★ Our Next In-person Meeting: Thursday, August 13! ★

Greetings, friends! Our next monthly meeting is fast approaching! On Thursday, August 13, 7:00–9:00pm, we’ll meet again at St. John’s United Methodist Church, located at 2140 Allandale Rd, Austin, TX 78756.

At St. John’s, parking is available on both the Wynona Ave. and White Rock Dr. sides of the church. You can also park in the Lamar Middle School lots across White Rock Dr. from the church. Street parking is available all along Wynona Ave. The entrance is on the Wynona Ave. side of the church.

We hope you had as much as we did in July – with our biggest in-person meeting yet, a successful first-ever Uke Stars Central Texas Uke Fest, and a great virtual meeting, our uke hearts were so full! Let’s keep the uke momentum going!

For August, we’ll learn to sing and strum a rockin’ American hit. John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” is from 1982 and spent the most weeks (16!) on the Top 10 Billboard chart of any 1980’s song. This great tune still gets plenty of airplay, and we know you’ll be singing along in no time to its contagious refrain.

John Mellencamp’s 1982 original recording is in the key of A major; Bob’s moved his arrangement up 3 half-steps to C major to keep things simple and accessible. He also recorded a fantastic play-along audio track of himself performing the arrangement, so you can practice along with Bob in advance of the meeting. Check it out!

Practice Play-along Track

Here are some details about Bob’s song sheet:

Pages 1-3 have the chords and lyrics.
Page 3 also has a description of the main strum pattern, with a simplified alternative.
Page 4 has tab for the optional riff that appears throughout the song’s Intro, Interludes, and Ending.
Page 4 also has a description of the special muted strum that appears in the middle of each Verse.
Page 5 has a description of the strum used in each Chorus where a 4-beat strum pattern is shared by two chords (F and Am), over the lyrics “Sometimes love don’t feel like it should…”
Page 6 has vocal harmony options for each Chorus.

As always, we encourage you to familiarize yourself with the song by using Bob’s song sheet, his play-along audio track, and John Mellencamp’s 1982 original recording – before the 13th, if possible. 🙂

At the meeting, Bob will perform “Hurts So Good” to demonstrate his arrangement, and then guide us through helpful exercises to get us comfortable with the chords and chord progressions, strum patterns, vocal harmonizing and picking options in each section of the song, before we put it all together to play it through.

Our meeting format, as usual, will begin with introductions and some local ukulele news/events. We’ll also include some open mic time for those of you who’d like to showcase one tune you’ve been working on. A sign-up sheet will be available at 6:30. As open mic time is limited to three participants, please sign up when you arrive and understand that preference will be given to those who have not participated recently or ever before.

After the open mic portion of the eve, we’ll play through our new-to-us song again and record a performance video. We’ll share this video on our YouTube channel about a week after the meeting – so please subscribe if you haven’t yet, and you’ll be notified when it’s available!

Ukulele Society T-shirts and Merch!

We’re very excited about our 2026 Austin Ukulele Society t-shirt, “Ukin’ Armadillo,” designed by Lyda Guz. This cool design features a rockin’ and rollin’ armadillo happily strumming his favorite ukulele decorated with 16 stars to celebrates the Austin Ukulele Society’s 16th year of making music together. As always, the shirts are silk-screened right here in Austin at a fantastic locally-owned print shop.

You can purchase our $25 shirts with digital payment via our Square Shop and/or via cash/check before and after the meeting. We know you’ll love adding our terrific, new, iconic Austin Ukulele Society shirt to your wardrobe!

We also have patches for $5 and vinyl stickers for $1 each.

Please bring cash or a check made out to Austin Ukulele Society; you can also pay via our Square shop.

Location
Our meetings take place at St. John’s United Methodist Church, located at 2140 Allandale Rd, Austin, TX 78756. Map it!

Parking is available on the Wynona Ave. and White Rock Dr. sides of the church. You can also park in the Lamar Middle School lots across White Rock Dr. from the church. Street parking is available all along Wynona Ave.

For anyone who might be attending for the first time, the entrance to St. John’s is on the Wynona Ave. side of the church. From there simply follow the sounds of ukuleles tuning up. 🙂

Newcomers and beginners are ALWAYS welcome! Even if you’re a complete novice, we encourage you to come out. Many beginners come to the meetings, and it’s so great to see their skills grow over time! There are almost always easier ways to play the songs, even if you can play only a few of the chords. Or just sing along!

For the monthly meetings, our friend Lori brings our loaner ukuleles! There are tenors, concerts, and sopranos, and you can borrow one to play during the meeting. You’ll find them at the front of the room. So if you don’t have a uke yet, or you forget your uke at home, or your uke is in disrepair, please join us and borrow a loaner uke. 🙂

Feel free to get familiar with the chord charts for any of the songs in our repertoire, all available on the “Music Library” page. We always play “Three Little Birds” and “On the Road Again” as our opening and closing songs, so if you’re new to the group and want to get familiar with them, you can play along using the presentations and our videos.

Stay tuned and keep strumming! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone on Thursday, August 13, at 7:00pm!