Good Morning Bedlam Celebrates the Ukulele in Genre-Spanning Style

BY NICOLAS GRIZZLE | FROM THE SUMMER 2026 ISSUE OF UKULELE

Good Morning Bedlam is an aptly-named band, for experiencing them is indeed like waking up to a scene of uproar and confusion. The Minneapolis, Minnesota–based folk rock duo is all over the map when it comes to styles, instrumentation, and emotions.  

“We’ll go to a jazz thing, and people are like, ‘What are you doing here?’ And we’re like, ‘We don’t know!’” laughs frontman Isaak Elker. “And then we’re on a ton of bluegrass festivals, and they’re like, ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘We don’t know!’”

While Elker admits that it may be terrible for marketing, it’s great for music lovers in that the band offers a little something for everyone. Their genre-crossing music is groove-heavy, with delicious vocal harmonies backed mostly by acoustic guitar, fiddle, upright bass, drums, and ukulele.

“We’re always doing plays on other genres,” says guitar and uke player Elker, who, with his wife Tori on bass, are the two full-time members of the band. “We really like to take a genre and say, OK, what would this look like if we were really just doing it in our style? We’ll take little pieces and elements and ingredients and then we’ll go make it ours.”

Both Elkers sing lead in the group, with others bringing lush harmonies and other instruments to recordings and larger live shows. Depending on the gig, their instrumentation can range from a duo switching between guitar, ukulele, bass, and cello to a trio including violin, all the way up to an eight-piece band.

Good Morning Bedlam’s forthcoming album, I Choose Joy, is a collection of ten original songs recorded both with a full band and as stripped-down duo arrangements. It is slated for release July 31 (half the songs were already released in 2023 on an EP titled Dear Day Dear Darling). Songs on their other three albums (Prodigal, 2016; Like Kings, 2018; Lulu, 2022) range from rollicking summer sing-alongs to tender and intimate confessions, with lyrics that are sweet and comforting one second and then cut to bone of your soul the next. This album follows that same course; if anything, it doubles down. All together, their catalog is a release of emotion at once joyous and melancholy.

While ukulele doesn’t make it into the finished versions of the songs as often as guitar, Elker focuses on the unique qualities of ukulele to have the greatest impact on a song. “You have so much that you can play with there to create sounds,” he says about his baritone uke. “It’s a challenge to create a sound with the guitar that people don’t recognize.”

We caught up with Elker to talk about how he uses ukulele behind the scenes of what the audience hears, how playing things the wrong way helped hone his band’s unique sound, and how the uke having fewer strings and frets than guitar can be an advantage.

How’d you get started on ukulele?

I started on soprano ukulele when I was in high school because I loved the sound, and it was so easy to get your hands on a cheap one. I would toss it in my backpack when I would go places.

I remember one of the first songs I learned, I was probably actually not even in high school—I was probably 11 or 12. I remember Ingrid Michaelson coming out with the song “You and I.” My friends and I were all just trying to learn it with our crushes. We all had ukuleles and we were all learning it and asking the girls we liked if they would sing it, do a duet with us.

I was playing that for a few years and writing some songs, and then when I was 15 I came across a band called Wild Child out of Austin, Texas. Their main instrument was a baritone ukulele and I became absolutely obsessed with it. I was already playing guitar at the time, so it was a really easy transition as far as chording and that sort of thing.

What do you consider your main instrument?

I would say the guitar is my primary instrument. Although even if the final version of a song doesn’t make it on the baritone ukulele, I love to jam out new stuff on there to just get an idea. That will so often give me a different perspective on things, because I just love the timbre so much.

How did ukulele find its way into Good Morning Bedlam?

It was there from day one. One of the first three songs I ever wrote was on the uke. I had this little melody that I would play up and down the neck, and that actually became the first song my wife and I ever recorded together where she was singing on it. Even though ukulele doesn’t make it as often onto the records, there are always little pockets where it’s there. It almost always plays a role in our most popular songs or our most defining songs, like “Lulu,” “The Haunting,” and “Sticks and Stones.”

How does ukulele figure into your process behind the scenes from what we hear?

When I’m figuring out more abstract chords, that’s when I really like to pick it up within the process, especially if I’m going to do something a little jazzy. There’s something about being able to work my way up the neck so easily, and just the sound of it, along with just the four strings—there is simplicity there. As I’m arranging stuff I like to take as much off the table as possible, and there’s this purity to the uke that sometimes I don’t get out of the guitar that lets me just be really imaginative.

How do you decide whether you want to use it on the recording or not?

I’ll usually decide early in the process. Within songwriting I use it a lot, but it makes it on the record probably 20 to 30 percent of the time. There’s usually something that’s a vibe or an emotion I want to convey with it. On this upcoming record, there are two songs where ukulele is the main instrument, and they’re very different. One [“Sticks and Stones”] is a summer jam where I use it a bit more in a way you would expect, something that really gives that positive, happy kind of timbre.

