On a mild October evening, 140+ local and visiting ukulele players (from as far as Cali, Colombia!) enjoyed our Halloween-inspired meeting. There were plenty of Dia de los Muertos shirts, animal ears and rockstar wigs – even Batman made an appearance! – as we got into the spirit of the season. Men at Work’s classic but creepy 1981 hit “Who Can It Be Now?” fits our tradition of Halloween-themed October songs and may make us all a bit more wary of trick-or-treaters at our doors this coming All Hallow’s Eve. 🙂

Our meeting kicked off with introductions, local ukulele event announcements and our warm-up, feel-good song (Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”). Bob introduced us to a special guest – one of Austin’s best saxophone players, Paul Klemperer. They performed Men at Work’s “Who Can It Be Now?” to demonstrate the arrangement Bob had prepared for us. Bob led the group through several helpful exercises for the strumming pattern, chord progressions and vocal harmonies. As the group played the song through a few times, we sounded better and better each time. With the assistance of Paul Klemperer on sax and Kevin Carroll on U-bass, we recorded the song to share with all of our ukulele-loving friends on YouTube. Check it out!

To play along with us, you can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “Who Can It Be Now?” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide (what we project on the screen for all to follow along, including exercises and drills).

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We loved the extraordinary talents of our open mic participants, who shared a wonderfully eclectic mix of songs that included a duet on a cover of a Swedish band, a Halloween-appropriate 1960’s cover (“Haunted House,”) a couple of original love songs from Colombia and Austin, and a great cover of a humorous Roger Miller tune. Thank you to Erin and Gabrielle, Walter, Camilo, Curt and Roger for sharing these lovely performances with us.

(Clockwise, from top left: Erin and Gabrielle, Camilo, Richard, Curt, Walter.)

As always, we look forward to strumming and singing at our next monthly meeting, on Thursday, November 8th! 🙂

For more downloadable music, visit our Ukulele Music Library. For more Austin Ukulele Society videos, check out our YouTube Channel.

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