365 Project #364 Picker's Circle

Today we attended the Picker's Circle at The Llano General Store, a new store in Llano. It's been held for a few Sundays lately and is getting popular, we had a nice crowd in today. We had a yummy potluck dinner, met with old and new friends and had a real nice afternoon.

I played percussion and Don played guitar, keyboards and bass.

365 Project #360 Music Clinic

Don got invited to a music clinic featuring some amazing musicians, so we attended this afternoon. He got to learn from and play with Dick Gimble, while other musicians attended the fiddle clinics with Gene Gimble, Randy Elmore and Paul Anastasio. We left musically happy and contented. 

365 Project #356 ARToberfest 2016

Yesterday, Oct. 1, Turnabout played for the Llano Art Guild and Gallery's annual fundraising event, ARToberfest. We had a great turnout, fabulous art in the Silent Auction, a wonderful German-style dinner and good music. Thanks so much to all who contributed their time and effort and to our wonderful guests!

Don Crowder, Lisa Miller, John Carpenter, Beth Henderson, Pat Gibbons

photo courtesy John Hallowell, Highland Lakes Weekly

365 Project #353 Lone Grove Jam Session

This evening we went to the jam session at the historic Lone Grove Schoolhouse. The Llano Pickers, an acoustic jam session, who usually meet at Fuel Coffeehouse, played from 2pm-6pm. There was a potluck dinner at six and then acoustic and electric instruments and singers performed until about 8:30. Don provided PA for the later group and we had a great time playing and visiting with our musical friends. I think we may be doing this again.

365 Project #348 Movie Magic

Don's friend Vicki saw the poster I created for our Play It Again performances and wanted one for her Movie Memorabilia wall. From the original file I created a movie poster, uploaded it to Vistaprint and ordered an 11-17" poster for her. When we perform at Fuel on Saturday night, the three of us will sign it and send it on its way. What fun!

365 Project #317 Music, It's The Best!

You might suspect that lately our lives have been one continuous round of Music and Art. You may be right. Well, perhaps working and computers and life stuff play a part in there somewhere.

Today we had a great day, rehearsing as Play It Again with Bob Hayworth at Fuel Coffeehouse, having a nice dinner at The Country Fryer in Llano, then hosting Highland Lakes Ukulele Club at Fuel. It was a wonderful day.

365 Project #310 Uke Club Marble Falls

Since we've started having meetings in Marble Falls, some of our membership is quite happy because they live there. Sometimes people who are in the library stop to see what's going on. This evening a nice gentleman, Gil, was intrigued and 'just happened' to have his washtub bass in his van. We invited him to join us, we love having a bass player. We're pretty sure he had a good time.

Virginia, Lewis, Lisa, Luis, Gil,

Elizabeth, Don, Pat, Jon

365 Project #304 Play It Again Practice

As Play It Again, our band, we often play at Fuel Coffeehouse on Thursdays at noon. Don and I live in Tow and Bob Hayworth lives in Valley Spring, about 40 minutes away. A nice meeting place is Llano, about halfway between. We give the lunch crowd a nice show, then practice for another hour. However, hammering out the details of new music is often a very tedious and not very entertaining adventure.

Our friend Zeno offers us his house to practice and we very much appreciate it. We got a lot done this afternoon.

365 Project #302 Uke Club Is Growing!

This evening at Highland Lakes Ukulele Club, we had the best crowd yet, 13 people! OK, one was a nice lady who was attracted by the enthusiastic singing and playing and came in to sing with us, but still, it was 13.

I've recently revamped the songbook and added a Baritone Book to our Songbooks. Standard ukuleles come in 3 basic sizes, small to large, Soprano, Concert and Tenor, which have a GCEA tuning. Then there is the largest, the Baritone, which has a DGBE tuning, just like a tenor guitar or the first four strings of a 6-string guitar.  The baritone guitar can play all the same chords as the others, but the chord pattern is going to be quite different from standard ukes.

Don has a left-handed Baritone Uke on order, he's very excited about it. 

Happy Strumming, y'all.

Sally, Virginia, Amber, Liz, Louis, Luis,

Cherie, Guest, Kathy, Pat, Sam, Lisa, Don

365 Project #299 Jammin' at LEAF

Don brought his guitar to quietly serenade potential visitors to my booth at the Llano Earth Art Fest. I brought my washboard along just in case any of our musician friends dropped by and they did! Our friend Zeno Laurence is a very good harmonica player. We started jammin' some blues and this cool button accordion player named Terry Theis appeared! We went on to do some country music, too, with our friend Beth Henderson singing a couple of her songs. Wow, what a nice time and we did attract a little attention, that's for sure.

365 Project #289 Chordious

Since I started the Highland Lakes Ukulele Club in July of 2014, I've been gathering song files from many sources on the web and posting them to the web site. Don has put together a system for meetings which has one computer and a hub that allows up to eight monitors to show the same page simultaneously. Members don't have to download, print and haul songbooks to the meeting and if we decide on changes, I can change them at will.

One of the most frustrating parts of producing the .pdfs is putting chord charts on them. I have to get a chord chart, chose the image I want, save it as a file, organize them, put them together for each song and insert it into the document. We have a new member who wants to learn to play her Baritone Ukulele which is tuned differently than a standard uke. It's the same tuning as a guitar, minus 2 strings. The Baritone Ukulele chords are completely different so she needs song sheets written for her. Yikes.

