Wow! We sure loved having a turnout of about 150 players for our 150th in-person Austin Ukulele Society meeting! Thank you so much for making this milestone extra special, as you brought so much more than ukuleles and voices to the evening. We got started with introductions of Bob and Jen, the co-founders of the Austin Ukulele Society, and then enjoyed hearing the names of everyone in the room. As always, we warmed up our voices, hands, and hearts with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

To celebrate our 150th in-person meeting, we learned to sing and strum a song that fits perfectly with how Bob and Jen got the Austin Ukulele Society started: “Try Everything,” by Shakira. With a career that began when she was just 13 years old, Colombia’s Shakira is one of the Queens of Latin Music! 2016’s “Try Everything” was featured in the popular Disney movie “Zootopia” and was a gigantic hit that continues to get tons of airplay, everywhere! We enjoyed learning to play and sing this infectiously optimistic song.

Bob performed his terrific arrangement of “Try Everything,” to get us ready to learn to play it. He took us through some very helpful exercises on the chord progressions, strum patterns, and harmonizing options, and helped us all get better and better at the syncopation of singing with the strumming.

We also enjoyed the open mic portion of the eve, during which Spence, Sho H, Rich, and Bob and Aaron gave us fantastic performances!

Afterward, we practiced “Try Everything” some more, then worked on recording our rendition to share with you. Look for it soon on our YouTube channel. We hope you’ll check it out and strum and sing along from home. 🙂

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

Many thanks, as always, to Jen and Lyda and the whole AUS team, for their tireless efforts to make the meetings successful. And thank you to Aaron Lewis for keeping the beat on the U-bass!

We look forward to having you at the next in-person meeting on Thursday, August 10. Until then, keep strummin’! 🙂

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

We appreciate your support and interest. If you’d like to make a donation to the Austin Ukulele Society (a 501(c)(3) organization), visit our Square Donation site. If you would like to be added to our mailing list, please fill out our this short sign-up form. For any other inquiries, please contact us or shoot us an email if you have previous correspondence with us.

Ukulele Society T-shirts!
We are proud to unveil our latest shirt, new for 2022: the “AUS Classic Ukulele,” design, hot off the presses! All of our shirts are thoughtfully 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. The new “AUS Classic Ukulele” design, “Ukulele Around the World,” “10th Anniversary,” Mermaid, Cowboy,” “Austin Lasso” and other shirts are $25. We also have vinyl decals with the AUS logo for $1 each. We can accept cash or a check made out to Austin Ukulele Society; you can also make payment via Venmo or PayPal. 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.