A lot of fun and a lot of practice at our May meeting

Our May monthly meeting, held on Thursday evening, May 9, was just like most of our meetings, and that’s good–folks had a lot of fun getting together, learning a new song, and for a group of us, getting ready to make an appearance. As usual, about 40 people attended, about ten of them for the first time.

We played the new song–well, it’s hardly a new song. It’s that old favorite, Up on the roof, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin and made famous by the Drifters in the early 1960s. Both Bob and I (Walter) thought it sounded fantastic when the group performed it. I do not yet have a copy of Bob’s final “Presentation” version to post, but I hope to post it soon.

Lots of fun stuff will be coming up in the Austin ukulele community. Jim D’Ville will be doing a workshop on June 1, Kevin Carroll’s uke group will be presenting a recital, and AUS is bringing uke songstress Deb Porter to Austin to do a workshop on How to Sing with Your Uke, plus a house concert, on Thurs., June 20–more details will arrive in the next post.

The appearance mentioned above happened the next evening, May 10, at Zilker Elementary School in south Austin. We had a great time and performed for a receptive audience. More about the Zilker appearance will appear here soon.

Thanks to those who did their solo (or duet) numbers at the May meeting–Kendra, Woody, Bob, Sandra & Ray, Jack, and yours truly.

For anyone in Central Texas who might be reading this post, but hasn’t attended one of our meetings, please join us! No obligations, it’s free, and it’s fun. For any of those who might have attended a past meeting, but is struggling with their instrument, we say “Come back.” We can get you hooked up with someone who can help you feel more comfortable with your instrument.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday evening, June 13, 7 – 8:30 p.m. at the Memorial United Methodist Church. More details soon…

Song for May meeting: “Up on the roof”

Do you remember “Up on the roof,” the Drifters’ hit from 1962? It’s going to be our song for the May meeting. You can get “Up On the Roof” here, or from the Ukulele Music Library. It’s an easy and fun song, with just four chords, and suitable to sing this summer. (Not that there are all that many East-Coast-style roofs to get up on in Austin–on many of them, you’ll step on the solar panels and slide off, so watch out.)

Here’s the original song from 51 years ago (Bob warns us that this video’s version is in G#, but we’ll be playing it in G):

Hope we’ll see you at the Memorial United Methodist Church, 6100 Berkman Drive, Austin, at 7 pm, Thursday, May 9.

May meeting will happen on Thurs 5/9

It’s that time again. We’ll be meeting on Thursday, May 9th, from 7 – 8:30 p.m., in the usual classroom at the Memorial United Methodist Church, at 6100 Berkman Drive, Austin, TX 78723. We don’t yet have a definite song, or even whether there will be a new song, but we’ll know soon if there’ll be one. (Bob is cogitating.) Visit this space again soon.

AUS at Memorial Methodist Church’s Heritage Day

A message from Bob about our appearance at the Memorial Methodist Church on Sunday afternoon, April 28 (and remember that the Church is nice enough to let us hold our monthly meetings there):

Yesterday we sounded fantastic! [Walter's] kazoo and Kendra and Ian’s vocal solos were real crowd-pleasers. The unexpected addition of Gary’s upright bass added a whole new dimension to our sound. After we played, there were so many people who approached me to thank us for coming and express how much they loved our music and the opportunity to sing along. Many thanks to everyone who attended — it was a fun experience!

Thanks!

Bob

It was a lot of fun; the Heritage Day at the church honored those who had been members for decades (and I overheard someone being applauded for being a church member for 40 years). We hope that more people who come to our monthly meetings will also come to our “events.” You can be onstage making beautiful noise without the stage fright because you’re part of a big group. And here’s the video of one of the songs we performed, courtesy of Trina Woodall:

No fools at our April meeting

Our meetings are always great fun, but the April meeting seemed to be particularly enjoyable. Preparing for the two big performing events we have coming up–one at Memorial United Methodist Church, where we meet, and another May 10 at Zilker Elementary School–the whole group went over some of our favorite numbers, such as “Love Potion #9″ and “Ring of Fire.”

It’s a little scary for some of us who want to perform in public to face the idea of playing our numbers without a chart of chords to follow (at least it is for me). I know that I’ve got to memorize the chords and lyrics for all eight of the songs we’re doing at the two performances. That’s why we have the Ukulele Music Library, of course. We can read the charts from our screens or print ‘em out on paper. Either way, it helps us play them over and over until we have them down pat. (If you’re interested in joining us on either or both days, drop a line to austinukes[at]gmail.com.)

Plus, besides the two performances, we have something else to look forward to–a workshop and concert by Deb Porter, a true Texas ukulele (and dulcimer) songbird. Deb has been traveling all over, making CDs, and singing for years. On Thursday, June 20, she’ll be presenting a workshop, “S.U.C.C.E.S.S.:  Smile, U Can Completely Enjoy Singing and Strumming!” and a concert, at a spot soon to be announced. She’ll teach us how to build our confidence when we sing, and how to tailor our ukulele arrangements to fit our voices. Plus, she promises to teach us how to yodel. More details soon!

