We had a terrific turnout and lots of fun at our in-person May meeting! We welcomed new friends from southern California and Florida as well as dedicated regulars who we are lucky to have with us nearly every month! ❤

Released just a month after his untimely passing in 1988, Roy Orbison’s “You Got It” was an instant hit. This song still gets plenty of airplay and has been featured in films and covered widely, too. It’s definitely the best kind of ear worm, and we were singing and strumming along in no time! 

Bob started the meeting with local ukulele news, including a reminder for our upcoming quarterly virtual meeting hosted on our YouTube Channel on May 22. He then played through his excellent arrangement of Roy Orbison’s “You Got It,” which provided good guidance for where we’d be heading as we learned. Bob led us through great exercises he’d prepared, to help us get comfortable with the chords, chord progressions, strum styles, picking, and harmonizing options. We enjoyed the practice and got better and better, and we sounded fantastic when we put the song together.  

Our very talented open mic participants – Jay, Richard, and Jack – delighted us with their songs and gave us a nice little break from our work on “You’ve Got It.”  

When we got back to our practice, we sounded better and better and we hope you’ll enjoy playing along with us from home, with our upcoming video, coming soon to our YouTube Channel. 

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “You Got It” 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 Jen, Lyda, Jana, Lori, Barry, Gary and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

Thank you so much for being part of our community! We look forward to “seeing” you at the May 22 virtual meeting and in person at our June meeting on Thursday, June 12, at St. John’s United Methodist Church! We’ll see you 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.

On a warm and bright April evening, Austin Ukulele Society participants happily gathered for their monthly meeting. It was an especially fun time, with the spring holidays bringing first-time visitors from near and far, as well as the yearly seasonal visit from our good friends in the Galveston Ukulele Society. Thank you to our regulars and first-timers – you always bring joy! ❤

We enjoy learning to play and sing songs from a variety of decades; we sometimes even cover a tune written a century ago! However, it’s been while since we played a recent hit and we were very excited to learn to strum and sing Miley Cyrus’ 2023 mega-hit “Flowers.” 

After playing our warm-up song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” we launched into learning “Flowers.” This song seemed fairly straightforward at first but had some fun little challenges, and we were glad to have Bob to guide us through them. Bob led us through exercises to make us comfortable with the chords, chord progressions, strums, and vocal harmonies. We sounded great when we put the song together and played it through a couple of times. 

Then we took a short break to enjoy fantastic open mic performances by Kelly, the Galveston Ukulele Society, and Kevin. 

We then played “Flowers” some more and recorded ourselves, coming soon to our YouTube Channel. We hope you enjoy the video and playing along with us from home!

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Flowers” 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 Jen, Lyda and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

Please join us in person again on Thursday, May 8, at St. John’s United Methodist Church! We’ll see you 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.

On a balmy March evening, which happened to be the 5th year anniversary of the pandemic shut down, the Austin Ukulele Society was thrilled to host its best attended in-person meeting since just before that fateful day. With 165 ukulele enthusiasts from all over the Austin area, including some visitors from NC, NY, MN, and Ontario, we really felt the wonderful community spirit and strength of the ukulele world. Thank you for being there! ❤

After a few quick announcements and a warm welcome to all, we got started with our warm-up song: Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

This month, we paid tribute to the late, great Roberta Flack. Her career spanned over 50 years and she had several hits over the decades, including our featured song, 1973’s “Killing Me Softly.” This song was also a huge hit for The Fugees, in the 90’s. We loved learning to strum and harmonize on this beautiful, timeless song!

With vocal support from Kelly and Kimberly, Bob performed his arrangement of “Killing Me Softly.” Next, he launched into teaching us very helpful exercises to get us comfortable with the strum pattern, chords, chord progressions, tab, and vocals for this classic hit. When we put it together, we sounded great.

We took a break to enjoy the wonderful talents of our open mic participants. Larry, Dan, and Rich gave us terrific performances of great cover tunes they’d been working on!

Afterward, we got back to practicing “Killing Me Softly” and hope you’ll enjoy playing along with Bob’s great video recording of the AUS’s performance (coming soon to our YouTube Channel). Please enjoy playing along with us from home!

