Steel City Ukuleles club expanding to Butler County
It didn’t take long for Paul Ruzomberka and Edward Smith to become fast friends when the pair met at the Allegheny Ukulele Soiree, held annually in Altoona.
Ruzomberka, who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, is a longtime member of the Steel City Ukuleles, which brings together ukulele enthusiasts from all over the Greater Pittsburgh Area.
The club, which has more than 800 members, hosts several meetings a month at five locations, all in Allegheny County.
Since Ruzomberka lives in Valencia and Smith lives in Butler Township, the drive to those monthly jam sessions was starting to become a burden.
The friendship that blossomed between the two men at the festival back in April led to a solution and will provide Butler County with one of its newest clubs.
They are the lead coordinators of what will be the Butler area branch of Steel City Ukuleles.
“There have been a couple of attempts to bring clubs like this to the Butler area,” Smith said. “We’ve just been working to find a good location. We think we now have really good partners with the Pittsburgh-Butler airport authority.”
Now that the two have a location, they have been working on growing the club’s membership through word-of-mouth and with online advertisements.
“I’ve talked to several people, including my son’s music teacher down at May’s Music Shoppe,” Smith said. “They were all very interested in seeing a group come to this area. We’re certainly hoping to see them become regular members of our crew here in Butler, just getting together to play music and have a great time.”
The pair is attempting to follow the model of the main branch of the club, which typically boasts six to eight events a month, with roughly 15 to 25 members attending each event, according to Smith.
Both men said they have become passionate about playing an instrument that became popular in Hawaii in the late 1800s and best resembles a smaller version of a guitar.
Ruzomberka, 71, was already accustomed to playing guitar before he picked up his first ukulele in 2015, while on his way to vacation in Florida with his wife.
“We were going down to Florida, and I didn’t take my guitar with me. We stopped in Hilton Head, S.C., for a week, and I went to the music store to rent a guitar,” Ruzomberka said. “The owner (of the music store) talked me into buying a ukulele.”
“What really changed my whole perspective was that I was always playing it individually. I didn’t really know anything different, but when I heard about this club and went to one of their meetups, I realized that I wanted to do that.”
Similarly, it has become an enjoyable pastime for Smith, who has introduced his daughter to the ukulele.
“It’s become a bit of a hobby for my daughter and myself, and it’s gotten to the point where we are really focused on this,” added Smith. “The rest of our family is focused on their own instruments, so we all have something that we like to play.”
Since the two are separated in age by roughly 20 years, their preferred genres reflect the music they grew up listening to.
Smith said he gravitates toward ’90s rock, while Ruzomberka describes himself as more akin to ’60s and ’70s classic rock, soft rock and folk music.
Both men also stressed how easy it is to learn to play a number of songs with the ukulele. It’s just one of the reasons why they encourage anyone with an interest in music to pick up a ukulele.
“I actually think it’s very easy to learn,” Smith said. “As someone who has played multiple instruments, including guitar and piano, I just find it very simple. It’s less strings, which makes it much easier for people to learn and remember shapes. It’s why a lot of schools have begun to adopt ukuleles in their music programs, and they’ve replaced instruments like recorders.”
Ruzomberka echoed that sentiment in regards to the speed in which one can pick up on the intricacies of playing a ukulele versus other string instruments.
“With the ukulele, you basically learn three or four patterns, which are called chords, and you can suddenly play 20 or 30 songs,” Ruzomberka said. “You very quickly can have a positive result versus frustrating lessons and sore fingers from pushing down on the strings of other instruments.”
More important than even playing the instrument, Ruzomberka said the ability to socialize and build friendships through this kind of club is one of the main reasons he had a desire to start it.
“One part of it is playing, but I found the other part is the social side,” added Ruzomberka. “You can be with a group of people playing and singing a song together. There aren’t a lot of instruments where you can get a group of people together. There’s so many different genres of music that everybody seems to find the type of music they like. There’s enough crossover that when we get together, we can pick songs that everyone has fun playing and singing.”
The club plans on holding evening meetings on the first and third Thursdays of each month and will always be open to new members.
This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 8, to correct the last name of Paul Ruzomberka. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated an incorrect spelling of his last name.
