Kevin Carroll
Bio
Kevin Carroll, the founder of edUKEcation.com, is a world-class performing and recording artist, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who has toured the globe with Americana artists including the Flatlanders (Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock), Jimmy LaFave, Alejandro Escovedo, Robyn Ludwick, Charlie and Bruce Robison, and more. His chosen instrument is the ukulele.
Certified by—and soon hired on as an instructor within—the esteemed James Hill Ukulele Initiative Teacher Certification Program, he’s also a protégé of Hill himself.
Kevin’s love of stringed instruments had long been a calling and a career when a chronic shoulder injury sent him into a physical therapy office in 2011 and the therapist offered a trade of PT services in exchange for ukulele lessons for his daughter. That marked a serendipitous turning point in Kevin’s appreciation for the diminutive instrument and the people who play it: as quoted in a 2014 Austin American-Statesman profile penned by Michael Barnes, he says, “I learned more in three years from uke players than I did in 30 years from guitar players.”
The Statesman-coined “Pied Piper of the Ukulele” grew up in Boise, Idaho, extending his Midwestern roots down to Texas when he moved to the Live Music Capital of the World in the 1990s with bandmates hoping to pursue a career in song. Thirty years, multiple world tours and several acclaimed recording projects later, Kevin’s musical camaraderie lends itself to edUKEcation.com, where the world’s top ukulele composers and arrangers offer a broad but exclusive collection of thoughtfully-arranged sheet music for ukulele players at every level.
Based in Austin, Kevin also teaches group and individual uke lessons, specializing in Celtic, blues, improvisation, chord melody, jazz, arranging, and instruction; in conjunction with his classes, he leads a local “ukestra” ensemble. He has taught at ukulele festivals and workshops around the world, authored four books of ukulele arrangements, and continues to expand his offerings through edUKEcation.com.