Jake Shimabukuro Joins Forces with Mick Fleetwood for Sensational Blues Outing

BY BLAIR JACKSON | FROM THE WINTER 2024 ISSUE OF UKULELE

Jake Shimabukuro never stops. Or at least it seems that way. When he and I caught up by phone in August, he was a about to complete a ten-day Midwest tour with a benefit concert in Chicago with cellist Meena Cho to raise more funds to aid the recovery of Lahaina, Maui—still a wasteland since most of the town was destroyed by fire in 2023. In the spring of 2024 he had hit Southern California and the Southwest, and still on the horizon a couple of weeks after Chicago were shows in the South, Northeast, and Midwest, then a big swing in the West and Hawaii that takes him all the way through mid-December, ending the touring year in Nashville.

And suddenly there is also a new recording to promote! On the heels of two of the finest albums he’s ever made—the highly eclectic all-star album Jake & Friends and his 2023 project playing with some of his favorite Hawaiian musicians, Grateful—comes the all-instrumental Blues Experience, featuring Fleetwood Mac drum monster Mick Fleetwood, and two of Jake’s regular favorites to play with, bassist Jackson Waldhoff and keyboardist Michael Grande. It’s a spellbinding blues tour de force that spans everything from the much-covered classic “Rollin’ and Tumblin’,” Albert King’s “I Wanna Get Funky,” and Gary Moore’s “Still Got the Blues” to unexpected treasures such as Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” (featuring Sonny Landreth on slide guitar), a raging take on Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World,” a brilliant, jammed out interpretation of Procol Harum’s 1967 hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” and perhaps most affecting of all, a moving version of the late Christine McVie’s Fleetwood Mac classic, “Songbird.”

Jake digs deep throughout on his custom Kamaka uke, finding dozens of shades of “blue” (and other tonal colors) in the process. For a guy who has one of the most upbeat personalities of anyone I’ve ever interviewed and who is clearly living something of a dream life, he sure “gets” the blues. Which will come as a surprise to exactly . . . no one!

I’d love to hear a little about your own history as a blues fan. Who were the people you listened to, and, as you were developing your own style on the ukulele, who influenced you; who did you sit around your room emulating?
For me growing up, I didn’t really know or think about the genres of music, but there were always musicians I loved hearing. I remember in Hawaii, when I was maybe in my last year or just out of high school, one of my favorite musicians was Bobby Ingano. He’s a master lap steel/slide guitar player, and one day I went to a jam session where he and some of his musician friends got together and played a whole blues set—everything from B.B. King to Clapton. One song that really caught my attention was an old Muddy Waters tune—I can’t think of the name. But that was really my first taste of hearing some serious blues music. Most of them were songs that I had heard but never quite identified.

I think we talked about this before [see Jake’s interview in the Winter 2021 issue], that I listened a lot to Jeff Beck and Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix; all those guys. The first time I heard Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House” . . . I was so blown away. I had always loved his playing, but I had heard mostly the popular rock stuff, like “Foxy Lady.” But then digging deeper into his music, when I heard [the heavy blues tune] “Red House,” I’d never heard anyone play guitar like that. 

Is it fair to say that this was at a time before you had plugged in or were using effects on the ukulele? Was it frustrating to hear Hendrix and then go plink around on your little acoustic ukulele trying to play blues?
[Laughs.] Actually that’s around the time [plugging in] started for me. When I was 17, I started working at a music store called the House of Music in the Ala Moana shopping center [in Honolulu]. They had an instrument department upstairs, which is where I was stationed. So when I was up there, I had access to all sorts of pedals and amplifiers, guitars—lots of cool stuff. I worked there for five years and I was so fortunate because it gave me the opportunity to experiment. There was a lot of downtime because a lot of people didn’t even know there was a musical instrument department upstairs! Downstairs we sold CDs, sheet music, and all that; that’s what they were known for. So I had a lot of time to practice on all these effects and pedals. And actually, it was part of my job to learn about all the different things that were coming out.

Most of the time growing up, from the time I picked up the ukulele up until high school, I mainly just played acoustically. I think I was in high school before I bought my first pickup for the ukulele, and it was made by a company called DeArmond. You would put them on the soundboard and then there were these hooks on them—you would use a big rubber band to put around the hooks and to wrap around the body of the ukulele, and that would hold the pickup against the body and then you would plug it in. I guess you would call that a transducer style. That was the way to amplify your instrument back then. It was tough. When you cranked it too loud it would just feed back. 

That’s the good part, Jake!
Well, yeah, sometimes. But you had to be careful, too, when you put the rubber band on and you didn’t secure it well, if it slipped it could swing back and hit you in the face! You almost needed two people to set it up properly. So that was the beginning of trying to amplify my instrument.

