Wailin' ukulele

Kelsey Butt came out on top in Mya-Moe ukulele contest with a tribute to her hometown, Labrador City.

She found out she won on Mother's Day and received a hand-made ukulele worth $1,500 a few weeks ago.

"I couldn't get over it," said Butt. "It was a big surprise."

She picked up the instrument last Christmas, she recalled, and thought it was cute.

"It started off with me and my friend sitting in a van with this really cheap ukulele and trying to play songs by the band Never Shout Never," she said. "I thought it had a really neat sound and it was a lot easier to play than a guitar."

She played percussion with the Cadets for a while and thinks that's why she learned strumming rhythms quickly.

Butt chose to enter the local Battle of the Bands with her friends five days before the competition and her band, aptly called Last Minute, took third place.

She recalled the drummer of her band, Ryan Searle, suggested they come up with original songs and that's when Butt started writing, mostly about life experiences.

She said she found out about the Mya-Moe competition from a Ukulele Underground website and thought it was a good idea in order to meet more people who played the instrument.

The contest was entitled From My Home to Yours and encouraged musicians to make a video of an original song or cover about their home towns.

"I made a video before and my mom said I could do better and I'm happy she did," said Butt. "I just thought about what the competition was about: sharing your home and stuff. The lyrics are how I relate to here."

She was born and raised in Labrador City and expressed that it's the only place she'd consider home.

Words she used to describe her hometown are: good, warm, and safe.

"I think we all have the same experiences here and it's hard not to be close here," she said. "There's a lot of people who work with the mines and you have only one school, so you pretty much know everybody."

"When my mom got cancer," she added, "The whole town came together and provided support."

She admitted that isolation might be the town's biggest downside, but said that everyone she knows who came to visit really liked the community.

"There's a lot of talent here and good people here," she expressed. "There's always something to find yourself doing. Everyone's kind of looking out for each other."

She wrote the lyrics three days before contest deadline and shot the video on short notice with friends Liam Vosman and Caitlin Saville.

"I wanted to show how nice the town was and genuine," she explained. "Also, how high spirited we were even though it wasn't sunny. It was a play-off of Hawaiian style meets cold Labrador."

Basically, she said she ran around town in shorts while playing a ukulele even though there was snow on the ground.

After winning the contest, Butt got numerous hits on her YouTube account, which she said is just what she wanted.

Right now, she's working on a CD of her music, which according to Butt, should be out in a few weeks.

She'll be leaving her hometown in September to study pre-social work at Memorial University of Newfoundland, but she plans on sticking with the ukulele and hopes to study music in the future.