Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

In late 2015, a friend I’d made at the Strathmore Ukefest formed The Woods Ukulele Club here in West Virginia, and recently she decided we were up to entertaining at senior centers, independent living facilities, and nursing homes.

Which meant that earlier today In Martinsburg ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

Has it really been three years since I last shared any of my uke strumming? How did that happen? By now, you’ve probably forgotten I even own one of those weapons of mass entertainment.

Let’s remedy that, shall we?

I’ve been taking part in a local ukulele club here in the ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

Last Sunday, ukulele master Stuart Fuchs-aka “Stukulele”-taught the second part of a uke-a-billy workshop at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Gaitherburg. I’d missed part one the month before thanks to sleet and freezing rain, which would have prevented me from ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

It shows where my priorities are that I told you all about Saturday night’s dinner at Range before I shared anything about the rest of my weekend at Capclave. But then … you already knew that about me, didn’t you?

When I arrived at the Hilton in Gaithersburg Friday night, I ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

Sorry for the silence here, folks. Blame the ukulele.

For pretty much every waking moment of Saturday through Tuesday, and for most of Wednesday, I took part in UkeFest 2013 over at the Strathmore Music Center in Maryland.

There were multiple tracks of programming, so it was of ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

I wasn’t able to make it to the June George Formby Society convention in Blackpool. I suspect you weren’t able to be there either. (Well, most of you, anyway.) Luckily, David Brindley was there to film the two-day event, and he’s since cut together a couple of hours of ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

I drove over to Gaithersburg yesterday so I could take part in the Maryland Ukulele Jam, a gathering which started last month and, if all goes well, will continue on the third Sunday of every month.

( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

Whenever I tell people that one of the most joyful parts of the George Formby Society convention I attended two weeks ago was the Thrash, they ask me to explain-what the heck’s a Thrash? And though I tell them it’s that part of a concert during which everyone who wants to is ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

I was in Blackpool last weekend for the George Formby Society convention, where I met in the flesh friends who’d previously only been virtual, saw some amazing uke players, got a tutorial in Formby-style strumming, and even had a chance to get up and bumble my way through a song ( Read more... )

Originally published at Scott Edelman. Please leave any comments there.

Yesterday, I shared my ragged performance of “When I’m Cleaning Windows” at the George Formby Society convention in Blackpool, and promised that as a reward for enduring it, you’d get to see how the banjo uke is really meant to be played. And so here are eight performers I ( Read more... )