Ask Dr. Rick Maxson how Drury’s ukulele club started, and he’ll laugh.

“It started as a joke,” says the Drury professor and sponsor of DUkes.

But the group is no longer a punch line. The club, entering its third year at Drury, meets every Tuesday at Big Momma’s for coffee and the enjoyment of playing the ukulele. And just recently, the group has been selected by Springfield’s Sister City Association to travel to Isesaki, Japan, to perform in August of 2015.

DUkes was created by student Christian Cook and Maxson in August 2012. According to Maxson, it started with a simple question from Cook: “Do you think we could make a ukulele club?”

“Back then, it was kind of silly notion,” Maxson says. “I was just thinking that maybe every other week we could just get together and play ukes. That’s what we do.” The club has now gained a lot of popularity on Drury’s campus and beyond.

Last year, DUkes became an official student organization of Drury University. The club has gone from having five to eight members to around 20 members regularly attending their weekly ukulele jams this year. It’s a club where people can “just hang out casually, play ukuleles and drink coffee,” Maxson says. “It’s just fun.”

DUkes has recently become popular in the Springfield community. “We’ve been asked to perform at a lot of public places. The most notable one is performing the national anthem at the Springfield Cardinals game,” Maxson says.

Last winter, the group did a guest performance at Lindbergs on Commercial Street. Maxson said, “[Sister Cities] had us do a guest appearance because they were interested in possibly sending us [to Isesaki]. It’s December, people are drinking, and we’re playing ukuleles. When we were done, they rounded us up at the bar, and they said to us, ‘You’re it! We need you to come play at our conference in the spring, but just know we want you to go to Japan for us.'”

Since then the group has been planning its fundraising campaign for this year to fund its trip to Japan.

If you want to get involved with the group, members meet every Tuesday at Big Momma’s on Commercial Street at 5 p.m. “It’s really easy,” Maxson says. “It lasts one hour. Someone that has an instrument and likes to play can just come on by. Now, other people that have never played one but like the idea can come at 4:30. We’ll loan them a ukulele and teach them four chords, and they can join along. It’s just a big ukulele party.”