Wow!! What a meeting we had tonight! Counting myself we had a total of 12 people present for this months meeting. And what a treat to have Harry Imoto and his family drive all the way down from Clarksville!! Now that’s dedication.

My daughter and I arrived a bit early so we could eat and we were pleasantly surprised to find Mary and Andy and Harry and his family already there eating. By the way, the food at Z’s Deli is excellent – a big thanks to Zapporah for letting us have our meeting there. We had the place to ourselves for most of the evening. She was nice enough to let us stay 30 minutes past closing.

We had some first timers show up tonight, Carol (I forgot your last name, sorry), Emily Sherman, Mike Pugh, Will Beasly (nice Pineapple Kamaka!), Harry Imoto (plus family - we’ll get you playing ukes next time) and my daughter Charlotte. It was great to finally put some faces with the email addresses in my contacts list.

We started off the evening with introductions and then worked on “Clementine”, which sounded pretty darn good – I think we are ready to perform that one in front of a crowd – more on this later.

We mastered “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and then did a great job of “The Flintstones” theme song. I could really tell that those of you who were at the last meeting have been working hard on your ukulele chops. Nice work everyone!

Oh and I really should apologize to Harry for putting him on the spot and asking him to do a song for us but his very smooth, very cool rendition of “Stardust” on his tenor Kamaka sounded oh so nice. Beautiful chord soloing Harry, I wish I could play like that. And the real kicker is that he’s left handed and plays left handed with his right handed uke turned upside down. It was a real treat to have him perform for us. Thanks Harry.

And for the first time ever there were three baritone ukes in our midst. That’s right – the baritone contingent was out in full force. Andy, Carol, and Emily were holding up the bottom end of our little ukulele orchestra – it was great to see and I know Andy was happy because I have heard him comment on more than one occasion that the Baritone is under-represented in our uke club. As a matter of fact, he had just said it not ten minutes before our two other baritone players walked in the door.

And Jill Mothershed, who has been playing for only one month, had memorized all of the Flintstones theme song and was playing it quite well. She’s a natural. That’s a great talent that you can use during the school year. And that goes for Carol and Emily as well – three teachers in our group – three people who will (hopefully) teach their students about the joy of uke!

We ended our meeting around 7:30 – no official ‘end of the night song’ this time but I think “Happy Trails” will be the one for next time. I will email everyone the words with chords before the next meeting. And speaking of the next meeting – it may or may not be on the third Monday in September – I will settle on a date ASAP and post that information here on the website and on the blog. And as always I will send out an email reminder.

I have been thinking about doing an extra weekend (mid-day, late afternoon) meeting in November, maybe a special pot-luck at my house in December (on a weekend) and then extra meetings in Jan & Feb. I thought we might try it out for a couple of reasons. First of all there are some who cannot make it on Monday nights and Secondly, in the winter it gets dark earlier and the weather can sometimes be treacherous at night once the sun goes down. And for those who have to drive any great distance (fifteen minutes or more) this can be the difference between making it to a meeting and staying home. I will let you all know as things develop.

Mary and Andy mentioned that they are going to open up their backyard to their neighbors and friends (I guess that includes us too) for their annual movie night. They will have a movie screen set up outside and I believe The Blob is the movie they are planning to show. I would like the Nashville Ukulele Society to do a song or two as an ‘opening act’ before the movie – The Flintstones and Clementine would be great choices since we all know those very well. Movie night is September 9 and there should be more information on the website and on the blog about this gathering. I hope that you can all come out for this.

Keep practicing everyone and if you have a favorite song you would like to work on at the next meeting just bring it along (but bring enough copies for everyone, probably 10 to 12 – if that’s not enough we can always share copies).