As both a blues fan for decades and a Hawaiian music history buff, I’ve been interested in the intersection of those two styles of music. In the 1920s and ’30s you find quite a lot of Hawaiian music artists, such as “King” Bennie Nawahi, Jim and Bob, Sol Hoopii, and others playing both traditional and newly written blues tunes along with their Hawaiian repertoire. But they are all artists who thrived on the mainland and were influenced by Black musicians, who, of course, adapted Hawaiian slide guitar for their own purposes. What are your thoughts on that confluence of Black music and Hawaiian artists?
Well, from talking to historians, it seems that Uncle Joseph K [Kekuku] invented the Hawaiian lap steel guitar and came up with the innovation of using the steel bar to put over the strings to slide and give the instrument that chromatic sound. A lot of Hawaiian musicians learned that technique from Uncle Joseph when they started traveling over to the U.S. With their darker-colored skin, they would often stay in African American communities, and I heard they would have these jam sessions [with Black musicians] and they would bring their steel bars and they would play. And I think that influenced a lot of the American players. 

Have you ever played slide ukulele?
Not really, no. There was one track that I did a few years ago where I got into an open tuning and used a glass slide on it for a certain effect. It’s called “When the Masks Come Down” [on the album Trio, from 2020]. But not a serious solo or anything. It’s more like just sliding into the IV chord or V chord to get that sound. I like it, but for me, I feel like you have to raise the action a little bit more on the instrument. When I was doing it on that one track I remember when I’d try to slide, you could hear the slide hitting the frets. If
you had an instrument specifically made for that, I think that would be ideal. But I always just travel with my one uke.

Let’s talk about the record. Tell me how this project with Mick Fleetwood came about. You guys had known each other for quite a while, right?
Yeah. Of course I’ve always been a huge fan, but I first met him years ago at the Na Hoku Hanohano Awards [Hawaiian music awards]. There was one year where they introduced a Hawaiian Music award to the Grammys, and Mick, along with Kenny Loggins, was there. There were a few big artists who came to kick off that first year. I got to meet Mick, and Kenny as well. Actually, Mick and Barry Flanagan from the group Hapa were good friends, so he introduced me to them real quickly backstage and then said, “Hey come up onstage and play with us,” so I got to play with them. If I remember correctly, we did [Loggins’] “Footloose.” It was cool. I was so starstruck!

Fast-forward probably 20 years, I got to see Mick after a Fleetwood Mac reunion concert. I got to reconnect with him backstage and I think that’s the first time he mentioned, “You know, someday we should do something together.” Then, a year later, after the Fleetwood Mac tour, we did a show on Maui and Mick and his family came backstage and that’s when we discussed more seriously doing a collaboration. [Fleetwood has lived on Maui for many years and even had a popular namesake restaurant in Lahaina that was, alas, destroyed in the 2023 wildfires there.] 

 It started with booking a week: “Just come out to Maui and let’s just jam and see what happens.” So we went to Mick’s studio on his property and we had a couple of tunes we thought we’d try, and we ended up recording four or five songs. Everything was live. And after that we booked another session and did another four or five songs.

How did you determine the repertoire? I’m old enough to remember when Fleetwood Mac was mostly a blues band, with Peter Green on guitar. He was right up there with Clapton and Jeff Beck among the guitar gods of the UK in the ’60s. And even later, when Fleetwood Mac became a commercial juggernaut in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Lindsey Buckingham could unleash some amazing blues licks. So they always had a blues core.
That’s true. They always had great guitarists.

What was your familiarity with the Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac?
Before we started recording, I got to go back and revisit the Peter Green recordings. I’ve always known the name but to really go back and listen to him you can see why he influenced Clapton and Beck and so many others.

Did Mick suggest “Need Your Love So Bad” [a Little Willie John song from the mid-’50s that the Peter Green–led Fleetwood Mac recorded as a single in 1968]?
It was either Mick or my manager, Van Fletcher. We’d all have these discussions about songs we might play. We’d talked about Jeff Beck’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers.” And then there was “Whiter Shade of Pale,” which I think Mick mentioned first. He was saying to me, “Next time you go to play in the UK, that would be a great song for you. It’s like an anthem when you play that there.” And I’ve always loved that tune. 

The reason we did “Songbird” is we were in the studio, and Christine’s birthday was coming up and we wanted to do something. We didn’t know if it was going to be for the album or not, or if it was going to be a one-off, but we wanted to do something special. Even though it’s so different than the other tracks. It was such a special moment. You could just tell that Mick was in another world when we did that. I remember after we finished, he was telling us that he could feel Christine’s presence with us in the studio. That was incredibly powerful; we all had chicken skin [goosebumps].

The way “Rockin’ in the Free World” came about is we were in the studio and there was an organization producing a tribute recording for Neil Young, and they were contacting different artists to be part of it. And they contacted Van and suggested “Rockin’ in the Free World,” and Van said, “Actually he’s in the studio with Mick Fleetwood; maybe Mick could play on it, too.” And they were like, “Whaaat?” [laughs]. We asked Mick and he was fine with it, so we did it and really had a lot of fun with it.

