Ululate. The word means to howl, or wail. Well, there will be a whole lot of howling and wailing going on Saturday night July 29 when the Ululators reunite in a concert at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, 25 years after theit last gig here on Martha’s Vineyard.
Paul Thurlow, Stephen Hart, Jimmy Parr, Sam Holmstock and Rick Bausman formed the Ululators and burst onto a somewhat moribund Island music scene in 1989, first drawing large crowds for self-produced shows in venues like the Grange Hall, the Katharine Cornell Theatre, and the Chilmark Community Center, then filling larger rooms like the Hot Tin Roof and the Atlantic Connection.
Saturday night, they’re getting the band back together.
“We’re going to have a really good time, Mr. Bausman said. “Just let it rip like we used to.”
The Ululators play music that is hard to label. Heavy on percussion, it also features electric guitars, keyboards, and horns. It is definitely rock and roll, but it’s more.
“We ended up calling it world rock,” Mr. Thurlow said. “We used to get billed as a Reggae band, but we weren’t really a Reggae band.”
Whatever it was, it was popular.
“I really think it was the energy,” Mr. Bausman said. “Our vocals aren’t technically perfect and a lot of the stuff that we do isn’t necessarily what you would expect from music school graduates, but we had tremendous energy. We played a lot of stuff at a really fast tempo, and just put everything we had into everything we did. It’s got influences everywhere from Caribbean stuff to West African influences to Celtic influences. We just decided to call it world rock because there wasn’t really any better way to describe it.”
The Chilmark Community Center shows became legendary. As word spread of the Ululators growing popularity, Island crowds sometimes overwhelmed the venues.
One night, an estimated 800 people showed up in Chilmark.
“Those were the shows that really blew up,” Mr. Parr said. “Those were just a sea of heads with all the back doors open all the way to the back room, and another 300 people out in the parking lot. It was just amazing. It was just magical.”
Mr. Bausman remembers noticing something unusual when driving to a gig at the Community Center one night. “There were people just lining the roads hitchhiking up-Island,” Mr. Bausman said. “I didn’t put two and two together until I got there. I remember there were people leaning in the windows, coming in the side entrances, even coming up the back stairs and walking right across the stage to get in.”
Bouncing off their success on the Vineyard, the Ululators took their show on the road for several years, beginning in 1991, playing hundreds of concerts a year on college campuses, Boston nightclubs, and festivals throughout New England and New York.
Occasionally, they served as an opening act for Phish, Toots and the Maytals, The Wailers, and Bim Skala Bim.
“We all had stars in our eyes, we wanted the big record contract,” Mr. Bausman said. “We never really made it that far, but we did pretty well.”
In the week leading up to the Saturday night concert, the band gathered for several rehearsal sessions. Most have played or recorded with each other separately over the years, but the rehearsals were the first time in 25 years the band was all together in the same room.
Playing the old tunes came back quite naturally.
“It’s amazing how that happens,” Mr. Thurlow said. “We were all remarking on the muscle memory of it. You’re doing something and all of a sudden, what’s going to happen next. You look down at your hands and oh, that’s what’s going to happen next.”
“Even after 25 years, all of us knew our parts perfectly, without even a flinch,” Mr. Hart said. “We played so much back then, it’s just in us.”
Days before the concert, the band learned that percussionist Sam Holmstock would not be able to join the reunion concert because of a family emergency. Island drummer Anthony Esposito will sit in.
The performance will actually be two concerts.
The first set will feature Mr. Hart and his new band, as they release a new recording titled Steve’s Songs. The second set will feature the Ululators reunion.
The concert begins at 7 p.m.
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