Tippy Canoe & the Paddlemen play popular music - or what the kids call "pop". Now their sound may not exactly be the popular music of today, but it encapsulates what has made people smile, laugh and talk about over the last nine decades. Your ears will perk up when you hear their potent toe-tappers or youll gladly wrap yourself in the melancholy they cast when performing a dreamy ballad.

Songbird and uke-slinger, Tippy Canoe, aka Michele Kappel (from Sympathy For the Record Industry’s The Kirby Grips), is on a mission to bring sincere uplift in a severely down-slanted era. Her voice is a mixture of the 60’s girl group sound and classic country with its own quirky nature shining through. Her songwriting bears the stamp of a person who has absorbed a variety of influences. These range from 20’s and 30’s acts like The Boswell Sisters and Jack Teagarden to 50’s and 60’s performers like Brenda Lee and The Chiffons and catchy post-punk bands such as Squeeze and Blondie.

The San Francisco Chronicle decided to slap her picture on the cover of their publication in 2007. The San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art included her in an exhibition on the uke and Spark TV, the bay area’s arts showcase, saw fit to zero in on the band’s brand of old-timey pop for a recent segment. Other adventures have included tours of the east and west coasts, the first annual San Francisco Ukulele Festival at Yerba Buena Gardens and one very long, hot evening in a strange tattoo parlour in Mexico.

The Paddlemen use their skill with the drum kit (Rick Quisol-The Frisky Frolics, The Royal Deuces, Atomic Cocktail), guitar (Mikie Lee Prasad-Heavy Petting Zoo, Maria Muldaur), bass (Chris "T.G." Green-The Frisky Frolics, Atomic Cocktail, Minnie Pearl Necklace) and harmony vocals/bass playing (Sandra Mello- The Bellyachers) to conjure up a tight-knit mesh of rhythm to compliment her old-timey pop melodies.

You can call it old-timey, you can call it retro, you can even make up a word and call it 20sjazzcountrydoowoppop, but whatever the moniker just let yourself go and enjoy it.