What did you think when you heard they thought that was the song Jake Shimabukuro should do on a Neil Young tribute? It’s not one that would have jumped out at me.
[Laughs.] Yeah I don’t know if they were envisioning a more acoustic laid-back version, but when you’ve got Mick Fleetwood in the studio . . . . The energy he plays with is so inspiring. He’s the kind of musician who, when he steps into a band situation, makes everyone play better.

I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but you instantly know it’s Mick Fleetwood. 
He has this style of playing that’s unique. His feel. There’s a song on there called the “Kula Blues” [written by Jake] where he kicks into this shuffle and . . . oh, my goodness, I didn’t want that song to end! It was so much fun to play. And just watching him is such a joy. He’s so interactive and into it. He goes with you and he’ll also take you other places you might not be expecting. It’s such a big sound and such a huge presence. It was such an honor to play with him. I feel like I grew so much from the experience. 

How many takes of a given song would you typically do? 
Usually two or three. We’d run it down to get a feel, figure out the form, and go from there. “Songbird” was one take. “Whiter Shade of Pale” I think was a second take. The one that kind of sticks out to me is “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”—that’s the only one that wasn’t totally live, because we wanted Sonny Landreth on there. Sonny and I had actually talked about doing a duet record, and months before this opportunity with Mick came up, Sonny and I recorded a version of “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers,” just the two of us. And we thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to get Mick on this record?” But it would be hard to overdub drums, right? So when we got around to doing this album, Sonny wasn’t able to come to the sessions, so what we did was leave some space for him and sent him the track when we were done. And what he sent back on it was just amazing! He’s so gifted. He’s not just one of my favorite guitar players; he’s one of my favorite musicians. Everything he does is so musical, his phrasing. He has this rubber-band elasticity to his playing.

When you’re working out an arrangement in the studio, like on “Whiter Shade of Pale,” for instance, the first time through when you’re picking out the melody, it’s essentially clean and un-effected. Then for the second verse you’ve added some distortion and changed the picking style, and so on. Is that something you map out in advance or do you do it on the fly?
It was more of a feel thing. I did know that I wanted to have at least one or a couple of verses clean for some contrast. Because I think at that point there wasn’t any clean ukulele sound. The song or two we did before probably had a lot of heavy distortion and wah-wah stuff, so I wanted to maybe take a step back and go more to the clean sound. I think I wanted to maybe go back to the clean sound for the outro, but I just forgot [laughs]. You know, I just kind of go with the flow, and playing with Mick . . . He takes you into his zone and at that point you just try to keep up with him! Every take we did, he was brilliant.

Has anyone else mentioned that Albert King song, “I Want to Get Funky,” sounds a lot like the riff of Tom Petty’s “Breakdown”?
I haven’t heard that, but now that I think about it, I can see that. That was the first track we recorded the first day. I was so nervous! At that point, the Fleetwood Mac concert and the Maui concert were the only times Mick and I had really been face to face, other than the Hokus. So I was nervous about how the sessions were going to go. I was afraid that during the first song he might say, “Nah, I don’t think I want to do this!” My bassist, Jackson, was super nervous, and so was my buddy [keyboardist] Michael Grande. I think we had sort of psyched each other out and we were all stiff when we met Mick’s team. But then he was so nice and down to earth. When we came in he gave us all hugs and was saying, “Thanks so much for coming in; this should be fun!” He was very encouraging. But when I listen to that track I can tell it was before we all felt totally comfortable. There’s a different vibe from the rest of the tracks. Not like it’s good or bad or anything like that. It’s like we’re testing the waters. It’s got a slightly different groove and feel. But I like that contrast with the other tracks we recorded.

The two projects we had come off of—Friends and Grateful—were both collaborative projects—and we wanted that spontaneity, so we wanted the best takes rather than going back and overdubbing things and all that. Let’s go for the take; one that we’re all happy with.

One of the things I loved about this project is we were recording in the same room, just the four of us facing each other, and we just played. I remember when we were first mixing, the engineer isolated the ukulele track, especially when I’m cranking the distortion, and you can hear Mick’s drums going into the pickup of the ukulele! You can hear his drums going through my pedalboard, so whatever delays I’m using, or overdrives or wah or whatever I’m using, there’s another subtle layer of his drums that are going through all those effects, too. I thought it created this extra special magic. It’s subtle but it’s very cool. I think it makes it feel more live and real versus complete isolation of every instrument. It gels them together.

Might we see a tour with Mick?
Oh, I wish Mick could come out and do some shows with us! That would be—oh, my gosh! But realistically I think that will never happen. Hopefully we can put together a three- or four-piece and do a lot of songs from the record. Obviously no one can fill Mick’s shoes, but at least we can play the arrangements and the tunes and have some fun with it.

For me personally, to be able to have this opportunity to play with this icon, this legend, was very, very special—and something none of us will ever forget.