We had a wonderful time at our April in-person meeting! Despite the rainy weather, the turnout was fabulous, with over 170 enthusiasts in attendance. We welcomed first timers and regulars alike; it was especially fun welcoming an old friend who moved to the Philippines, new friends from the Cayman Islands, and a recent transplant who has been taking his uke around the world with his work, hoping to find a group like ours!    

Hard to believe, but nearly three years has passed since we covered a Beatles tune. We often get requests to do so, and we get it – the Beatles’ repertoire is delightfully timeless, ever popular, and has many songs that lend themselves well to group sing and strum-a-longs. They also often offer some great learning opportunities for cool strum patterns and vocal harmonies. At this meeting we learned to strum, pick, and harmonize the iconic “Hey Jude.”  

After sharing some local ukulele news, we played our warm-up song – Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Then Bob (with Jay on U-bass) gave us a great demo performance of “Hey Jude.” 

Bob took us through some very helpful exercises to learn each component of this timeless 1968 Beatles favorite, and we had a great time learning the strum styles, the harmonizing options, the picking part, and even some a cappella refrains of the coda. We put the song together a couple of times and sounded better with each practice.

We took a break to enjoy a special open mic treat, as Kevin Carroll and his Austin Ukestra performed an original piece.

After we got back to practicing on “Hey Jude,” we made a recording for your listening (and play along!) pleasure. We hope you’ll have as much fun as we did. It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Hey Jude” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide (what we project on the screens for all to follow along, including exercises and drills).

We’re immensely grateful to Jay Clement for his bass accompaniment. Many, many thanks to all the fabulous AUS volunteers for their hard work.  

Take care and be well. We hope you’ll all join us at the AUS virtual meeting on April 23rd on our YouTube Channel! And we look forward to seeing everyone at our next in-person meeting on May 14 at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Keep on strumming until 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 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.

Our new “Ukin’ Armadillo” design, “Circle of Stars,” “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.

Thank you so much for coming out to the Austin Ukulele Society’s March meeting! We loved seeing so many enthusiastic uke players, from near and far! We owe a big shout out to our friend Vany who joined us all the way from India, and who we got to know in our monthly virtual meetings during the pandemic.    

We’ve long wanted to cover an ABBA song, and this was our big “chance”! We learned to strum and harmonize one of ABBA’s most popular songs of all time, 1978’s “Take a Chance On Me.”  

Bob kicked off the meeting with introductions and a quick review of the agenda. After sharing some local ukulele news, Bob (with support from Jay on U-bass) gave us a lovely performance of “Take a Chance on Me.”  

Then we got to work, learning the chords, chord progressions, strum styles and harmonizing options for this upbeat song. As we practiced each component and put more pieces together, we got better and better!

We played it through a couple of times, then took a break for the open mic portion of the evening. Rebecca and Jay gave us two terrific performances; we’re so grateful to all who get up and share their talents with us!

Next, we played through “Take a Chance On Me” again, and recorded it for you to enjoy and play along with from your home. We hope you’ll have as much fun as we did. It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “Take a Chance On Me” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide (what we project on the screens for all to follow along, including exercises and drills).

We’re immensely grateful to Jay Clement for his bass accompaniment. Many, many thanks to all the fabulous AUS volunteers for their hard work.  

Take care and be well. We look forward to seeing everyone at our next in-person meeting on April 9 at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Save the date for our next virtual meeting, April 23rd on our YouTube Channel! Keep on strumming until 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 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.

Our new “Ukin’ Armadillo” design, “Circle of Stars,” “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.

Our February meeting was one for the books, with ~175 ukulele enthusiasts ready to learn to sing and strum our first-ever Taylor Swift song! Swift’s a songwriter known for penning many fantastic songs about romantic relationships and heartbreak, and we knew she’d be a great choice for our Valentine’s-week meeting.    

We learned to strum, pick, and sing “You Belong With Me.” This 2008 mega-hit is considered one of Swift’s signature songs, and we had a blast singing and strumming along to its infectious tune with great lyrics.

Bob kicked off the meeting with introductions and a quick review of the agenda. We also played through our warm-up song – Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”  

Bob (with Aaron on bass) performed his arrangement of “You Belong With Me,” much to our listening pleasure, and to help us get familiar with what we’d be learning. We dove into helpful exercises to learn the strum style, the chord progressions, the harmonizing options, and the picking parts. When we put the song together, we sounded fantastic! 

We took a break and delighted in three excellent open mic performances. The lovely trio of Kelly, Kim and Becky covered “Blue Skies,” Paul did a great rendition of “Makin’ Love Ukulele Style,” and Roy and Theresa performed a great cover of the classic John Prine/Iris DeMent duet “In Spite of Ourselves.” We’re thankful, always, to our open mic participants – and we hope to see you at the Ukulele Open Mic on Saturday, February 21st!!

We got back to practicing “You Belong With Me” and recorded ourselves – we hope you enjoy our video and playing along with us from home! It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

To play along, you can download the lyrics, chords, and tab for Bob’s arrangement of “You Belong With Me” or download a copy of the presentation and instruction guide (what we project on the screens for all to follow along, including exercises and drills).

