In an attempt to drag the ukulele out of its twee ghetto, Rob Pachol has joined up with guitarist Jason Eastwood to create a ten string, nylon-strung duo they call The Incidentals. Their music sounds somewhat like:
-forgotten NFB soundtracks
-Sabbath Bloody Sabbath reimagined by The Friendly Giant
-John Fahey contemplating Steve Reich in miniature
Recognizing that those descriptions are pretty twee in themselves, we could also go with what we don’t sound like:
-a Prius commercial
-banana pancakes around a campfire
-whatever else first comes to mind when you think of ukulele with a guitar
(Jason Eastwood started playing in professional “polka” bands and teaching guitar in Winnipeg’s North End while in high school. After two seven year stints away from his hometown - one in British Columbia where he was the principle songwriter and guitarist in the “collage rock” band DisasterMan - one in Halifax where he took over as a guitar instructor at Dalhousie University from Don Ross - Jason returned to Winnipeg to dedicate himself to his compositions and projects such as
Guitarfulness.com, a site dedicated to his own style of ambient classical guitar music.
Rob Pachol has been a fixture on the Winnipeg music scene for many years now, genre-hopping with his guitar as a sideman for a multitude of acts.
In 2010, Rob decided to put his attention towards the underdog of all stringed instruments, the ukulele. His youtube channel (Sanfordandsong) is dedicated to stretching the repertoire of the tiny four-string, and many of his videos have been featured on Ukulele Hunt, the web’s most popular ukulele appreciation site, including Ukulele Video of the Year in 2013. )