By day, Noel Tardy is a bookkeeper. She’s got a knack for numbers and is skilled at keeping records. She wears black and red-framed glasses, which make her look a little serious and a little studious. Pretty much how you might imagine a bookkeeper to look. But that’s really not Noel. The “real” Noel emerges after the books are put away and the nine-to-five job is complete.
The real Noel wears bright, flowery, Hawaiian shirts. She’s soft-spoken and smiley and not so very serious. The real Noel is known around Lake Highlands for her unique musical passion. She even has a moniker for herself.
Noel Tardy is the Ukulele Lady of Texas. But you can just call her the UkeLady.
The Preston Hollow native knew early on that music was her thing. A natural musician, Noel focused primarily on the violin from elementary to high school but also played a variety of other instruments.
“I’d drag home new instruments every week. I’d have a trombone one week and a tuba the next, trying to find what I liked and my mom would just shake her head and say ‘Oh no, what’s she bringing home this week,” Tardy laughed.
Her zest for music remained even after the teenage years. In college, she majored in music, with an emphasis on the classical guitar. She sang in the Women’s Chorus of Dallas for over a decade. But it wasn’t until a vacation in 2002 that she discovered her fondness for the ukulele, an instrument that would eventually become an integral part of her life in so many ways.
“I made a number of trips to Hawaii from the time I was in high school until 2002 and I never got involved with the music, although I loved it, I loved listening to it. I had already decided before a trip in 2002 that I was going to get a ukulele and hopefully get some lessons while I was there. And I did,” she said.
When she returned home Noel realized there might be a slight problem with learning the ukulele. She quickly found out that it wasn’t a common instrument in North Texas. But after some heavy-duty Internet searching, she found a ukulele club that met at the White Rock Sports Bar. The group, Dallas Ukulele Headquarters, which started out with just five or six people, grew quickly as the ukulele increased in popularity.
“All of a sudden, a few years ago, we really started putting more out on the Internet, we started having workshops and meet-ups and now we have 470 people in the meet-up groups,” she said. “We keep expecting the number of ukulele players to drop down, but it’s not, it’s getting bigger and bigger.”
Not only was the ukulele growing in popularity across Texas, it was also becoming increasingly more important in Noel’s life. She began to ponder ways to start incorporating her passion for the “uke” into her own life more and also into the lives of others.
After a chat with fellow musician and club member, Gina Volpe, the two decided to open a ukulele shop. Volpe owns an embroidery business, Keep U-N Stitches, and had “always wanted to have a music store.” Keep U-N Stitches, located in the Lake Highlands Village Shopping Center, was already the perfect location.
“That whole space, the corner, was full of garage sale clutter and I said, ‘We can make a store right there and so we did. We’ve had the store open about a year and a half now,” Tardy said.
UkeLady’s Music Store, still nestled inside the embroidery shop, continues to do well. The moderately-priced ukuleles can’t come in fast enough, Tardy said. “They’ve been on back-order on and off for a year at times.” Noel does her bookkeeping job from Monday to Thursday each week and devotes Friday and Saturday to selling ukuleles. The store also holds a song circle and free starter class once a month.
Even with that “sensible” bookkeeper background, the store is more about sharing her love for the ukulele rather than making big sales. Last year she founded “Ukes in the Classroom,” a non-profit organization devoted to teaching music literacy the “ukulele way.” Four North Texas schools are already taking part in the program, and Noel has donated ukuleles to each one. The program uses music to bridge the gaps between generations, rebuild family life, and keep kids out of trouble.
“One of our Dallas schools that we already have ukes in, the teacher told me this last year that if it hadn’t been for the program, she thinks one of her students would already be in a gang,” Tardy said.
Ukuleles, though they are the perfect-sized instruments for little fingers, aren’t just for students. Noel said members of the Dallas Ukulele Headquarters club range from kids to 80-year-olds. Knowing the instrument’s appeal to musicians of all ages, Noel created the Lone Star Uke Fest several years ago.
“We were kind of in ukulele deprivation as far as having professional people available to teach in our area, so I started bringing in well-known players to the uke community and we’d just have them here for a day or a weekend and I started going to some uke festivals in other parts of the country and I thought, ‘we need one here,’” she said.
The third annual Lone Star Uke Festival took place in April this year, and included workshops, songwriter contests, and special performances by two of the schools participating in “Ukes in the Classroom.”
“The cool thing is that the experienced players will sit beside someone who is not as experienced and help them. A lot of guitar groups are kind of snooty, but ukulele people are not like that,” she said. “The people we bring in to do workshops are the most sharing and friendly people I’ve ever seen with their talents.”
There must be something in that sweet, gentle music. Just like her fellow musicians, Noel is constantly trying to inspire people of all ages to discover the joys of playing the ukulele. She’ll use whatever way she can, whether it be through her business, her non-profit or one of the festivals to motivate others.
“The main thing is I do is encourage anybody who has never played an instrument but who has always had the desire, to do it. No matter what their age is, they can learn the ukulele,” she said.