But I also like to use it to really mix up something and put a different spin on it. The other main song it’s featured in is “Elemental.” I wanted to do something that you wouldn’t traditionally hear on the uke. And so it is a uke, but of course it’s got all of these layers of delays and reverbs on there because I wanted to create a soundscape. There are different ways that I play it within that song, too. Sometimes I’m rolling and picking, and then other times I’m doing a strum but basically taking the backs of my fingernails and scratching them against the strings. 

How did you learn ukulele? Did you take lessons?

No, I just learned songs and then started doing my own thing with it. I think for a lot of the things that we became good at as a band, I’m so glad nobody told me that it was the wrong way to do things. It was so often just failing into something good. It allowed me to explore, like, What is my own thing? How do I do these riffs? How do I do these different things? It’s kind of a throughline for us (as a band), but definitely for uke too.

Do you think that you take advantage of the ukulele not being as established in popular music as the guitar? Do you feel like that’s like a benefit to you when you’re writing and recording?

Absolutely. I think how niche it is is what gives me that ability to step out. So often when I’m playing guitar, it’s like, “Oh, I know this, I’ve heard this before—this is the Lumineers, or this is the Avett Brothers.” I don’t want to think that, because now I have to get away from that. When I transition it over to uke, I don’t have to worry about that as much.

I think, actually, “Elemental” might be a good example of that, where I wonder if I had really tried to go heavy guitar on that one, if we would have heard a lot more Sufjan Stevens and that kind of vibe. But there was something about playing on the ukulele where you might hear the inspiration there, but it’s really easy to keep it “us” and to keep it more unique.

When you tell someone you’re in a band, and they inevitably ask, “So, what kind of music do you play,” how do you answer that question?

We usually say folk-rock or folk-pop. That seems to be the cleanest way to say it. And if somebody doesn’t listen to our genre, then I’ll usually say it’s kind of like Lake Street Dive meets the Head and the Heart. But if somebody really knows our type of music, I say it’s lyrically very inspired by the Avett Brothers and really heartfelt songwriting like Bright Eyes, or something like that. But musically, we will also swing pretty heavy through jamgrass and blues—even though we don’t really know how to play blues. So we’re taking from those concepts.

The albums sound so big, like you’ve got five or six players. Do you tour with that many people, or is it just the two or three in most of your videos online?

We basically have two, sometimes three-ish setups. And the band is me and my wife, Tori. So we do all the writing and the arranging. 

When we’re touring far from home we have duo arrangements of everything and then when we’re close to home and we’re doing big headlining shows, or we’re doing big festivals, then our main setup is a five piece. Depending on the budget sometimes we’ll go all the way up to an eight piece. So we have ways of stripping all those back.

One thing we’ll be doing with this record when we put it out this summer is releasing two versions of all ten songs. So it’ll be 20 songs: ten produced, full-band versions and then all of them as duo versions as well. 

Tori plays bass, right?

She plays bass and cello. For a long time, violin was the other main instrument. A lot of our stuff is very heavy on violin, so when we officially decided to be a duo was when she picked up the cello. She’s taken on a lot more of that melodic stuff on that instrument.

We write the music we want to write, however many instruments that is, we just make the art we want to make. And then we go in and dissect that and say, what’s that at the heart of this song? What melodies, what riffs? What pieces? And then we make those into duo arrangements. We’re really excited to be able to put both versions out because we’ve seen over and over that some people want to hear the big band stuff and other people want to listen to that stripped-back, intimate version.

Your last LP, Lulu, garnered some positive reviews. How did that change things for the band?

Lulu was such a big jump for us in being able to tour and sustain what we were doing. It was also the first album that we had professionally produced. It’s such a special record to me. It really changed our ability to sell tickets, especially regionally and nationally, getting us into more festivals and larger gigs.

How have things changed for you personally since then?

We recently had a baby so we’re not touring full time anymore, which has its ups and downs. I think that it makes every show more special. We were doing 150 shows a year, and you start to lose your sparkle show to show, your ability to take in what you’re really getting to do. Like, we could be working at a coffee shop—which is great—or we could be onstage. You lose sight of that when you’re playing so much. One thing that has been so amazing about playing less is that every time we play, I think we just feel grateful that we get to do this and that even if we’re not hitting the road nine months out of the year anymore, people are really with us and they really believe in what we’re doing.

What He Plays

Isaak Elker plays just one ukulele: a no-name Kala baritone that looks like it’s on its last legs. The body is remarkably worn from hard playing, yet it travels with him on every show. “I didn’t know what I was getting when I bought it, and it has been with me through thick and thin,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll play with my fingers, sometimes I’ll strum with my thumb, and then sometimes I like to do really percussive or melodic stuff on it, so I’ll use a pick. It’s hard for me to even think about getting a different one now . . . It has so much character. It’s all scratched up, and it’s just so comfortable and familiar.” —NG