As always, we’re immensely grateful to Aaron for his accompaniment on U-bass and all the fabulous AUS volunteers for all their hard work.  

Take care and be well. We look forward to seeing you all at our March 12th meeting at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Keep on strumming until 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 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.

Our new “Ukin’ Armadillo” design, “Circle of Stars,” “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.

Hello, friends, thank you for joining us at our January virtual meeting! Whether it was 5pm in California, 9pm in Nova Scotia, 2am in Germany, or noon Friday in Sydney, Australia, more than 180 of you showed up, ready to strum and sing with Bob and the gang in Austin. We love you! 🙂

With the recent passing of the legendary co-founder of the Grateful Dead, Bob Weir, we thought it would be great to pay homage to him by revisiting our take on “Ripple.” The Austin Ukulele Society covered this classic ~11 years ago.

Bob kicked off the meeting by introducing special guest and friend Jay Clement, who joined him to harmonize on vocals and play u-bass. He then introduced Jen, his AUS partner, and Lyda, his life partner, and shared some local uke news, including our upcoming Ukulele Open Mic on February 21st.

Then Bob led us in playing our lovely opening song, Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” before launching into the meeting’s tutorial. Bob led us through some helpful exercises to learn each part of “Ripple,” including its strumming styles and harmony options. He also spent time reviewing and demonstrating some useful strumming techniques. We enjoyed breaking down “Ripple” and played it through twice – we sounded great!

Then Bob spent a little time sharing some background on “Wagon Wheel,” and we had fun playing this popular tune together, too.

To close out the evening, we played Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” Bob shared a few of the AUS in-person meeting videos, and we chatted some more before ending the livestream.

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

Download the song sheet for “Wagon Wheel” to play along, or grab a copy of the presentation and instruction guide, including exercises and drills.

You can also watch a replay of the January 22 livestream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!

It was a wonderful time together, and we owe a many thanks to Lyda Guz for managing the presentation and Jen Richardson for moderating the chat. Special thanks to our guest Jay Clement for his bass and vocal accompaniment!

Thank you all 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 April 23, 2026! And we hope to seeing all our nearby friends at our next in-person meeting on Thursday, February 12, 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 kicked off our 16th year of monthly meetings on a beautiful January evening in Austin. We had at least 175 ukulele enthusiasts of all levels in attendance! As always, we want to thank you for showing up, smiling and participating. We could not do this without you!    

In January we always opt to learn a popular and upbeat song. This January was no different, and we learned Glen Campbell’s 1975 timeless, international hit, “Rhinestone Cowboy.” This tune is generally considered his signature song and tells a tale of making it, despite obstacles. We were all singing and strumming along in no time!

Bob kicked off the meeting with introductions and gratitude. He thanked Jen for being his partner in all things AUS, Lyda for all she does, not least of all designing our fantastic shirts, Lori and Jana for supporting us in business decisions and t-shirt sales and gave thanks to our tireless friends Barry and Gary, too. After sharing some local uke news, we warmed up with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”  

After hearing Bob and Aaron perform a great demo of our new-to-us song, we got to work on “Rhinestone Cowboy.” We had fun learning the chords, chord progressions, strum patterns and picking options from Bob. After we practiced each component of the song, we put it all together and played it through, sounding better each time. 

We took a break to hear Rich play a great song he’s been working on. Then we got back to practicing “Rhinestone Cowboy” and recorded a video of our performance!

We hope you’ll play along with us on “Rhinestone Cowboy” from your home. It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

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

Take care and be well. We look forward to “seeing” everyone at our upcoming virtual meeting on Thursday, January 22, at 7:00 CDT on our YouTube Channel. We also hope to see you at the February 12 in-person meeting at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Keep on strumming until 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 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.

Our new “Ukin’ Armadillo” design, “Circle of Stars,” “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 December evening in Austin, around 150 ukulele players brought lots of cheer and merriment with them to our 15th Annual Holiday Potluck and Strum-along! 🎁 🎄

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! We truly enjoyed visiting and noshing to start off the eve! Bob shared some info about the evening’s agenda and we warmed up our hands and voices with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” Then we played through some of our favorite holiday songs and medleys!

We had an extended open mic portion of the evening, with a terrific array of big groups and solo musicians, all playing an excellent variety of holiday tunes for our listening pleasure. We owe a huge thanks to Walter, the Tuesday Ukulele Group (TUG), the Georgetown Ukulele Club, the Sweetwater Ukuleles, Jack Pott, Rodger, Helen, and the Austin Ukulele Society Ensemble for sharing their terrific performances!

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

Thank you for bringing food and treats to share, wearing holiday attire, and always bringing happiness with you. We truly appreciate you all for making 2025 a wonderful year for the Austin Ukulele Society – we couldn’t do it without you!

As always, we owe Jen, Lyda, Lori, and Jana 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 2026 with you! We’re looking forward to seeing you on Thursday, January 8, at the first meeting of our 16th 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.

