At our June meeting, ukulele players of all ages and stages and from places near and far, gathered to make music together! We were very excited to meet at our new home at St. John’s United Methodist Church, and we were thrilled to have 150+ participants this past Thursday. This was our largest number for in person attendance since February 2020!

After we did our introductions, we shared local ukulele news, including our upcoming ukulele Open Mic Happy Hour at Kick Butt Coffee on Saturday, June 22, from 4:00-6:00. We’re looking forward to seeing you there! Then we warmed up our hearts and voices with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

This month we learned our second tune by one of New Jersey’s best gifts to rock and pop music: Bon Jovi. We rocked out on 2000’s “It’s My Life,” a top 10 hit in several countries and Bon Jovi’s most-viewed video (nearly 1.5 billion views!). This infectious rock anthem gets plenty of airplay to this day, and we had a blast strumming, picking, and singing it!

Bob performed “It’s My Life,” to demonstrate his great ukulele arrangement. Next, he taught us each part of the song, getting us comfortable with the chords, strums, muting, chord progressions, picking and vocal harmonies. When we played the song through a couple of times, we sounded very good!

We took a break to enjoy fantastic open mic performances by Kathlyne, Kaia, and Sho Humphries, who all shared terrific, creative covers with us!

We got back to practicing “It’s My Life,” and we got better and better at it, so we recorded a video we’ll soon be sharing with you on our YouTube channel. We hope you’ll play along with us from home! Please know you’re always welcome to visit us in Austin and join us on the second Thursday of the month for our in-person meetings.

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “It’s My Life” 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).

Thanks and see you on July 11 at St. John’s United Methodist Church! Until then, be well and keep strumming! 🙂

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 2024: the “AUS Grackle 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 Grackle Ukulele” design, “”Classic Ukulele” 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.