Editor’s Note: Mathew Jones is the brother of Bradley Jones who is the Online Design Editor for the Daily News.
Matthew Jones has a recipe for popularity.
Step one: acquire a ukulele.
Step two: play that ukulele anywhere and everywhere.
Step three: bask in the attention that follows.
That's why, on a Thursday afternoon, ten people greeted Jones in a 90-minute time frame as he sat beside the staircase on the second floor of the Art and Journalism Building.
“You, like, live in here,” said one passerby who Jones addressed as Adam. Jones knows most people’s names.
“I do live in here,” Jones said. “This is my house. Get off my lawn, you damn kids.”
Jones may be joking, but if he’s not in class, he’s lounging around campus—at the Scramble Light or underneath Shafer Tower. On the day Adam greeted him, it was cold. Jones stays in AJ when it’s cold.
It’s a pretty good gig for the senior classical cultures major. He has a casual listener base of thousands. Even if the passing students have heard it all before, Jones will sit and play for his own pleasure. And there will always be that freshman or visitor stumbling upon him for their first time.
The only downside is summertime when Jones’ audience packs up their suitcases and heads home. That’s when Jones, who is from nearby New Castle, Ind., wanders around Muncie. Before he returns to his apartment, he’ll find someone to talk to.
“I”ll go up and I’ll say, ‘Hey, you look pretty interesting. Talk to me for a sec. I wanna know what you’re all about,’” he said.
They can say no, Jones said, but they usually don’t.
FINDING HIS POPULARITY
Jones carries an old family portrait in his wallet. In it, he’s surrounded by his siblings: four brothers and a sister. It isn’t the most flattering picture. His smile reveals the hint of a double-chin and his hair is shaved close to the scalp—a “cue-ball cut,” said Jones.
When Jones first arrived at Ball State, his hair drew comparisons to Jesus. It’s one of the things that made him stand out.
Jones grew his hair out after a girl rejected him during his freshman year of high school. It wasn’t necessarily the “no” that did it. It was the fact that everyone had short hair and if following the crowd meant Jones still couldn’t get the girl, then he didn’t see the point in keeping up with everyone else. So Jones stopped. He stopped caring and he stopped cutting his hair.
“And believe it or not, I made a crap ton of friends,” he said.
Something about the new hair, or maybe the new philosophy, attracted others.
Jones began sitting in the same place before school every morning. His brothers would do the same. Soon, people that Jones didn’t even know were joining him. The crowd spanned the entire width of the hall, "like a blood clot," said Jones.
Jones had the crowds, but he said he still didn’t have many friends. That’s when he made the hat.
He created it out of a newspaper, a blue pen and a little assistance from a friend.
Jones handed the completed hat to the friend who abandoned it in the high school hallway. There, it tumbled past lockers and into the hands of a “cool kid.”
The popular guy took the hat to a crowded pep rally, where he unknowingly handed it back to its creator, Jones. A yearbook photographer snapped shots in the distance as Jones donned his headpiece of destiny.
“I essentially made that moment of popularity for me,” said Jones.
Except the moment didn’t stop. That summer, just months before moving to college, Jones began hanging out at the local park, following his own example of letting the people come to him.
It worked. It worked so well that by the end of the summer, Jones threw a party at his park bench for about 60 people. They brought more ukuleles, harmonicas, a trumpet and a set of bongos. Jones’ parents provided pizza.
Jones arrived at Ball State for Fall Semester in 2011 with all the right ingredients for a successful freshman year: his instrument, his long hair and a care-free attitude.
COLLEGE ON HIS OWN TERMS
Jones had a couple of rules for his college career: don’t join any student groups and stay out of the library.
At orientation, a leader told him that no college student could graduate without doing those two things.
Four years later, the now short-haired Jones still hasn’t joined a group. Halfway through his junior year, he used a printer in the library. He wanted to make a Christmas tree topper from a picture of a famous internet cat.
Jones said he doesn’t like others telling him or anyone else what to do. That’s why he challenges the “shoulds” of the college experience. Like getting drunk at parties or looking down on freshmen.
Jones definitely isn’t fazed by freshmen.
“You got to stick up for the little guy,” he said.
LEARNING TO PLAY
Jones isn’t sure how long he’s been playing the ukulele, but he knows it’s been at least since May of 2009. He has the documentation to prove it—a certificate from a school event: “Best rendition of ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ on a pink ukulele in German.”
Jones also knows that he tried learning guitar first, but he never really picked it up. Ukulele seemed easier and Jones had a girl to woo. That’s why he started writing his own songs too.
He developed his first lyrics while sitting on a wall in the park—“The grass is green, the sky is blue and both are beautiful just like you. That’s love.”
He admits that his word choice wasn’t revolutionary, even more so in the second verse—“Tick tock, tick tock. Tweedle dee dee. Oh my god, that’s OMG. Love.”
He’s written songs since then that are better, he said. On campus, he likes to play covers, but he’ll show off his originals too.
He played one for Emmalie Hodge, a sophomore sociology major, after she stopped to talk to him on March 25.
Hodge didn’t know Jones when she met him at the Scramble Light. She didn’t even figure out his name until 45 minutes into their conversation.
She stopped because she’s a musician who finds herself drawn to others like her, but also because Jones seemed relaxed and happy. He was inviting.
“He was like, ‘Hey, I’m here. And if you want to listen, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too,’” she said.
Hodge is in a choir, she’s active in her sorority and she’s the recently elected president of Feminists for Action. Her activities don’t leave her much time to do anything but attend meetings and catch up on homework, but she couldn’t pass Jones when she saw him standing next to Ball State’s busy intersection.
Chatting with Jones wasn’t going to help her with school, but it would do something for her soul, she said.
***
Jones graduates at the end of the year. He doesn’t have a carefully laid out plan, but he also doesn’t seem worried about the future. If history is any indicator, playing a song and smiling might be his best bet.
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