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Killing Me Softly” 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 Jen, Lyda and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

We look forward to seeing everyone at our next in-person meeting on Thursday, April 10, at St. John’s United Methodist Church! Be well and see you soon!  🙂

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.

We had a wonderful, well attended February meeting; we’re grateful to our ukulele friends for always helping us feel the love during Valentine’s week. ❤

The evening kicked off with introductions and local ukulele news, including the upcoming Kevin Carroll “Intro to Blues” ukulele workshop we’re hosting on February 27. See more information below and please email us at austinukes@gmail.com for more info and to reserve your spot.

Since our meeting always occurs near (and occasionally on!) Valentine’s Day, we always choose a love song for our new-to-us song. Over the years, we’ve covered many great love/romance songs from a variety of genres and time periods including themes of heartbreak, romantic love, and love/compassion for all. This year, we picked a hugely popular 1983 duet by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers: “Islands in the Stream.”

Bob took us through helpful exercises to learn the chords, chord progressions and picking options. We enjoyed getting comfortable with each section of the song and sounded great when we put it all together.

After playing it through a couple of times, we took a break and enjoyed the talents of Walter M., Walter L., and one of our favorite couples, Aaron and Sana. We always appreciate hearing the great arrangements you’ve been working on!

We then got back to work on “Islands in the Stream” and we were sounding so good, we wanted to share our performance with you in a recording (coming soon to our YouTube Channel). Please enjoy playing along with us from home, and we hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day.

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Islands in the Stream” 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 Jen, Lyda and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

“Intro to Blues Ukulele” with Kevin Carroll

The Austin Ukulele Society is pleased to present Kevin Carroll on Thursday, February 27, for a workshop and more. The workshop – “Intro to Blues Ukulele” – will run for about 75 minutes. Afterward, Kevin will have a short Q & A session, followed by a brief intermission and a mini-concert.

Here’s a brief video in which Kevin shares a little about what you can expect:

Where: St. John’s UMC, in the Great Hall (2140 Allandale Rd, Austin, TX 78756)

When: Thursday, February 27th; 7:00pm – 9:00pm (Workshop 7:00 – 8:15pm, Concert 8:35 – 8:55pm). Doors at 6:30pm.

Cost: $20.00 (includes workshop and concert).

Space is limited, so please email us at austinukes@gmail.com for more info and to reserve your spot.

We’ll see you at our next in-person meeting on Thursday, March 13, at St. John’s United Methodist Church.

Be well and see you soon!  🙂

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.

The Austin Ukulele Society’s first virtual meeting of 2025 was a wonderful ‘bonus’ way to kick off our 15th(!) year! We love being part of the ukulele world! With over 165 attendees from nations including Germany, Brazil, Canada, Australia, the U.K., Jamaica, and Mexico – plus at least a dozen states of the U.S. – we truly felt the global ukulele spirit throughout the evening! 🙂

During this livestream event, we revisited the first Tin Pan Alley Medley we learned and recorded at an in-person meeting about 10 years ago. As many of you know, numerous tunes from the Tin Pan Alley era are ukulele classics, and our medley includes some of those: “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue,” “All of Me,” and “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.” We enjoyed learning to sing and strum these classic Tin Pan Alley hits every ukulele player should know! 💓

To kick things off, Bob shared some local ukulele news, including the upcoming Uke Stars event. He then led us through our warm up song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

Bob then gave us some background on our “Tin Pan Alley Medley No. 1” and played it through for us. He then took us through helpful exercises for learning how to play the chords and chord progressions, the strum pattern, the transitions, and more. He also gave a great presentation on the Circle of Fifths and how they relate to the Tin Pan Alley Medley. Thanks to you all for the fabulous feedback and valuable dialogue throughout!

We played the medley through a couple of times and sounded great! We then played Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and spent a little more time in the meeting chat while we watched a few AUS videos together.

You can download the song sheet for the “Tin Pan Alley Medley” to play along, or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills.

You can also watch a replay of the January 23 live stream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!

As always, we appreciate Lyda’s efforts to run the presentation and Jen’s to moderate the chat and convey questions over to Lyda and Bob!!

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and staying connected!

