The Austin Ukulele Society hosted its first ukulele open mic night at the Rattle Inn on Wednesday, Sept 18th.  There was a great turnout of performers with 14 solo and duet acts, who signed up to play two songs each. We had another 20 ukulele enthusiasts in the audience, showing their appreciation for this fun ukulele-filled evening. We were all treated to a great range of musical styles, both cover tunes and original compositions, as well as familiar acts and ones we hadn’t seen before.

A big shout out to Nathan Antar, visiting Austin for the first time from the Bay Area (with uke in hand), who found out about the open mic night that day, when searching the web for Austin ukulele activity.  We were given the chance to have anyone who wanted to come up and play a third tune after running through the sign up sheet once, and several performers delighted us with an ‘encore’, keeping the ukulele music going till after 10pm.

The AUS looks forward to hosting another ukulele open mic night in the near future, and hopes the delightful Rattle Inn staff will welcome us back.  A big thanks to Evan, our sound engineer, and the rest of the Rattle Inn crew for serving great drinks and making us welcome.  Keep strummin’ and singin’ and we look forward to seeing y’all soon!

Hey folks– we had a great time at our September 12 meeting. We tried out a new song that worked amazingly well–Wagon Wheel, made famous by Darius Rucker’s version. (Here is Wagon Wheel in Presentation Format– In other words, it’s Bob’s special meeting version.) Bob recorded the group of 50+ AUS members playing the song and doesn’t it sound nice in the YouTube video below?

Bob is committed to getting the AUS folks in great video hi-fi at our future meetings–so prepare to be recorded.

Sounds pretty good to me.

All AUS members should remember the special Open Mic at the Rattle Inn on Wednesday, September 18, starting at 7:30 (sign-ups begin at 7 p.m.).

At our own Open Non-Mic session at the Thursday meeting, we want to thank Woody and his banjo uke, Kevin with his slide uke, Ray, Kendra, Roxanne, Steve, and (yours truly,) Walter. We hope to see one and all at our spooky October 10 meeting at the Memorial United Methodist Church, which will begin at 7 p.m.

For our September 12 meeting (Thursday, 7 – 8:30 p.m., Memorial United Methodist Church), we will play “Wagon Wheel.” Co-authored by Bob Dylan, this song was performed by the Old Crow Medicine Show, but it was made famous by Darius Rucker in this video. (Say, are those the guys from Duck Dynasty?)

Unfortunately, Rucker sings it here in the key of A, but Bob feels that we AUS folks will have an easier time strumming the song in the key of G. Of course, on YouTube you will also find uke players singing any song you can name, so here’s the Carolina Ukulele Ensemble, full of youthful energy, and playing it faster than we will, but in G:

And here’s Mumford and Sons performing it in G as well.

See you on Thursday!

There’s nothing like an AUS meeting to cool yourself off with all the coolness it provides in the hottest month of the year, right? This month, on Aug. 8, we tried our hand at the old Creedence Clearwater hit “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” – here’s the Presentation Format from the meeting, with the extra bells and whistles. It’s amazing how, at first strum, you can think a song is fairly simple and not too tough, yet during the meeting, Bob can bring you into the song to see all the rhythmic tricks that one can play. (We also had great fun bringing back last month’s KISS song “Rock and Roll All Nite,” and banging it around with great fervor.

Yet Bob had another trick up his sleeve (not easy when you’re wearing short sleeves): he filmed us playing “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” This means that if you weren’t at the meeting, you can watch and listen to the video on our YouTube channel, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amhXIHrDsss and you can download the Presentation Version of the song (link above) and have it ready when we perform it at a future meeting. Watch for more of this kind of thing in the future. You won’t have to worry about missing a song when you miss future meetings. Way cool! Be sure to send us any comments you may have about the video, and what you’d like to see recorded at AUS meetings coming up.

Our next meeting will be at the Memorial United Methodist Church, as usual, from 7 – 8:30 p.m. on September 12. We hope to see you there.

Even though we’ve seen a little more rain than usual the past few months, an Austin summer is still pretty dry, and the lakes are dipping lower and lower. So how about another classic Creedence Clearwater number that will express our hope for what we need most around here? “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” is a classic from 1970. (Bob says that the original recording below is in the same key we’ll be performing, so strum along.)

As always, our meeting will be on the second Thursday evening of August, which means we’ll be meeting from 7 – 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 8, at the Memorial United Methodist Church, at 6100 Berkman Dr., Austin. If you’d like to perform a song you’ve been working on, please have it ready. During our Open Non-mic section, there’s no friendlier audience than our group. See you then!

At our July 11 meeting, the 40 or so AUS members present rocked and rolled–not all night, but long enough to enjoy ourselves. That old KISS song sounded great with dozens of ukuleles strumming it together. Bob also had us using the strings as a percussion instrument and learning how to syncopate the song’s chorus so that we started a beat behind, as in the song, which was very cool. Oh, and if you were there, you know that Bob made an error in his fingering chart for the Eb chord. He corrected that and here is the correct Rock and Roll All Nite–both in the original version, and in the expanded Presentation Format from the meeting.

We heard about the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain concert coming to Austin on November 21 and 22. You can purchase tickets now at the Texas Performing Arts site. If you’ve ever seen the many YouTube videos of the Ukes, you will know that you probably won’t want to miss this show. The Dallas Ukulele Headquarters will have a group of folks coming down to Austin on Friday night 11/22 for the concert, after which we are hoping to take some of the members of the Ukes out for a drink. Then at mid-day on Saturday, the DUH folks will get together with the AUS folks for a jam. More info will be coming as the date gets closer.

Thanks to both Bobs, Kendra and Lacey, Ray and Sandra, Richard, Woody, Kathleen, and Jack for performing at our Open Non-Mike session. There was one other fellow whose name we didn’t catch, pictured above–if that’s you, or you know who he is, please let us know. We hope that you will think about performing for the group at a future meeting. It’s just about the world’s most forgiving audience.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday evening, August 8, at the Memorial United Methodist Church. Hope we’ll see you there!

Folks– Bob just released two PDF documents we’ve been waiting for– Up On the Roof – Presentation Format and House of the Rising Sun – Presentation Format. These are the “final” versions of the songs that we played and sang at the May and June meetings. Get ’em here now!