During the solo section of the meeting, several of our in-house performers–Derek, Woody, Jack, Steve, Bob, and Gary (plus yours truly, Walter)–played and sang for us in a bagful of styles. If you are interested in performing before the friendliest and least critical audience you’ll ever find, you should come to our meetings and raise your hand when Bob asks for volunteers.

It looks as if our next meeting will be held on Thursday evening, May 9th, from 7 to 8:30 as usual, at Memorial United Methodist Church. Will we see you there? We hope so. –Walter

AUS folks will be out there singing, and Time for the meeting!

Jen sez:

We’ve been asked to do a couple of performances in the coming weeks.

The first will be at the church where we have our meetings.  On Sunday, April 28th, Memorial United Methodist Church honors their older and long-time members with an event called Heritage Sunday.  We’ve been asked to perform at around 12:30, for about 30 minutes.  We’re invited to enjoy lunch there, as well.

On Friday, May 10th, in the evening (exact time TBD), we’ve been asked to perform at Zilker Elementary’s Backyard Concert. The event is a fundraiser to help purchase much-needed instruments for their music classrooms.

The songs below (in no definitive order, yet) are the ones we’re probably going to do for both live performances since it’ll be nice to rehearse the same material for two gigs and they are good, clean fun tunes!

Three Little Birds
Don’t Fence Me In
Stand By Me
What a Wonderful World (Iz style)
Love Potion #9
Ring of Fire (presentation version)
Runaway
On the Road Again

We’ll try to have at least one rehearsal during the week before each of the performances, of course.  It is not mandatory that you attend the rehearsals as long as you practice on your own to get ready, of course.

At both performances, we’re looking for about 12-15 volunteers who can commit to either or both events.  Please drop a note to austinukes{at}gmail.com to let us know which one you can join, or if you’d like to join both Austin Ukulele Society ‘ensemble’ performances. Looking forward to strumming with you all soon!

Later: Thanks to those of you who’ve already responded enthusiastically!

You should be pretty comfortable and familiar with the songs we’ll play live, and it’s best to try to memorize the songs.  We will not have much room for music stands, and there won’t be any projector, in either place.  Some of us (including me) make a little chord cheat/reminder sheet that fits on the top of the uke, so that you can glance down, at the beginning of songs perhaps, for a quick refresher.  However, I can attest to this being more for a quick reminder and not something you’d want to rely on while playing.

Please let me know if you’d like to participate in either or both of the performances.  We’d love to have you, and all levels are welcome, as long as you can make time to practice and get comfortable with these eight tunes.

We’ll keep you posted on a rehearsal date, and we’ll certainly practice some (if not all) of these in our meeting this Thursday! Remember, we’re meeting this Thursday evening, April 11, from 7 – 8:30 at the Memorial United Methodist Church at 6100 Berkman Dr, Austin.

However, we will need to meet in a different room within the church, just for April–they have other events in the gym and adjacent rooms.  You will want to enter through the ‘main’ door under the canopy covered driveway in the parking lot.  Walk straight through the carpeted corridor, through a tiled/lobby area, and into carpeted area again.  Turn right, and you will see the church’s Parlor – we’ll meet there.

We will try to have signs to guide you to the correct room.   –Jen

Stephen Mangold–a local uke builder

For his 65th birthday, Stephen Mangold, a long-time bluegrass guitarist who already had some guitar-building experience, gave himself a gift–a weeklong class in ukulele building, held at a luthier school in Vermont. He had, as many players do, discovered the ukulele after years of guitar playing and wanted to spend some time with the smaller instrument. He hasn’t regretted it since; he’s been busy creating ukes (along with guitars) ever since.

When I went to visit Steve, a retired UT electrical engineer, at his northwest Austin home, he showed me a tenor guitar he’s been working on the past few months [below, right]. “The top is Engelmann spruce,” he told me, and the back and sides are Brazilian rosewood. “Not the endangered kind,” he hastens to add.

A tenor guitar, of course, is a beast hovering somewhere between the guitar, the banjo, and the ukulele, with a guitar body and a slender neck, with four metal strings, like those on a tenor banjo. “Tenor guitars appeared in the days of the jazz bands in the 1930s,” Steve said. The banjo players saw that the banjo’s days in jazz groups were ending, and the guitar was taking its place in the rhythm section. “A banjo player could pick up a tenor guitar and play it right away. It’s tuned just like a banjo.”

He’s built 7 ukes so far, two of them sopranos and the rest mostly tenors. “I build them from scratch,” he says. He bends the sides, builds the fingerboards, the nuts and the saddles, and crafts the tops mostly from spruce that he buys at one-eighth of an inch thickness but thins down to .07 of an inch (a guitar top, for comparison, is .11 inch). He likes to create the binding–the decorative strip at the point where the top or back joins the sides–from curly maple. He builds each instrument with a convex back [left] for a louder, fuller tone.

Steve has been to a couple of AUS meetings so far; at the March meeting he played a solo and mentioned that he’d built the uke he played it on. After the meeting he was immediately surrounded by a group of folks who wanted to see his work up close. It’s tough for Steve to get to meetings, though, because his bluegrass group holds their jam on the same night at the New World Deli. He’ll try to get to the AUS meetings more often, he promises. If you’re interested in contacting Steve to learn more about how he builds ukuleles, you can email him at fiddlersam[at]sbcglobal.net. –Walter