On a warm and lovely May evening, 100+ members of the Austin Ukulele Society gathered together, in person, for a night of community ukulele music. It is truly wonderful seeing the faces of our Austin-area friends, and we were also delighted to welcome uke players from Madison, WI, Cape Cod, MA, McGregor, TX and Dallas, TX.

Our evening started out, as usual, with introductions and local ukulele news. Then Bob took us through our warm-up song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

We love learning songs from different genres and spanning many decades, so it’s always fun to choose each month’s new-to-us song. Since we hadn’t done a country song in a while and have long wanted to do a Dolly Parton song, we were VERY excited to learn her 1973 hit “Jolene.” It’s Dolly’s most-covered song, and has been covered over the decades by many, including Olivia Newton John, The White Stripes, and Lil Nas X. 🙂

Bob shared information about his arrangement of “Jolene,” before performing it for us. He took us through some very useful exercises on the strum style, chord progressions, fingerpicking options and harmonizing possibilities. We had fun trying out each component of the song and then putting it together to play through a couple of times. As we practiced, we sounded better and better each time, and recorded it for your listening and playing-along pleasure – we hope you enjoy it!

To play along with us, you can download the lyrics and chords for our arrangement of “Jolene” 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).

During our open mic session, we enjoyed the talents of Jay Clement, Kelly Howard, and Kim Carducci. Thanks for your excellent performances!

We look forward to seeing you again on Thursday, June 9, for our next in-person meeting at MUMC! 🙂

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

Contact Us if you have any questions or would like to be added to our mailing list!

Ukulele Society T-shirts!
As you may know, we create a new t-shirt every fall. Celebrating our global AUS community, we are thrilled to unveil our latest edition t-shirt, “Ukulele Around the World,” designed by the talented Lyda Guz!

The shirts are silk screened here in Austin at a fantastic locally-owned print shop and are available for purchase via mail order. The new “Ukulele Around the World” design, “10th Anniversary,” Mermaid, Cowboy,” and “Austin Lasso” shirts are $20 – all other styles are $15. Please drop us a line if you’d like to purchase a shirt (or two or three). 🙂 At this time, we can only ship orders within the U.S.