Ukelilli playing Edinburgh

American ukulele musician Ukelilli is touring the UK next month and will be playing in Edinburgh on 3rd March at the Pheonix Cellar Bar at 8, doors are at 7:30 and it costs £3.  She has some great stuff and I’m planning on making it along myself.

I have also invited her along to the Ukearist on Monday 1st March which she’ll hopefully be able to make.

http://www.ukelilli.com/

Songwriting Group

After the impromptu song writing at last Monday’s Ukearist we thought we might try and set up a song writing group to meet up at a separate time from the regular fortnightly Monday evenings with a view to forming one or more groups to get something together for song writing competitions later this year.

It would be good to try and arrange something fairly soon.  Please let us know in the comments below if you would like to get involved with and devote extra time to this.

Richie from UOGB with a Ukearist t-shirt!

Fame at last for the humble Monday Ukearist!  Here’s a pic of Richie from the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain proudly wearing one of our very own Monday Ukearist t-shirts, taken last week in Belgium:

He explains:

“All I can remember is being strangely drawn to the light, after imbibing a small glass of Trappiste beer.

No wonder. The bulb had a filament in it.

Quite a rare sight nowadays!”

He also let me know that they are playing up in Perth on May 25th.  I am almost definitely going, anyone else fancy it?

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Two bits of UOGB news:

The DVD of their 2009 Prom is now on sale through their website.

If anyone already has this, can you rate it for us?

The other bit of news is that the UOGB will be playing in Perth on Tuesday, 25 May. Tickets on sale from Monday, 29 March.

Anyone interested in going as a gang?

Tickets for Ukulele Festival of GB now on sale

A quick heads up for you all that tickets are now on sale for the Ukulele Festival of Great Britain.   Tickets are £24 for all events, get yours quick!  I’ve bought mine already!

Show us your talents and share your skills

At the last couple of ukearists we have experimented with setting aside part of the night to individual performances and for folk to teach the rest of us something new on the uke.  This has worked out really well so I reckon we should make it a regular feature at the Ukearist, it certainly adds a bit of variety to the night.

So far we have had performances from myself, Dave and Steven and Chris has taught chunking and 12 bar blues and did a bit about the blues scale for improvising.

I suggest that at around 9pm each night whoever fancies doing a performance or bit of teaching can do so.

This will be a really great for giving any of you interested in performing a friendly and low-pressure environment to do it in and will be really interesting for the rest of us to see what sort of things folk play outside of the ukearist.  I’m also really looking forward to learning new skills from the rest of you.

If you have any other suggestions or comments please share them below.

Cigar Box Ukulele

I made a cigar box ukulele of Christmas and, surprisingly, it turned out rather well!  Here’s a short video of it in action:

Seasonal Uke Gifts??

Greetings All!!

OK, fess up! What uke-shaped oddities did you find under your trees?

Z, am especially interested to know what you found there ….

Nothing uke-shaped under my tree, though the ukes did make an appearance at the P family gathering. There was some strumming and some singing (not *all* of it done by me!).

Made sure not to go on *too long* (leave ‘em wanting more – or at least not wanting to forcibly remove you and uke from the premises) and looking forward to a foray into Glasgow music shops on Tuesday.

And the rest of you?

Hope it has been a joyful ukey time!

No Ukearist on 4th January

Monday Ukearist will be taking a break on Monday 4th January, next one will be our first birthday special on the 18th January.

Wishing you all a wonderful festive period, see you in the New Year.

Christmas Ukearist this Monday

Don’t forget it’s Christmas Ukearist this Monday where we will be playing lots of Christmas songs from this song book.  Please print the songbook out if you can as we won’t be providing copies!  Well, I might bring a couple spare along, but don’t count on it!

Next most important is that this night is also a bit of a party so please feel free to bring along mulled wine, other Christmas boze such as sherry, brandy, baileys and special brew and Christmas nibbles such as mince pies, chocolates, turkeys, nut roasts, brussel sprouts and santa’s shoe stew.

There will doubtless also be a post-ukearist trip to sofis for a few more drinks and a wee strum.

Hope to see many of you there, for those of you that I don’t, have yourselves a very merry Christmas!