We look forward to being back with our friends from near and far online on Thursday, May 22. And we look forward to seeing our nearby friends at Uke Stars and the next in-person meeting on Thursday, February 13, at St. John’s United Methodist Church. 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.

We were thrilled to kick off our 15th year of monthly meetings on Thursday, January 9! Though it was a stormy and very chilly night, the weather did not deter the enthusiasm and terrific spirit of the participating ukulele players from all walks of life.

As you may know, our January meeting is often one of our most popular gatherings, for many reasons: resolutions to play more ukulele (of course!), Santa Claus putting new ukuleles under the tree, university students still home on winter break, and some uke-playing friends who winter in central Texas being able to join us. Therefore, we always opt to learn a very popular and upbeat song. This January was no different, and we loved learning Elton John’s 1972 mega-hit “Crocodile Rock.”

We started the evening with local ukulele news and introductions. Then we played our always uplifting warm-up song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Next, Bob G. gave us some info about “Crocodile Rock” and played it for us, to demonstrate his arrangement.

We worked hard on the fantastic exercises Bob prepared for us, playing through chord progressions and exercises to get comfortable with the song. By the time we played the song through, we sounded great.

We took a break to enjoy two wonderful open mic performances by Lora and Sho.

Afterward, we played through “Crocodile Rock” a couple of more times and made a recording to share with our uke friends and fans around the world — coming soon to our YouTube Channel. We hope you’ll play along with us from home!

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Crocodile Rock” 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 Jen, Lyda and all the fabulous AUS volunteers, for all their hard work.

Our next meeting is a virtual one on YouTube! We’re looking forward to “seeing” you all on Thursday, January 23. Please join us from wherever you are, as Bob gives us a helpful tutorial on how to play a terrific song.

We’ll see our local and visiting friends again for the next in-person meeting, on Thursday, February 13, at St. John’s United Methodist Church.

Be well and see you soon!  🙂

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.

We were thrilled to host our 14th annual Holiday Strum-along and Potluck party on Thursday, December 12! We had a chance to nosh, sip, and enjoy a longer open mic session. And we had a blast revisiting a bunch of our favorite holiday tunes. It was a lovely time spent with wonderful ukulele players from near and far, and we loved every minute of it! 🎁 🎄

We take a different approach to this last-meeting-of-the-year compared with our other workshop-style meetings. Instead of learning a new-to-us song arranged by Bob, we socialize! First, we warmed up our hands and voices with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Then Bob lead us through holiday music favorites from the Austin Ukulele Society’s fourteen-year repertoire of holiday songs and medleys.

We took a break to enjoy an extended holiday edition of our open mic portion of the evening. We owe a huge thanks to Frank, TUG, Paul A., Jay, Paul B., Jack Pott, and Walter for sharing their terrific performances of holiday-inspired tunes and tales.

After the open mic performances, the whole group got back together to play a few more AUS repertoire songs!

As always, we owe Jen, Lyda, Lori, Jana and Jodi a big thanks for supporting all of the backend business of the AUS. Thanks also to Barry and Gary for their tireless set up efforts at each meeting. We’re all grateful to Bob for his patient and thoughtful teaching and leading. Last, but not least, we owe a big thanks to Aaron for keeping us on the beat with his U-bass! 

We can’t wait to ring in 2025 with you! We’re looking forward to seeing you on Thursday, January 9, at the first meeting of our 15th year! Until then, keep strumming and have a peaceful holiday season! 🙂

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.

We welcomed over 110 merry and bright musicians to the November 14th meeting! As is our tradition in November, we got that delightful holiday spirit going by learning to sing and strum a medley of a couple of holiday song classics.

After Bob shared the agenda, some upcoming ukulele calendar events and introductions, he gave us a great performance of his arrangement of the medley we’d be covering that night: Buck Owens’ “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy” and The Ronettes’ “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” are both great holiday tunes that share a theme, so Bob arranged a medley for us.

He took us through the chords, chord progressions, tab options, and vocal harmonies, breaking down the medley into components for us to practice.

After we’d worked through the exercises, we put the medley together and played it through a couple of times, sounding better and better each time!

