Thurs. July 29 

    You know his name. You've heard his music if you lived through '80s new wave. But you may be surprised by what he's doing now. Greg Hawkes, former keyboardist for the Cars, will be playing a set of acoustic ukulele music at Club Passim Thursday July 29 at 8, as part of a uke trio. Hawkes put out an album last year called "The Beatles Uke," which is just what it sounds like: Beatles songs done on ukuleles.     How did Hawkes come to this juncture - and we must say, very contented - point at age 56?
    Well … he came to the ukulele about eight years ago. And Hawkes saw the Beatles play the Baltimore Civic Center, Sept. 13, 1964. He was 11. As with a lot of kids, something joyous exploded in his head. Already taking piano and clarinet lessons, began to learn guitar. The first Beatles song he played was “She Loves You.”
     Fast forward: Nearly 46 years later, Hawkes releases a 15-track solo CD of all-instrumental Beatles covers.  “I’ve come full circle,” says Hawkes, with a laugh, in his Lincoln home. 
      Now, you may be having a “Huh? What?” moment if you remember Hawkes as the keyboards-and-synthesizer wiz for the Cars. Shocking?
      “I don’t know if it would be shocking,” says Hawkes. “If they were a fan of the band, they probably knew I was somewhat of an eccentric, anyway, and liked odd sounds. If they ever saw, “I’m in Touch With Your World’ they would know that I like novelty instruments – sirens, whistles. From that point of view, it’s a natural. On the other hand, it’s definitely a step into left field.” Hawkes has moved from the electronic world into the organic.
     Hawkes’ re-introduction to the ukulele – he’d had one as a kid – came eight birthdays ago, a present from his wife, Elaine. “I thought that was pretty neat,” he says, thinking, “’This should be fun.’ It was more fun than I thought it would be. I started playing it all the time.” He now has about 20 ukes.They weigh about four pounds and, traditionally, have four strings.
     He first put a Beatles song to disc when he was asked to contribute a song to a compilation CD called “My Favorite Martin,” where musicians played songs on their favorite acoustic Martin guitars. Except for Hawkes, who contributed “Eleanor Rigby” on a Martin uke. (He was brought into the project by his friend, former Cars guitarist Elliot Easton.)  It came out late in 2008 on Solid Air Records.
    The executive producer, James Jensen, liked the result so much he asked Hawkes about an entire album. “The first thing I thought of after he suggested it was a whole album of Beatles things,” Hawkes says. “And at first I thought, ‘Is that too much? Should I spread it around?’ He said, ‘No, I like themes,’ so it was, like, Beatles Instrumental, there’s my theme.”
     He recorded over a period of six months last year at Cybersound Studios on Newbury street with co-producer Perry Geyer. “The main limitation of the ukulele,” says Hawkes, “is the range. You have to play all the bass parts up an octave, maybe two. Then, replicating the vocal parts in some cases proved to be a challenge.”  Hawkes chose music from all phases of the Beatles’ career – four George Harrison songs, 11 Lennon-McCartney songs - starting the disc with “Penny Lane,” and going through “Yellow Submarine,” “She’s Leaving Home” and “Goodnight,” among others. (“I’m still trying to figure out how to do ‘Revolution No. 9,’” he quips.)
     Hawkes had a close encounter with a Beatle back in 1989. A friend and producer, Chris Hughes, was working on Paul McCartney’s  “Flowers in the Dirt” album. He said to Hawkes, “I’m doing a track [‘Motor of Love’]. Would you fancy coming to London to play keyboards on it?” That was one of the easiest decisions Hawkes ever made.
    “Paul told Chris he wanted the track to sound a little like ‘Drive’ by the Cars,” says Hawkes, lighting up at the memory. “For him to know the song and validate it in such a fashion! In the control room, he had a shelf with 30 CDs lined up and he had ‘The Cars Greatest Hits’ in there.”
    For “The Beatles Uke” Hawkes chose a range of songs. Some psychedelic, some whimsical, some poignant. All melodic. But none kitchsy.
      “The ukulele is often remembered, and still regarded, as a jokey instrument – at the top of the list,” says Hawkes. “But I enjoyed Tiny Tim – he was very knowledgeable about the Tin Pan Alley composers and history of the songs.” Hawkes cites several virtuoso players and says there’s been a ukulele movement of sorts over the past decade.
      Hawkes has not been dormant since the Cars dissolved. He’s a regular member of the Turtles (and its offshoot group) Flo & Eddie. He’s played with Easton in a revamped version of the Cars with Todd Rundgren called the New Cars in 2006-7. And, also with Rundgren, he was part of a large band of musicians and singers (Christopher Cross, Denny Laine, Lou Gramm, etc.) that toured  last summer, doing “A Tribute to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” (They played Showcase Live in Foxboro.)
     When he plays out now – in addition to the Precinct show, he’ll be at Club Passim March 22 – Hawkes draws from “The Beatles Uke,” plays other Beatles songs, his own compositions and, even, Cars tunes. “After ‘Heartbeat City,’ we started using sequencers and it got to be you couldn’t play a Cars song without turning on a computer,” says Hawkes. “For a while. I thought you couldn’t even play music without a computer. So, the ukulele was such a joy to discover. The total opposite, which is a fun approach for me.” Playing Cars songs on ukulele, he says, “is a little funny but I don’t mean it as a joke. It’s a nod, obviously, to my history. It’s like ‘See, you can even play Cars songs on a ukulele, you don’t even have to have an electric guitar or a synthesizer.’”   (A version of this story appeared in the Boston Herald leas tyear.)

Tickets: $16

47 Palmer St., Cambridge, 617-497-7679 www.clubpassim.org