“Kitchenette” may be one of the more unconventional tracks on Charissa Hoffman’s debut album, but it also nicely sums up what she’s been trying to convey about her chosen instrument for years. A Nashville native and sixth-generation musician, Hoffman picked up the ukulele as a young songwriter and ran with it, stubbornly resisting any suggestion that it was a stepping stone to guitar. That commitment eventually took her to Boston, where she became the first ukulele principal accepted at Berklee College Of Music.
On Horizon, Hoffman pushes the instrument well beyond its typical associations. Produced by acclaimed multi-instrumentalist John Mailander (Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers, Billy Strings), it features guest appearances from Béla Fleck, Abigail Washburn, Chris Eldridge and Nina de Vitry. But the album’s virtuosity is largely a vehicle for a personal journey that’s seen Hoffman reconsider her family’s Southern Baptist faith even as she examines a musical lineage that encompasses a century and a half. Among the most telling artifacts that have made their way to Hoffman: a fiddle that once belonged to a great-grandfather who was forced to abandon music at age 12 for work in the coal mines.
Horizon’s latest single, “Kitchenette,” is its sole instrumental. Built specifically around the ukulele’s reentrant tuning and rapid-fire picking techniques, the song travels effortlessly from its tense, contemplative starting point toward a brighter, more exuberant place—perhaps the sort of place she’d imagine for her great-grandfather.
“The more I thought about it, the more I felt it was emblematic of the project,” Hoffman says of the song. “It showcases the ukulele in a different light. And it may not have words, but I hope it puts a boogie in your butt.”
We’re proud to premiere Charissa Hoffman’s “Kitchenette.” The self-released Horizon is out October 30.
—Hobart Rowland
See Charissa Hoffman live.
