There are artists and creators who are defined by their medium. And then there are people like Larry Hinkle, whose creative pursuits cannot be constrained to just one thing.
Artisan Larry Hinkle’s workshop Wednesday March 4, 2026. (Photo by Jeff Kearney(
My introduction to Hinkle took place on a sidewalk behind the Fredericksburg train station, where we watched a compact Italian man wrangle a towering metal sculpture off the back of his truck.
Artist Hanna Jubran was installing his sculptural artwork as part of the Fredericksburg Arts Commission’s public sculpture project. I was there to talk to members of the commission, when I was introduced to Hinkle, who recently joined the group as a recruit.
At this point, I only knew him as a member of a garage rock band I kept hearing about: Alpha Jerk, a gritty punk band that formed in the early 2000s but has recently been staging a local comeback.
And then I began to hear his name around town. He created the sculptural stands for an exhibit of bronze works in the UMW galleries. His name came up when I visited Picker’s Supply and the conversation turned to ukuleles.
He built a custom corner cabinet for a couple I know.
His handiwork can be found in restaurants and homes across the city.
Hinkle is known among local Frisbee and disc golf enthusiasts as part of Laszlo’s Wienie World, a group that feeds guests in its canteen (pavilion) at the annual Virginia State Frisbee Tournament in Pratt Park.
And this encapsulates who Hinkle is. He seems to be everywhere and knows everyone, whether as an art teacher, a musician or a woodworker.
Eclectic and electric
His current career is as an adjunct art instructor and studio technician at UMW, sometimes teaching classes, sometimes joining another professor’s class for special topics. He teaches art students how to make musical instruments. In the summer, he teaches a furniture-making class.
Hinkle can’t escape the lure of woodworking.
I visited him at his workshop on Lafayette Boulevard, directly next door to the music venue Eleven Eleven, where he practices and performs with Alpha Jerk.
It’s spring break, but he is busily working on a custom wooden driveway gate. He claims his teaching job is the side gig: woodworking is his true passion and vocation.
Hinkle at work on the gate he was commissioned to build. Photo by Jeff Kearney.
“I’ve been a self-employed woodworker for the past 30 years,” said Hinkle, who moved to Fredericksburg in 1991. “I was a carpenter’s helper in Alexandria and then I moved down here and got a job in a cabinet shop called Limited Edition.”
When he left the D.C. area, he joined a Fredericksburg band — KASH, the Kosmic Alpha Scratch Homeboys. (The band’s claim to fame was opening up for GWAR at then-Mary Washington College.)
What we now call The Griffin on Charles in downtown Fredericksburg, behind Castiglia’s, was once his woodworking shop, which naturally doubled as a band practice locale.
By 1996, he decided he had learned enough making cabinets that he could open his own shop. He had his big start.
“And then,” he said, “the Great Recession happened.”
It was time for a creative pivot.
“I’ve always been playing music,” Hinkle said. “And around 2008 I had all this scrap wood laying around so I decided I was going to make a marimba.”
A wood-be luthier
Enter Harry Wilson, legendary jazz vibraphonist and Fredericksburg icon. Hinkle asked Wilson to take a look at his instrument and, from there, the pair started collaborating and performing around the region.
Hinkle shows off the marimba he made. Photo by Jeff Kearney.
“We started hanging out, and he started playing my instruments and I started playing music with him,” Hinkle recalled. “And then I got turned onto ukulele.”
The duo of Harry and Larry was born, with Hinkle playing jazz on the ukulele and Wilson on the vibes.
This newfound love of the ukulele led Hinkle to try his hand at making one of his own, turning scrap materials from his woodworking enterprises into a thriving niche business that saw a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was about 2010, and I just couldn’t really deal with the recession,” he said. “I was just working enough to pay rent so I decided to move my operation into a shed behind my house.”
His regular work dried up, so he rolled the dice at crafting ukuleles. “I decided, since I had all the tools and the skills, I’m going to try to make a ukulele because I always wanted to make a guitar.”
He had never attempted to make a guitar because he found the process intimidating, noting: “I didn’t want to spend all this time making a guitar and have it sound like shit.”
He ordered a kit and slowly worked on copying the parts for the ukulele and abandoned the kit when he found the process intuitive and fulfilling. He has now made almost 200 instruments.
“We started selling ukuleles left and right, and I was like riding that wave,” Hinkle said. “Six years ago, during the shutdown, at one point I was backordered for like 15 instruments. And orders just kept coming in.”
Hinkle’s routine shifted as a result. “I would just get up, go to the shop, work on ukuleles, go home, do some yard work and play Frisbee.”
Thanks to social media, his endeavors drew attention during the pandemic, as so many people, stuck at home, began to learn to play the ukulele. He launched a website, and, a week later, a man in Santa Barbara placed an order.
“I made a resonator ukulele for him. But I never met him,” he said. “I also think I have an instrument that went to Switzerland.”
Artisan Larry Hinkle’s workshop Wednesday March 4, 2026. Photo by Jeff Kearney.
A buyer stationed in Afghanistan took her Hinkle ukulele with her. A Marine in North Africa travels with a Hinkle ukulele. Now, his students help craft the instruments in class.
Taj Mahal and Keller Williams both have Hinkle ukuleles, as does one of Dave Grohl’s daughters.
Not only do his ukuleles travel the world and end up in the hands of famous musicians, but many of them carry a piece of Fredericksburg with them. “One of them was made with English walnut from a tree that grew on Fauquier Street near Kenmore.”
Wood is a treasured resource for Hinkle, who saves scraps from his furniture making to use in instruments. Even old pianos have value for him. He salvages the soundboards from pianos people are throwing out, giving them a second-life as a new instrument once he’s finished.
Last year, his band The Transmitters (another Hinkle creation from 2005) performed a 20th anniversary show at J. Brian’s. And Alpha Jerk is back on local stages again. While the gigs do provide financial boosts, Hinkle says the music is really “just more of a passion.”
While his collaborations run from jazz to rocksteady, he’s a punk at heart.
Back in his shop, a stack of salvaged piano parts loiter in a loft. The walls in one corner are a display rack of his favorite ukuleles. The catwalk holds his fine art furniture pieces, work that seems suited for a museum and not an industrial woodshop.
For Hinkle, it’s all the same impulse — a need to make things, whether that’s an instrument or the music itself.
“We just do all that for fun,” he said. “I grew up in that old DC-hardcore punk scene, so I kind of have that itch I need to scratch once in a while.”