It’s time to start polishing your holiday repertoire! The Austin Ukulele Society had a delightfully merry November gathering. As is our tradition in November, we kicked off the holiday season with plenty of colorful attire and smiles as we learned a new-to-us medley of holiday standards! “Silver Bells” may be 75 years old, but it is as timeless and popular as ever. Since “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is also in 3/4 waltz time, they make for a great medley.    

After sharing some local ukulele news and the evening’s agenda, Bob demonstrated his lovely arrangement of “Silver Bells” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” 

He then took us through helpful exercises to learn the chords, three-quarter time strum styles, picking, and vocal harmonies. 

We enjoyed practicing each section of the medley. When we put it all together to play through, we sounded terrific!

We hope you’ll play along with us on the “Silver Bells Medley” from your home. It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

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

We look forward to seeing you at our holiday strum-along and potluck on December 11 at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Be well and have a lovely Thanksgiving!  🙂

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 had Halloween season chills and thrills covered, across the globe, at our virtual meeting last week! From Australia to Canada, the UK and Germany, and all points of North America, we united for a fun and spooky evening of music. 🙂

Since this event fell just eight days before All Hallows Eve, we couldn’t resist revisiting an eerie tune from the AUS past. We were thrilled to learn a spooky, bluesy, howling hit from 1966: Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs’ “Li’l Red Riding Hood.” 💓

Bob started the night by sharing some personal and AUS updates and asking all to say hello and where they were signing on from. We then played Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” to warm up our voices and fingers.

Next, Bob shared some info about “Li’l Red Riding Hood” and gave us a great demonstrative performance. He then took us through helpful exercises to help us get comfortable with the chords, chord progressions, harmony options and more. Bob extended his tutorial to include some chord and strumming variations to use in our featured song as well as many other songs we might play. We had fun practicing the various components of Bob’s lesson, and by the time we played “L’il Red Riding Hood” through, we sounded great and confident – and even played it through twice!

To close out the evening, we played Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” and visited a bit more in the chat while watching a few AUS in-person meeting videos.

You can download the song sheet for “Li’l Red Riding Hood” 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 23 livestream. Watch the entire show or jump to the part you most want to see!

It was a wonderful time together, and we owe a special thanks to Lyda Guz for managing the presentation and Jen Richardson for moderating the chat.

Thank you all 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 January 22nd, 2026! Until then, we wish everyone a great Halloween and a wonderful holiday season!

And we hope to seeing all our nearby friends at our next in-person meeting on Thursday, November 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.

A thrilling kickoff to the Halloween season was had by all 165+ in attendance at the Austin Ukulele Society’s October meeting! At this meeting we were thrilled to cover Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” This epic, eerie and haunting tune is on EVERY Halloween playlist, and the music video is considered the best of all time. We loved strumming and singing it together!

The evening began with introductions and Bob giving a run-through of the evening’s agenda. We then warmed up by playing our traditional opener: Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”   

Bob gave us a great performance of his arrangement of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” before we launched into helpful exercises. We practiced chord progressions, strumming options, and even an appropriately-timed stomp as we learned to strum and sing.

When we put the song together, we were sounding terrifyingly good!

We took a break and enjoyed the fabulous open mic talent of Alan (all the way from the UK!), Walter M., and Rich C. We are fortunate to have had such a delightful interlude!

Then we got back to our enjoyable work, and after we practiced some more, we were ready to make a recording for you. We hope you’ll play along with us on “Thriller” from your home. It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

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

Take care and be well, enjoy the spooky month, and please join us at our livestream on Thursday, October 23, at 7:00 CDT on our YouTube Channel. We also hope to see you at the November 13 in-person meeting at St. John’s United Methodist Church. Keep on strumming until 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.

The September meeting of the Austin Ukulele Society was extra special, as we saw our biggest in-person gathering since before the pandemic! We were thrilled to welcome 175 ukulele players of all ages, backgrounds and skill levels, as it is always a joy to make music with such wonderful folks! ❤

This month, we turned our attention to a soulful song made most popular by Dobie Gray in 1973: “Drift Away.” This international, timeless hit pays homage to the gifts that music gives us, and while it’s been covered by many, our rendition will stick more closely to Dobie Gray’s version. We loved playing this beautiful song together!

We kicked off the evening with brief introductions and local ukulele news (including info about Lil Rev and Rockin’ Ray’s September 25 workshop – email us for details!). Then we enjoyed warming up our voices and fingers with Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”  

Then Bob performed “Drift Away” to help us get a feel for the arrangement we’d soon be playing. He then took us through some very helpful exercises to get us comfortable with all of the components of the song, including the chord progressions, strum patterns, picking options, and vocal harmonies.

We enjoyed working on each part of the song and then putting it together to play through. 

This month’s meeting didn’t have any open mic participants, so we took advantage of a little extra practice time and fine tuned our performance. Please enjoy playing along with us from home! It will be coming soon to our YouTube Channel! 

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

Take care and be well, and we hope to see you all at the October 9th AUS in-person meeting at St. John’s United Methodist Church, as well as the October 23rd online meeting on our YouTube channel. Keep on strumming until 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.