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December 20, 2004

Stringed victory | Joel Eckhaus has found his niche in the weird world of ukuleles

By Taylor Smith
For many, hearing the plucked nylon strings of a ukulele instantly conjures Hawaiian beaches and perfect surf, grassy hula skirts and Don Ho. But to hear South Portland resident Joel Eckhaus pick his ukulele brings other images to mind. From Tin Pan Alley tunes to blues stomps, Eckhaus' approach to the ukulele is decidedly unconventional, more rooted in traditional American music than in the kitschy Hawaiian stylings that often pigeonhole the instrument.

In fact, Eckhaus, 53, has made a living by embracing the unconventional. His company, South Portland-based Earnest Uncommon Musical Instruments, specializes in handcrafting some of the more obscure members of the stringed instrument family. The company has pumped out ukuleles, mandolins and tenor guitars off and on since 1976; these days Eckhaus' customers are as likely to buy a straight-ahead traditional acoustic ukulele as a wildly colored electric tenor guitar in the shape of a scaled-down Gibson Flying V. "Part of my success is that I build unusual stuff," he says. "I have unusual designs, and I don't have any competition for things like electric tenor guitars."

The company was, for Eckhaus, a way to turn his love of playing music and tinkering with instruments into a full-time gig. As a musician, he had traveled all over the Northeast and beyond playing old-time string band music with a number of different groups. But Eckhaus, a White Plains, N.Y., native who in the early 70s was living in Vermont, found that he could never earn enough playing to survive without part-time jobs driving buses or working construction. "I was trying to figure out what kind of work I wanted to do and thought that instruments seemed pretty cool," he says.

Eckhaus took his decision to become a luthier ˆ— a builder of stringed instruments ˆ— seriously, and in 1973 enrolled in a woodworking program at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology, where he worked with James Krenov, a world-renowned woodworker. Later that year, he returned to Vermont for an apprenticeship at Tourin Musica in Jericho, where he furthered his skills under the tutelage of Peter Tourin, a builder of harpsichords and viola da gambas.

In 1976, Eckhaus built his first mandolin at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, W.V. during a five-week intensive course, and, after returning home to Williston, Vt., hung the shingle for Earnest Uncommon Musical Instruments. (The name, Eckhaus explains, comes from a customer he worked with at Musica Tourin who had named his Regal Octophone octave mandolin Ernest: "I thought that was a good name," he says. "I didn't think Eckhaus would be that good a name for the business.")

The company during the first few years primarily sold Eckhaus' handmade mandolins, but, as his interest in the ukulele grew in the early 1980s, the instrument became an increasingly large part of the Earnest family of instruments. He moved to Maine in 1981, living in Brunswick and Litchfield and landing a job building guitars with Lewiston-based luthier Dana Bourgeois. At Bourgeois' shop, Eckhaus had the space and equipment to continue building Earnest instruments. But tiring of the demands of building guitars in a relatively high-production environment, Eckhaus in 1987 moved to the Portland area and set up his own shop in South Portland.

Eckhaus admits that the instruments he specializes in are unusual, but he also says the focus on ukuleles, mandolins and tenor guitars helps keep his company from becoming just another name in the well-populated world of guitar makers. And as obscure as the instruments are, Eckhaus says he's seen a resurgence in the popularity of ukuleles, mandolins and tenor guitars. The instruments, he says, are definitely finding their way into the mainstream: Neo-folkie Ani DiFranco and indie rocker Neko Case both have made tenor guitars part of their repertoire, and mandolins have experienced a renaissance in recent years thanks to a renewed interest in bluegrass and traditional music.

The ukulele, however, has been a surprisingly big growth story in recent years. "Instruments come and go in fashion," he says. "There are jazz ukulele players, Hawaiian ukulele players and punk ukulele players. It's really flourishing now." In fact, even Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder a few years ago contacted Eckhaus to build him a custom electric ukulele.

Business vs. art
Earnest instruments range from $350 for a cigar-box ukulele ˆ— the body of which sports an honest-to-god wooden cigar box ˆ— to more than $6,000 for an archtop tenor guitar, which boasts a hand-carved body and a gleaming sunburst nitrocellulose lacquer finish. But Eckhaus says ukuleles and mandolins, which carry price tags of between $1,000 and $2,000, are the most popular instruments he sells.

All told, Eckhaus sells about 30 instruments a year ˆ— give or take a uke or two ˆ— to customers around the world. His marketing strategy, he says, is to "go where the players are," and every year he travels to events like Uke Expo, an annual gathering of ukulele aficionados, to promote his wares. "A lot of my sales are to people I've never met before," he says, adding that he ships instruments to customers all around the world.

While Eckhaus knows the market could handle a much larger supply of ukuleles, he's reluctant to expand his business to satisfy that demand. For starters, he likes being able to guide the construction of an instrument from start to finish. Each ukulele, mandolin and tenor guitar is still made largely by hand. The shop's walls are lined with well-worn jigs ˆ— wooden forms that help bend thin strips of wood into the instruments' curved sides. Belt sanders and routers sit in the middle of the floor, and hand tools and wood clamps are scattered over workbenches and hung on the walls.

But Eckhaus, who teaches woodworking and instrument building courses at Maine College of Art in Portland, also worries that his business skills aren't sharp enough to handle a faster-paced rate of production; he jokes that sound business practices rarely get in the way of his artistic endeavors. But despite his reservations about his management skills, Eckhaus constantly toys with strategies to make the company more efficient. He often hands off finishing work to Steve Ryder, a fellow electric mandolin builder who shares space in Eckhaus' high-ceilinged South Portland shop. Ryder sprays on finish coats of paint, varnish or lacquer in a ventilated booth tucked away in a corner of the shop. And Eckhaus recently enlisted Kris Eckhardt, a skilled machinist and musician, to crank out a handful of instrument bodies. (The pair also are working in tandem to create a whammy bar for Eckhaus' line of electric ukuleles.)

In recent months Eckhaus also has been outsourcing the manufacturing of some instrument components to Joe Monbleau, a craftsman who runs Maverick Precision Wood Products in Turner. Monbleau uses a computer numerical control, or CNC, machine to carve out in just a few minutes electric ukulele bodies and other parts that would take Eckhaus hours of routing, chiseling and chopping to complete. After his experiences working with Monbleau, Eckhaus says he's toyed with the idea of having instruments made overseas, then shipped back to South Portland for the final touches. (That strategy, he explains, is much more attractive than building a stateside factory to bump up production.)

Despite his occasional expansionist leanings, Eckhaus seems fairly certain that he'll keep the business running the same way ˆ— and at the same size ˆ— that it's been for the past 28 years. After all, he figures that growing bigger would just take him away from the workbench and thrust him into the role as businessman. "I subscribe to the 'small is beautiful' school of economics," he says. "I've definitely got more of an artistic nature than a business nature. I just like to make things."

Earnest Uncommon Musical Instruments

South Portland

Owner: Joel Eckhaus

Founded: 1976

Product: Handcrafted ukuleles, mandolins and tenor guitars

Employees: One

Revenues, 2003: $30,000

Contact: 799-9788

www.earnestinstruments.com

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