‘Stache Man: Ukulele Loki puts his best (read: hairiest) face forward

By Jason Heller March 27, 2009
Forget about the über-masculine mustaches of Burt Reynolds or Ron Jeremy,” says Ukulele Loki, local musician and ringleader of the dizzying Gadabout Orchestra. “Many of my mustache heroes are artists or jesters.” And while it may seem odd to have a list of mustache heroes in the first, it makes sense when you take into account Loki’s own devilishly twirled facial hair-not to mention the fact that he’s the founder of the local organization known as the Hirsute Moustache & Beard Grower Society. “When I first started wearing a mustache in 2000,” Loki recalls, “I was after the pencil-thin ’stache inspired by ’20s crooners and Errol Flynn. The extreme version of a pencil-thin, what I call the lip-liner, was popularized in modern times by John Waters. At the time I started growing one, there couldn’t have been anything less cool than wearing a moustache. This was way before moustaches were worn ironically by hipsters.”
There won’t be any irony at play tonight, however, when Loki-along with fellow local songsmiths Tim Pourbaix and Ian Cooke-appear at Jackson’s in LoDo to headline the Mustache March Gala. The show is a benefit for the the cancer charity Love Hope Strength, but it’s also a chance to let the ’stache out of the bag and hear some great music. Besides playing his own retro-leaning yet postmodern take on Tin Pan Alley pop, Loki is the co-host of Route 78 West, a smorgasbord of eclectic Americana that’s broadcast every Sunday morning on Boulder’s barometer of cool, Radio 1190. But even that progressive station, it turned out, once harbored its own anti-’stache prejudice. “When I first grew the ’stache, the so-called cool kids at Radio 1190 tried to insist that I shave it off,” he admits. “They claimed that only cops and child molesters wore mustaches. But I stuck to my guns. The only problem was, I’m a blond, and the pencil-thin was visible only if I shaded it with mascara. The whole process was vain and messy and time-consuming and silly. After that, I decided to grow out the edges and twist it into handlebars.”
Now in full control of those handlebars, Loki is hoping to steer his love of the ’stache into something grander. In addition to helping raise funds for Love Hope Strength at tonight’s Gala, the entertainer is humbly soliciting assistance in his effort to attend the World Beard And Mustache Championships in Anchorage this May. “I’ve been invited to play and compete,” Loki explains, “but there’s no way they can cover the cost of my travel, let alone for the whole band.” If you can’t make it down to Jacksons tonight, Loki will gladly accept donations and purchases of Gadabout Orchestra merchandise at his website. In the meantime, he’s working on the Orchestra’s new music video, which he claims will “add another level to surrealist fashion with the inclusion of a kick line of chorus girls wearing fish, cow, bear, and elephant heads.” Is it any surprise Loki counts Salvador Dalí as one of his favorite ’stache-bearers?