Features : Once a guitarist for a popular jam band, musician and teacher Mark Femino gives the ukulele a makeover on new rock single

It was about a decade ago that professional musician and teacher Mark Femino was handed a ukulele, and his light-hearted exploration of the instrument went from frivolous fun to a full-fledged 15-song album, The Flea Jumpin’ Juke Joint.

Now the Boston native, a multi-instrumentalist who has written songs on guitar, piano, bass and mandolin, is back with ukulele in hand for his new single, “Yesterday I Sang For You.”

“At first I didn’t realize the scope of the instrument,” Femino says. “There’s so much you can do with it but it was definitely like what am I doing with this thing at first. It was pretty versatile and it hit me like a ton of bricks––shit, this thing is cool. I’m not trying to market myself as the ukulele guy, but you’re not finding too many ukulele songs out there, especially ones with a pretty rocking solo in the middle of it.”

But Femino has done just that, and his newest song is very much a ukulele rock track, though listeners could be forgiven for not realizing it at first. It’s a hard-edged and captivating tune, and yes, it features a rocking––and quite impressive––ukulele solo.

Femino was an active touring musician in the 90’s with his jam band, Blind Man’s Sun, which sold roughly 10,000 albums and played frequently around the Northeast. He embarked on a solo career in the early 2000’s and released the EP The Light and The Dark (Chiaroscuro), after which one reviewer likened Femino to a cross between Paul Simon and Sting and noted his “youthful exuberance.”

After performing on the ABC Weekend Morning Show to an audience of 500,000, Femino became a father in 2003 and got into teaching, conducting, and directing choir. And then came a fateful invitation from his parents to sit in for their ukulele club meeting.

“I’ve been a professional guitar player for a long time and I said I don’t know anything about the ukulele,” Femino recalls. “They said just come along anyway, you probably know what you’re doing. I went in and started playing and I had a lot of facility on the instrument already because it’s so similar to guitar and the chords. Then they got me one for Christmas and I just thought it was a silly thing. I was playing Metallica riffs on it, but it opened up a Pandora's box of songs.”

He followed up his ukulele album with the 2020 release Femi La Bouche, an adventure combining “a singer-songwriter’s sensibility with hip hop and electronic beats,” and released the hard rock album Ferilus in 2022 and the more acoustic project These Are the Moments in 2023.

Now, some 30 years after getting his start, Femino describes himself as a seasoned, realized musician at the peak of his musicianship.

“I’m 50, and you think about the musician you’re going to become when you’re young,” he says. “I am the musician that I was going to become, for better or for worse. At this stage of my life I still have all my abilities and I can still deliver it the way I always could but I’m a little bit more refined at this stage.”

While Femino is busy recording and polishing his catalog of roughly 150 songs, he’s still a prolific writer, too, and “Yesterday I Sang For You” is a new creation. It’s also one of the newest releases from his next project, a collection of songs he plans to release individually over the coming months.

The newest single serves as a nod to the Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken.”

Oh yes there were two roads diverging
And yes I chose which path to take
Though I chose the one less traveled by
Not sure what difference did it make

“The song’s going to be a little bit darker but it really has a positive message at the end,” Femino says. He sings on the chorus:

Oh yesterday I sang for you
But tomorrow never comes
Want nothing more than to seize today
Find acceptance and move on

“It’s more a song about choosing the road less traveled, wondering if it actually made a difference, and finding acceptance in life,” he says.

Femino, of course, still finds time to pick up his guitar––and, it turns out, Blind Man’s Sun isn’t finished. The group just flew to Los Angeles for a reunion that fans begged them to put together after the members previously broke up, “like a lot of bands, in the midst of artistic turmoil,” Femino says.

One fan in particular decided to fund the reunion, put the group up in a mansion, and the members got back on stage at a backyard festival in front of as many as 500 audience members.

“After 25 years, it blew my mind,” Femino says. “I was not really having any expectations other than to get through this and we had fans come. Had a guy with a band tattoo on his shoulder, people wearing old tour shirts. People showed up and were singing along with the songs. And now the train is rolling.”

Blind Man’s Sun will perform a Brooklyn show on Dec. 20.

Femino is also publishing a children’s book called Freddie The King later this year, inspired by a song of the same title he wrote with a second grade class.

“I’m very proud to be a working musician,” he says. “I teach at a school, play gigs, and teach ukulele on the side; I’ve also been a father for 21 years. I’ve been through a lot and I’m still holding my head up as a musician and trying to contribute music to the world.”

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