Lodi campground welcomes back annual ukulele festival starting Sunday (2024)

Hearing a ukulele might make people picture a tropical Hawaiian beach lined with palm trees, but starting Sunday the harmonious sounds of the miniature string instrument will echo through evergreen trees surrounding a campground in Lodi.

“Our goal for this event is to have adults remember what it’s like to play,” said Marcia Standiford, co-organizer of the Holy Smokey Ukulele Festival. “And not just play ukulele. We want people to experience what it’s like to be a kid again while also playing high quality music in a highly supportive environment.”

“Everybody is welcome, and there is always someone more than willing to help people learn anything,” said co-organizer Wendy Smith. “It’s a close-knit, loving community. ... And you could get any kind of music. From 1920 to 2024, there is no telling what you could hear.”

An event for people to gather as friends and share their love for ukuleles while learning from each other and jamming out together with their instruments, the fourth annual Holy Smokey Ukulele Festival will take place Sunday through Thursday at the Smokey Hollow Campground, W9935 McGowan Road.

About 40 ukulele enthusiasts from around the country will reunite to take over a section of the campground for the four-day event.

A number of workshops will be offered where people can fine tune their uke skills, which include song memorization, learning barre cords, riffs, licks and hooks, and writing songs, which Standiford and Smith will be leading.

There will also be various secret group challenges in which uke players will be assigned partners to win prizes. Attendees also will have a chance to win a number of uke-related items through a raffle.

And of course, no ukelele festival is complete without open mic hours and campfire singalongs, which will end each night, the pair said.

Cabins, tent or RV camping and a variety of other accommodations are available at an off-season rate, and the festival is free for those who attend for a day but don’t stay overnight.

To reserve a spot at the special rate, people can call Smokey Hollow at 608-635-4806 and leave a message with their information.

Festival origins

Standiford worked for about 16 years in the Madison School District as manager of imedia production, community engagement and public information as well as communications coordinator, and was later an executive assistant to the dean of UW-Madison’s School of Education.

Growing up, she always loved music and sang in her school’s choir, but never really played an instrument until she found the ukulele, she said.

“Once I picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down,” Standiford said. “My husband used to joke and say he was a widow, because I would come from work and go right to playing the ukulele. ... He would eventually go to sleep, and I would still be playing. It was so much fun.”

Her retirement probably came a few years early, Standiford said, as she wanted more time for ukulele jam sessions with her friends, many of whom were already retired and eager for her to join them.

Now, about 10 years after picking up the instrument, she plays in shows all over the state and Midwest, and owns about 10 ukuleles, she said.

Smith was a banker in the Madison area for more than 40 years and had played guitar growing up, so when she retired from banking, she was excited to have more time to play, she said.

But finding the guitar bulky and heavy for her to consistently lug around and strum, she decided to give the ukulele a try and discovered free lessons being offered at a guitar center in Madison.

Already having a background in guitar, she said the class was an interesting experience because she probably could’ve taught the class.

But while she played along with others in the class, a man overheard her playing pretty well, she said, and told her about a group of ukulele enthusiasts called the Madison Area Ukulele Initiative (MAUI).

During Smith’s first class with MAUI, she met Standiford, who had forgotten her music book that night. The two sat next to each other and shared Smith’s book. They started harmonizing, and said they immediately knew there was something there.

About five years later, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, the pair was searching for a place to be outdoors with friends in order to play music and kind of be away from society, so Smokey Hollow’s campground was perfect, they said.

They found the campground was almost completely empty, as it was just after the summer season. They then had an idea.

“We sought that feeling of camaraderie through a love for music,” Standiford said. “And we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole bunch of people here to all play together?’”

And that’s exactly what they did. The next year, they invited about 40 people to the first year of what would become Holy Smokey Ukulele Festival.

Easy to learn

It’s generally pretty easy for people to learn how to play the uke, Standiford said, as it’s a small instrument without much weight to it, and typically only has four strings with a couple of cords, so chord changes and progressions are much easier to do.

There are also four different sizes of ukuleles people can choose from: baritone, tenor, concert and soprano.

While the pair has played just about every type of ukulele, Smith prefers to play a baritone uke, because its strings are set up similar to a guitar, while Standiford prefers to play a concert uke because she enjoys the size and sound of the instrument, they said.

Standiford and Smith have tried their hands at passing along their love for the instrument through giving instructions and lessons, which they enjoyed, but both agreed they would just rather play live gigs or jam with friends, they said.

“To me it’s no fun to practice, practice, practice, and never show anybody,” Smith said with a laugh.

With all of the live shows the pair has played together, their biggest crowd was about 800 people at the Ukulele World Congress in Nashville, Indiana.

Standiford said psychological research has found that playing music is great for the brain and helps people to stay on their toes cognitively.

But aside from the benefits to the brain, the pair said the community that ukulele players form is really what makes the biggest impact on people.

“There are a number of people that we’ve met who said ukulele has truly saved their lives,” Standiford said. “They were isolated, depressed, and they picked up the uke, and that all suddenly changed. ... Because they found their people.”

Along with smaller gigs the pair plays together, they also play in a band along with two other people called 3 Ukes and a Bass. The band travels around the state and Midwest playing a full range of music, most recently at Beatlefest in Spring Green on Labor Day.

Smith said her goal for the group is to be able to play more gigs, and she already has her eyes set on a few venues where she wants the group to play.

“Playing together is the best thing in the world,” Smith said. “There is nothing I enjoy doing more than playing the ukulele and singing with our band.”