Saturday, December 20 is the date for our performance at the Museum of Science and Industry's Christmas Around the World celebration. An hour of music and performance, and some special surprises this year! Come by and check it out.
Folk & Roots; BeatlesThis Saturday is the Folk & Roots Festival in Welles Park in Chicago. We'll be performing once again at the gazebo on Saturday at 12:00. Stop by and say hello.
On Thursday evenings for the next few weeks, the 'Ukulele Club of Oak Park is having practices for a record-breaking attempt to have the largest number of 'ukulele players on stage at one time. The performance is going to be at this year's Fest for Beatles Fans, and they could use all the help they can get. Practice sessions are Thursday nights at Eastgate Cafe in Oak Park (845 Lyman Avenue, near Harrison Street) from 7 to 9. All players at all levels are invited; they really need the numbers to have a chance to break the record, so if you think you might want to show up, show up.
On the schedule + The Hard Part
So we're on the Friday night schedule of Southern California. The trouble is, they got the wrong name for the director. I sent emails to a couple people; hopefully one of them will be able to sort it out. Update: they did.
I'm starting to get a bit anxious about this performance, because there's a Hard Part in the performance. You know about that, right? The Hard Part is the one single part of a performance that you don't quite have mastered yet, but you've got to perform in front of a large crowd in a very short time. So you've got to cram and work hard on that one bit over and over, trying to crack it so you can perform it on stage and make it all look effortless. The whole other entire performance is okay; it's just that one Hard Part that's keeping you awake at night.
I won't tell you what the Hard Part of this particular performance is; you'll just have to come see for yourself. That's Friday, October 5, 2007 at the Southern California Ukulele Festival. We're on at 7:00 PM local time; be there or be unentertained.
Folk & Roots schedule upThe 2007 Folk & Roots Festival schedule is online! We'll be at the gazebo in Welles Park on Saturday, July 14th at noon, and also at the Kids' Dance Tent at 2:40 PM on the same day. Come see us there!
The gazebo performance in particular should be a great chance for us to play a lot of great music. We've been working on our repertoire for the last year or so, memorizing 12-15 numbers that we can do without referring to any books or paper. We probably have at least an hour's worth of material that we can do with no problems, so this performance should be a real pleasure. There are some pictures of our last gazebo performance up at my Flickr site.
Carnivale!Our next performance: Saturday, September 9 at the Park West Carnivale in Chicago. We're going on the kids' stage at 2:45 PM, doing an abbreviated version of our current live set. Stop by and see Hawaiian & Maori dancing! It'll be swell.
Last performance, next performanceLast Saturday's performance in Evanston went well. The dancers in particular were excellent, having to juggle three separate styles of dance with different costumes for each program. We did pretty well, and got lots of compliments after the show.
Next up for us: an appearance at the Chinatown Dragon Boat Races on Saturday, July 22. The race is an all-day event happening at Ping Tom Memorial Park (300 W. 19th Street), and some people in our group will be paddling in one of the boats. Come check it out!
Our group on YouTubeSome footage from the back row of our performance last Saturday: "In A Little Hula Heaven" (YouTube link)
Next Saturday, it's another performance at the Evanston Ethnic Arts Festival! Lots of Hawaiian, Maori and Polynesian content planned for that evening. Check it out, see that you do.
Folk & Roots Festival, July 8Just got the official word that we are in fact performing this Saturday, July 8 at the Old Town School's Folk & Roots Festival. We'll be doing an ukulele and hula performance at 3:20 PM at the kids' dance tent. Come by and learn some Hawaiian!
4/30 Film Center performanceDid another performance this past weekend. This one was at the Gene Siskel Film Center, before a showing of a Hawaiian documentary. We had about a half-dozen ukulele players and 4 or 5 hula dancers in our lineup that evening. We went through a setlist of about 15 songs that we've been going over during the last couple of months as a standard list of songs to perform in public. It went pretty well; there were at least 3 or 4 people from the audience who stood up to dance hula with the other dancers. And we did everything we were supposed to do, which mostly consists of playing and singing loud. So that's not bad.
Now that this major performance is over, we will start concentrating on our next major performance, which will be at the Folk & Roots Festival in July. It looks like our performance will be on Saturday, July 8 at 3:20 PM in the Kids' Tent, where our techer will present Hula For Kids. I was under the impression that we had a second performance to do, as we did last year when we played at the gazebo stage, but perhaps this is not the case. I'll check on that.
Jake!Jake is in town! We saw a concert last night at the Old Town School, where he opened for Loudon Wainwright III. He played a bunch of stuff that I recognized from previous times that I've seen him, but he did not finish with "Crazy G", which was a shame. Still, you can't complain at a Jake concert, because you get at least 3 or 4 times the amount of playing from a regular concert. And everybody at the concert was duly impressed.
I picked up a copy of his DVD Play Ukulele Loud at the merch table, because the DVD has some instructional stuff on it and I wanted to see what kind of tips I could pick up from Jake. At first glance, it looks like he demonstrates the flashy finger rolls and strumming techniques, and doesn't go into much depth of demonstration. I guess he figures that with DVD technology you can just play the clips over and over again until you get them right. Well, I guess I can do that. But it would be nice to see a better in-depth instructional DVD. (The best instructional DVD that I've seen, oddly enough, is the DJ Q-Bert turntable scratching DVDs, which demonstrate techniques meticulously, with looped chapters so you can practice over and over.)
Jake's doing a couple more performances today, out in the suburbs somewhere, but I've got to practice for a performance tomorrow night downtown. Plus, the other performances are wicked expensive, so best to stay at home and practice.
MSI performance pictures
Pictures from Saturday's performance at the MSI are up on Flickr. Not too many pictures of the ukulele performers, but the dancers' pics are pretty good.
MSI performance schedule onlineThe Museum of Science and Industry has finally posted the performance schedule for this year's holiday celebration. We're performing on Saturday, November 19, at 12:15 PM, just after something called Radio Disney Holiday Dance Party. So we'll probably have loads of kids in the audience all excited after seeing Mickey Mouse and whatever other characters will be there. Still, it should be a fun performance.
We've got about 4 or 5 songs to perform this year, depending on the amount of time we get. The goal is to perform without our books, and so I've been practicing a lot to try and get the lyrics down pat. I feel like I'm burning out a bit on uke practicing, but I'm definitely remembering the words. I'm just hoping that a week is good enough for me to practice the songs. We shall see.