying, ‘Three chords and a job.’ So we got a little gig in Paia.”

She clearly recalls that first gig. “Everybody in town showed up and had a great time. Even the bartender was happy.” Johnson and Kneubuhl were in tears, however, because nobody had really listened. We’re not going to do this anymore, they blubbered to each other.

But they did do it again. And again, and again, finding their niche as a unique musical hybrid. In each show, Kneubuhl performed at least one hula number. They drew setlists from old-time Hawaiian/hapa haole ditties, vintage jazz compositions, and Tin Pan Alley hits. Eventually, the duo began composing original songs.

By using hapa haole songs, they were taking a risk. “In 1970, when I was getting out of high school, hapa haole music was really frowned upon,” says Johnson. “We had the Hawaiian renaissance. This was [considered] the music that had merchandised [Hawaiian culture], so it was absolutely shunned.”

Forty years later, traditional arts and language programs had taken root, and the resentment was starting to dissipate. “Now people . . . realize that some of these songs are terrific. We (Hula Honeys) didn’t have any competition doing hapa haole music when we started—which was great.”

In addition to honing their repertoire, Johnson wanted to improve the sound of their accompaniment. That’s when the baritone ukulele came into the picture. “We were both playing tenor ukuleles—the same instrument and the same notes. We really canceled each other out . . . we just didn’t have enough going on musically. So I shifted to this other instrument that’s tuned differently, and it made the chords bigger.”

Grammy-winning folk musicians Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer caught a Hula Honeys gig at a club in Haiku on Maui’s North Shore. Impressed, they invited the duo to perform at events such as the Kennedy Center (2010) and Philadelphia Folk Festival (2013).

The Hula Honeys have recorded three albums to date. Life Just Got Sweeter was produced in 2004. Five years later came Girl Talk, which won the 2010 Na Hoku Hanohano award for Jazz Album of the Year. Their 2013 album, A Hui Hou (Until We Meet Again), produced by Marxer and Fink, won another Na Hoku for Jazz Album of the Year in 2014. That third album also includes several original songs.

Teaching Baritone

Although performing music remains Johnson’s career priority, she reaps rewards when students make progress in her workshops. “Sometimes you see the ball drop and somebody goes, ‘Ohhh!’ That’s worth sitting on the airplane for. When they find out that they can take this fingering and move it up here and on and on . . . Everything’s changed.”

At ukulele festivals from Bethesda, Maryland, to Kahului, Maui, Johnson is often the only faculty member teaching baritone. She teaches her “string theory” system for mastering chords, coaxes student fingers up and down the fretboard, and reveals the baritone’s expressive potential.

She believes intermediate-level baritone players stand to gain much more from workshops than beginners. “You don’t really need a person to teach you until you can make a few chords on your own,” she says. “My job is to get you up the neck. You start off with a bunch of chords way down at the nut, but you’ve got all this marvelous potential on the baritone because it has more frets than the tenor, concert, or soprano.” Grabbing a uke, Johnson demonstrates her inventive system for learning chords by shape. She speaks and sings explanations almost gleefully, punctuating them with strums and the occasional pluck.

Solo Work

Johnson doesn’t seek out solo gigs. Occasionally, however, opportunities find her. For example, Craig Chee and Sarah Maisel asked her to perform at the Meals for Maui livestream fundraiser they organized in 2023. And during the pandemic, Johnson initiated her own solo gig on Facebook. She posted videos of herself performing songs that could help people through the stress and feelings of isolation. 

The pandemic posts are still there. Johnson sits on her couch, strumming and singing, framed by the plantation shutters. Behind her, the waving heliconia leaves are visible through the picture window. Most of the songs come from the first few decades of the 20th century. Some are upbeat, others wistful. One reflects on love, another evokes a season. In one video, a sound like white noise competes with the song’s concluding moments. After her final chord, Johnson whirls around towards the window and back again with a smile. “It’s raining!

After so much time alone during the pandemic, Johnson is grateful to be back at it with the Hula Honeys playing at ukulele festivals, music venues, and private parties. “It’s always nice to have a couple of gigs coming up so you have a reason to get together and rehearse,” she says.

What She Plays

Johnson’s first baritone ukulele was all mahogany, a wood which, to her, gives the uke “a very mellow, warm sound that suits the baritone nicely.” It came from Oahu-based Ko’olau Ukulele. “They have fancy, expensive, beautiful instruments and also not-so-expensive ones sold under the name of Pono and run by John Kitakis . . . I’ve had quite a few ukuleles from him.”

For performing and teaching, she plays a custom baritone crafted by Steve Grimes, a well-known luthier on Maui. He made the body from koa, which, to her ear, has a brighter sound than the cedar and maple instrument she plays at home. “I also wanted koa because it’s a local wood and because it’s pretty.” She requested “a round neck, like on Gibsons. Most ukuleles have a flat neck.” Additionally, she asked Grimes to inlay a bumblebee on the fifth fret and a white ginger flower on the headstock. The instrument is part of Johnson’s growing family of baritones, each endowed with special qualities, including a Kamaka, a Gibson, a Martin, and a couple of Ponos.

She favors two kinds of string sets. Her main performance baritone has Aquila Lava Nylgut strings. Playing them feels good, she says, plus they have visual appeal with the two top strings being black. On a different ukulele, she uses strings from Aquila’s Red series. “These are a lot softer and very, very easy to play. But I have to watch out—if I put the reds on another ukulele, it sounds terrible because they’re just not tough enough and they buzz.”

How would she advise people shopping for a baritone ukulele? “It’s the same for baritone or a concert—you want an instrument that suits you, that fits well in your hands, has a nice low action, and stays in tune.” —AC