The September meeting of the Austin Ukulele Society was extra special, as we saw our biggest in-person gathering since before the pandemic! We were thrilled to welcome 175 ukulele players of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels, as it is always a joy to make music with such wonderful folks! ❤

This month, we turned our attention to a soulful song made most popular by Dobie Gray in 1973: “Drift Away.” This international, timeless hit pays homage to the gifts that music gives us, and while it’s been covered by many, our rendition will stick more closely to Dobie Gray’s version. We loved playing this beautiful song together!

We kicked off the evening with brief introductions and local ukulele news (including info about Lil Rev and Rockin’ Ray’s September 25 workshop – email us for details!). Then we enjoyed warming up our voices and fingers with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”  

Then Bob performed “Drift Away” to help us get a feel for the arrangement we’d soon be playing. He then took us through some very helpful exercises to get us comfortable with all of the components of the song, including the chord progressions, strum patterns, picking options, and vocal harmonies.

We enjoyed working on each part of the song and then putting it together to play through. 

This month’s meeting didn’t have any open mic participants, so we took advantage of a little extra practice time and fine tuned our performance. Please enjoy playing along with us from home! It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

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

As always, we’re immensely grateful to Aaron for his accompaniment on U-bass and to Bob, Jen, Lyda, Jana, Lori, Barry, Gary, and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

Take care and be well, and we hope to see you all at the October 9th AUS in-person meeting at St. John’s United Methodist Church, as well as the October 23rd online meeting on our YouTube channel. Keep on strumming until then!  🙂

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’re very excited about our 2025 Austin Ukulele Society t-shirt, “Circle of Stars,” designed by Lyda Guz! Each of the 15 stars stands for an action-packed year we’ve been making music together. As always, the shirts are silk-screened right here in Austin at a fantastic locally-owned print shop.

Our new “Circle of Stars” design, “AUS Grackle,” “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.