I found a great tool! Chordious is a program written to find and let you design chord charts for any stringed instrument. It's fairly intuitive to use, multi-platform and it's free. There's a written and a very good video tutorial, take a look if you ever had the frustration of finding, making or saving chord charts.

Simple, clean interface

Video Tutorial

365 Project #288 I Love Ukulele Club

When I started the Highland Lakes Ukulele Club in July 2014, I could not have predicted what a satisfying experience it would be. I actually practice and have gotten a bit better ;-) and have met some lovely people who have since become friends. 

I've gained some skills maintaining a different kind of website than usual, have developed a few word processing skills to produce songsheets and most of all, have totally lost any stage fright I previously had. If you don't sing out, ukes aren't loud enough to make up the difference. When you're playing ukulele, there's strength in numbers, or, all of us are a lot better than any of us.

Virginia, Cherie, Don, Lisa, Louis, Liz, Sally

365 Project #284 Sweetwater Music

We shop hard online for the things we need, living in Tow, TX has its advantages but shopping isn't one of them. When it comes to our musical needs, Sweetwater Music Instruments and Pro Audio is our very favorite. They have competitive prices and their inventory covers almost everything imaginable. But the best feature is their customer service.

In our experience, every person at the other end of the phone line or email is extremely knowledgeable and if they don't know something they'll have an answer for you right quick. On top of everything else, every order comes with a cute little bag of candy. They have our number, these Sweetwater people. 

365 Project #271 Ukes Are Fierce!

Well, they're somewhat assertive. We had Play It Again rehearsal at Fuel Coffeehouse in Llano today, went to dinner at China Wok and then hosted the Highland Lakes Ukulele Club at Fuel in the afternoon. We have two new members, Dakota and Sally, and had a great time!

Lisa, Sally, Virginia, Liz, Don, Dakota 

365 Project #263 Christmas Day at Fuel

Our friend James Smullins had a great idea. Why not open Fuel Coffeehouse for friends to come hang out on Christmas Day? Friends, friends-to-be and anyone who didn't have family to visit or entertain were welcome to come, bring food or not, everyone welcome. I asked if they'd like music and the answer was 'Yes!' so we brought a minimal set-up and played for a couple of hours. 

Plenty of food and companionship and a lovely, welcoming place to be on Christmas Day. I can't think of a better way to spend the day. Then we packed up and played another gig until 1am, broke down and got to bed about 4am. We didn't do anything today which required moving.

Photos courtesy Rocksand Franks

365 Project #249 Musical Grandkids

Don and I are big believers in 'chosen family;  the people you love and want to stay close to being your family. We've asked our friend Lisa Davis if her children Micah and Abby can be our musical grandkids. She has graciously accepted on their behalf. They are now official members of the Highland Lakes Ukulele Club and we look forward to watching their musical progress over the coming years.

Here they are performing for their grandparents at home.

photo courtesy Lisa Davis

365 Project #248 All Glammed Up

This evening we played at Fuel Coffeehouse in Llano as Play It Again, our trio with Bob Hayworth who plays bass. J. Oscar Polanco, our friendly barista,  took this nice photo during our break. Thanks, Oscar!

photo courtesy J. Oscar Polanco

365 Project #242 Precious

Some of our music equipment has nicknames. After wagging around the 145 pound rack cabinet we call "The Bitch" for 10 years (in and out of a van), we decided it was time for a change. We invested in a Behringer PMP2000. It has 9 XLR channels and a stereo power amp with 250 watts per channel. At 31 pounds you can practically haul it with one finger.

The first time we set up and got compliments for our sound, the Behringer was promptly nicknamed "Precious" and the former unit is now in storage for emergency-only use.

Precious

Not Precious

365 Project #231 Aloha, Jake!

Photo courtesy Carol Navarro Adams

Tonight we went to see Jake Shimabakuro at Bass Concert Hall in Austin. Jake is considered the world's best ukulele player and for good reason. He's taken a simple instrument places it's never been before, from a vibrant rendition of Queen's Hungarian Rhapsody to a heartrendingly delicate version of Schubert's Ave Maria.

His performance was amazingly vibrant for a duo, he plays with his whole body and never allows the audience time to get fidgety. His bass player Nolan Verner has exquisite technique (four finger picking) and complements Jake's music perfectly. He plays a four-string but I suspect he may have a BEAD tuning, at least I think I was hearing some thumping low notes.

We stayed to have our ukuleles signed by Jake. He spent time with each person who wanted an autograph and/or picture and made everyone feel noticed and appreciated. He's pretty much my ideal as a performer and a person.

Jake liked our Highland Lakes Ukulele Club business card; "Changing the world, four strings at a time."

Many thanks to our friend Daniel Adams for driving, his wife Carol Navarro Adams and our friend Katie Do for the wonderful company. It was a memorable and very special evening.

More photos soon!

365 Project #230 Little Bitty Pretty One

Don insisted that I needed a new bass and I was resisting the idea of spending anything on one. We found that there's a slightly smaller and lighter weight bass than a standard short-scale. The Ibanez Mikro Bass GSRM20 has a scale length of 28.6" and the weight, while not listed by Ibanez, appears to be about 6 1/2-7 pounds. It's got good reviews all over the web and I was able to listen to it on YouTube.

Don wanted a 5-string, but I think a 4-string will be easier to learn. Besides, the 5-string only comes in black. Yes, she's purple, she's beautiful and she's in the mail. In ten years or so, maybe I'll be a pretty good bass player.