Flea Jumper

MSI performance scheduled!

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.

Ukulele Cabaret in Chicago

Ukulele Cabaret Chicago is the Windy City's answer to ukulele cabaret in other towns like New York and San Francisco. The next one is coming up in December, and the theme appears to be space travel. I wonder if I can work up an arrangement of Brian Dewan's "The Creatures" by then...

Ukulele? Yes!

Ukulele Yes!, the online publication for uke instructors edited by teacher and extraordinary uke player James Hill, has a new issue out. If you're an instructor (or if you just want a glimpse into the shadowy world of uke instructors), check it out.

Douglas Wolk on the uke

Part 1, and part 2. Some video from the recent Portland Uke Fest; definitely worth checking out the articles just for that.

Chicago Trader Vic's opening in October...?

If you check out Trader Vic's news page, you will see an item from last week indicating that the new Chicago Trader Vic's will open in October; i.e., in three months. That's a pretty surprising turn of events, given that it's been years since the original location in the Palmer House Hilton closed. You'd think that Trader Vic's would be drumming up the publicity about the impending opening. So maybe it's not a completely done deal yet.

At any rate, it'll be very interesting to see what happens in October. Hopefully the opening will not be the weekend of October 10-11, because that clashes with the annual convention of the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association in Joliet, which I suspect I may be attending in some fashion. More on this later. (Ooh, exciting!)

Windy City festival this week

Just a reminder that the Windy City Uke Fest happens next weekend. I won't be going because of the rather high prices ($95 for a complete fest pass? $25 per day?), but if you can afford it you might want to check it out.

I think the next festival that we'll be attending will be next year's Hula Conference on O'ahu. The majority of the events there will of course be dance-related, but we've heard rumors that there might be some music-related events happening at the same time. Plus, who wouldn't want to travel to O'ahu? More on this later.

Folk & Roots; Beatles

This 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.

New Chicago area festival!

Just announced: The Windy City Uke Fest, which happens August 1-3 in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. This is being put together by the Windy City Islanders guys, and they've already got an impressive list of performers and instructors. More info at the Website.

I was kinda hoping that the Midwest Ukulele Jam Festival guys would have gotten a second festival together for this year, but I haven't heard anything about it, so with those guys and also the Midwest Uke Fest guys not having anything going on this year I suspect this will be the main event for Chicago area uke players this year.

Rock!

After years of waiting (years!), the ukulele documentary Rock That Uke is FINALLY going on sale this week. Supposedly. Maybe. Right now there's a page up at Elderly Instruments where you can order it, but on the page it says that it's still on backorder. So it's not actually at the store yet, I guess. I think I'll wait until the on-order message disappears before I actually order my copy.

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.

We are officially playing Cerritos

If you check out the site for the Southern California Ukulele Festival you will see us mentioned in the uke club concert for Friday night. Well, you won't see us mentioned by name, but you will see a vague reference to a group from Chicago. That's us. Hopefully we will make a bit of a name for ourselves at the festival this year, so in the future we won't just be that group from Chicago.

Those of you in the Southern California area, come check us out. Friday, October 5 at the Cerritos Park East Community Center (13234 E. 166th Street) in Cerritos, California. Show starts at 5:30 PM; there will be food. I don't know when we'll be on.

Southern California plans

The Southern California Ukulele Festival recently posted a schedule of performers for this year's concert on their site. Included in the line-up: Bill Tapia, who turned 100 this year. We saw him at the 2005 festival, and he still looked pretty spry, so this concert should be exciting.

The festival also has ticket information available now. The complete enchilada, which includes the festival, luau-style dinner after the festival, and the evening concert, is just $45. That's not a bad price. Doesn't include travel expenses, though, which will obviously be more for us Chicago people. Get your tickets soon, California residents!

Chicagoland!

Photos here. It was a fun festival! There were loads of people coming through the festival all day long, and all of the acts were great. I can't say that I was happy with my own performance when we were on stage, but the hula dancers distracted everybody with their fine dancing, so that was good. People will remember the dancers.

The next performance is in three weeks, at the Folk & Roots Festival. See you there....

Festival Madness!

In less than two weeks the first Chicagoland Ukulele Jam Festival kicks off. Like most events and organizations with "Chicagoland" in the name, it's not really happening in Chicago; it'll be at Legal Grounds Coffee in Maywood. Apparently you just take the Blue Line out to the Forest Park stop (aka "end of the line"), and then it's a couple of miles on the #317 Pace Bus.

And in four months we'll be attending the Southern California Ukulele Festival out in Cerritos once again. I just heard from the woman who's organizing the Friday night uke club concert, and found out that we still have time to submit our application for the concert. So I'll be sending that off this week, to be followed later on with all the other paperwork they need (group bio, pictures, stage requirements, etc.).

Folk & Roots schedule up

The 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.