We took a break to enjoy the fabulous talents of Kathy Murray and Bill Jones (of Kathy & the Kilowatts) and Kimberly Carducci. They did a couple of excellent covers that got the audience singing along.

Then we got back to practicing our medley and recorded a video for you to enjoy and play along with. So don your holiday sweaters and accessories and join us on uke from your home, once the video is complete — coming soon to our YouTube Channel. 🙂

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of the “Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy / I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” medley 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 Jen, Evan, and all the AUS volunteers, for their hard work.

We look forward to seeing our Austin-area friends and visitors at our annual Holiday Potluck and Strum-along on Thursday, December 12, at St. John’s United Methodist Church!

Be well and see you soon!  🙂

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.

The Austin Ukulele Society was delighted to host a friendly group of 120+ ukulele players from near and far! This event gave us the opportunity to take a deep dive into learning a song, with a detailed tutorial presented by Bob, live Q&A fielded by Lyda, and the presentation managed by our friend Evan. 🙂

With Halloween just a week away, we revisited one of our more grimly-themed songs. It was eerie fun to learn to strum and sing Austin-based alternative rock band, Fastball’s, 1998 number one hit “The Way.” This hugely popular song was inspired by the haunting, true story of a local elderly couple’s disappearance. Bob created an excellent arrangement for us on the ukulele, and we enjoyed strumming, picking and singing it! 💓

Bob kicked off the evening with a little local ukulele news and shared a lovely letter from Hayes Secondary School in the U.K., whose ukulele group (‘HUB’ – Hayes Ukulele Band) plays many AUS songs. He also introduced our good friend Evan Kolvoord, who assisted with the presentation, and Lyda, who moderated the chat.

Bob then demonstrated his arrangement of “The Way” before teaching his detailed educational tutorial of the song. We had a great time learning to play the various chords and chord progressions, the different strum patterns, and picking options. We enjoyed the vocal options and practicing the components of the song, before we put it together and played it through a couple of times along with both Bob and Evan. 🙂 Your questions and feedback were much appreciated throughout the workshop-style meeting!

We then played Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and spent a little more time in the meeting chat while we watched a few AUS videos together.

You can download the song sheet for “The Way” to play along, or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills.

You can also watch a replay of the October 24 live stream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!

As always, we love to give to a shout out to Lyda Guz, who moderated the chat with finesse through the evening and to Evan Kolvoord, who skillfully managed the presentation slides and joined in on playing the tunes. Thanks Evan!!

Thank you for joining us, sending in your selfies, and staying connected!

Our next in-person meeting will be Thursday, November 14, at St. John’s UMC in Austin. And we hope you’ll be back to join us again at our next virtual meeting on Thursday, January 23, 2025. 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.

On a lovely October evening, over 100 ukulele players met up for the monthly Austin Ukulele Society in-person meeting! We kicked off the evening with introductions and some local uke news.

We especially love the October meeting since we enjoy getting the Halloween spirit going by wearing some costumes or accessories and, of course, learning a song that is at least a bit spooky. This year was no different as we learned to strum and sing Britney Spears’ 2003 megahit “Toxic.” This song features a very catchy hook and a variety of music styles that add to the suspense of the sometimes creepy lyrics. We quickly became “addicted” to strumming and singing this song!

After we played our warm-up song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” Bob G. performed his version of “Toxic” for us, so we could get a feel for what we’d be working on. He then took us through various exercises to break down the sections of the song, so we could get comfortable with the chords, chord progressions, strum styles, and more.

We practiced and worked hard, getting better with each effort. When we played the song through a couple of times, we enjoyed hearing how good we were sounding!

Next, we took a break to enjoy a terrific open mic performance by Mia and to sing happy birthday to Walter (led by The John Davenport).

We got back to practicing “Toxic” and hope you’ll play along with us on our recording from home — coming soon to our YouTube Channel.

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Toxic” 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 Jen, Lyda and all the AUS volunteers, for their hard work.

Our next meeting is a virtual one on YouTube! Please join us from wherever you are, as Bob gives us a helpful tutorial on how to play a terrific song.

We’ll see our local and visiting friends again for the next in-person meeting, on Thursday, November 14, at St. John’s United Methodist Church.

Be well and see you soon!  🙂

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.