Buke & Gase are hanging up their self-made instruments for good. The duo of Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez became cult favorites making fascinating experimental rock music using bespoke instruments of their own making: the buke (a six-string former-baritone ukulele) and the gase (a hybrid guitar-bass). They've been collaborating since the early 2000s and doing it as Buke & Gase since 2008, but they're ending the group after a pair of farewell shows in April.
As Dyer explains in a statement, factors for ending the band include personal family changes (she's pregnant!) and the economic realities of a modern music business where the musicians themselves struggle to get paid. Here's that statement:
Buke and Gase!
How I love thee,
Let me count the ways…
Oh wait, no. That time signature is way too convoluted.Thanks for reading Arone Dyer's Cornucopia! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
My Buke & Gase collaborator Aron Sanchez and I have been in each other’s worlds for a while now, nearing twenty-six years! We’ve traveled a lot, much like a family, or perhaps more than a typical family. And we’ve become family because of it. And now it’s time to break up that family, and start our own…
Case in point: I’m pregnant! Which means big (welcome) changes.
I’m sitting here trying to write a blurb explaining why we, Buke and Gase, are throwing in the towel, and it’s annoying to admit, but the income-factor is a part of it. Everywhere we go, music is being played in the background, and somehow the money for that usage never reaches the people who create the art. Streaming has made the selling of albums nearly impossible! And now artists have to contend with AI? Really? Is this what the kids are into? (More like what a small number of money-making adults are forcing upon all of us.) Do you really want to listen to music made by…let’s be real, it’s not Intelligence, but Artificial IMITATION? Pah! Mere mimicry! (I feel like I need to note that no AI was utilized to write this.)
I digress.
And yet: we love our fans. We want to share our energy with you one last time. Or two or three last times. Brooklyn and Hudson are both places that are essential to our story—the former is where we met; the latter is where we both ended up living by the early 2010s.
So we’re calling this our New York farewell!
Let us give you a warm hug goodbye.
Buke & Gase were the subject of a documentary in 2023, and I recommend clicking around their catalog if you've never checked them out. Best of luck to them in parenthood.
TOUR DATES:
04/16 - Brooklyn, New York @ Public Records
04/25 - Hudson, New York @ The Half Moon
