HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — Mickey Reed’s methods of teaching music are a little unorthodox, but sure enough, these unique lessons help tie it all together.

What You Need To Know

  • Mickey Reed teaches beginners at the Jerry Passmore Center on Tuesdays
  • After teaching kids at a summer camp how to play, she made it a goal of teaching 1,000 people how to play 

  • Before teaching ukulele, Reed was an occupational therapist

  • She calls her band The Silver Fleas

“I didn’t want to burden people with learning music theory, so this was a really easy way to get us all on the same track when you got 15 people trying to strum together. You have to have something to keep us all together,” Reed said.

Reed wasn’t always a music instructor. In fact, she was an occupational therapist for most of her life.

But one rainy day, at a summer camp in May, Reed found herself looking for something to entertain the children.

“Someone said, ‘Mickey, you might want to check that closet there. There’s a bunch of ukuleles in there,’ and I said, ‘I will try anything right now,’” Reed recollected. “So I got the ukuleles out and I had played guitar, so I said, ‘I think I can figure this out.’”

After that summer camp where she taught the children how to play the four-string instrument, Reed made it her goal to teach 1,000 people to play the ukulele. 

Her journey has now led her all the way to teaching a group of retirees at a senior center in Hillsborough. 

For the group of musicians, she says music can be impactful.

“As our brains change, music is something that hangs on forever,” Reed said. “It’s one of the last things to go, specifically in your brain. I've had plenty of experiences where people couldn’t talk, but they could sing.” 

For the group of aspiring musicians who show up every week, when you have that “aha” moment, they say, there’s no better feeling.

“It feels good, it feels satisfying. I’m learning something new. I’ve been trying to do this for a while, so finally getting the chord, for example, is a huge accomplishment,” Connie Schardt, a class participant, said.

When the classes meet week in and week out for their lessons, and ukuleles are tuned, one starts to see it all come together.

Reed even has a name for her band — The Silver Fleas.

“That was my hope for this. It’s exceeded my hopes in the first year,” Reed said. “The advanced beginners have 40 songs in their repertoire. And it's community, we’ve found this has formed into a little community.”

Reed teaches on Tuesdays at the Jerry Passmore Senior Center in Hillsborough.