I just returned from a truly inspiring day in North Wales where I met Pete Howlett and his assistant Tommy Ziegenspeck in North Wales. One of the reasons for the visit was to interview them both for Uke Magazine. This was such a fascinating meeting for so many reasons that it’s actually tough for me not to preempt the final article and reveal all here, but with some restraint I will save the full story for Matt Warnes excellent ukulele magazine and instead give a taster of my observations from this trip.
I came across Pete’s work last year when Phil Doleman was kind enough to let me play his Howlett during one of our meetings. I was immediately impressed by how well it played and how great it sounded. As I played it I thought “Bugger, I’m going to have to get one of these” and immediately commissioned an eight string baritone which I’ll be collecting this year. I confess to being somewhat sonically obsessed and have played a LOT of ukuleles. Most of time I think either “yes it’s ok” or other thoughts perhaps not suitable for print, but its very rare that I within minutes am totally seduced by the instrument at hand. Its even rarer to buy an instrument having never actually played it at all and the only time I have to date ever done this was with the Pete Howlett Makore which I blogged about here
My wife and I arrived at the workshop early Saturday at the workshop which is at the foot of a quite breathtaking mountain. I had planned for a couple of hours to interview both Pete and Tommy as I was mindful that it was the weekend and I didn’t want to intrude on their private time. We actually stayed for hours and quite frankly I could have kept going if it wasn’t for having to get back to Leeds for other commitments. This generosity is reflected massively in many other ways including working with Uke magazine to offer a Howlett to a non professional deserving player. Pete describes Tommy as “a luthier” and himself as “an artisan” and with some degree of humour today reconfirms this on Facebook –
“Just so you know – there is only one luthier working at Pete Howlett Ukulele; his name is Tom Ziegenspeck. Pete is an artisan builder, autodidact who by doing has become multiskilled across a range of disciplines. I think he could say with absolute assurance he is leading Tommy gradually astray down the artisan pathway… smile emoticon Let’s hope they both don’t get lost and one of them has the sense to keep their phone fully charged and the other brings a torch!”
Tommy is in his own right a skilled builder and brought some of his instruments for us to see. It was interesting to note the differences between these and Pete’s designs. Tommy’s ukuleles are extremely well made, but noticeably heavier than the Howletts. Tommy is also a very accomplished player and during our interaction when Tommy had one of Pete’s ukuleles in hand Pete shouted out “Jake it Tommy!” Tommy then proceeded to play “While my guitar gently weeps” with some relish and this highlighted that the Howletts are not only great sonically but also are exceptional in that they play evenly across the whole fret board. Pete is also a really good player and talked about his love for the blues, so I would have been happy to spend a day on that one subject alone.
One of the things that struck me and I’ll highlight in the Uke magazine article is that this is a magical combination of skills. I talked about this convergence as somewhat surreal, Pete described it as “bizarre!” The chances of a German bagpipe playing luthier who is focused on making ukuleles meeting up with an artisan at the foot of the Welsh mountains is in my view highly unlikely to say the least, but it’s undoubtedly a winning combination of talent. I was also struck by the fact that when I asked about what makes for creating a great instrument Pete talked at length about a greater inspiration along with technical skills and wood choices. I immediately was transported back to my interview with Takahiro Shimo, an excellent ukulele builder from Tokyo who said much the same thing. I was also struck by the constant references to the importance of detail when building an instrument and it was clear to me that both Tommy and Pete love their work and this translates into producing some truly remarkable instruments. I highly recommend checking out Pete’s site http://petehowlettukulele.co.uk/ and checking out his FB group page as well as his YouTube channel.
