My first solo public ukulele performance

Although I have been playing guitar for more years than I care to remember, I have only very rarely played and sung in public. Once or twice at parties and with small groups of friends and once playing Shadows covers at a fan meeting.

Since taking up the ukulele, I have spent a few months jamming with a new club/group (UkuleleCentralUK) which meets every other week. I have found a certain confidence amongst this very mixed ability gathering and even did an open mike spot a few weeks ago. We played a concert of christmas songs in late december for an audience of friends and family and I very much enjoyed it.

For red-nose day this year, we gave our second concert to the same (?) audience BUT we had several solo spots to break up the set list. I even volunteered to perform the song I did at that open mike spot only a few weeks earlier. I was very nervous but put in a lot of practice. (I didn't know That there were so many places where I could potentially go wrong.) And eventually felt confident that I could manage to get through the whole thing without making a fool of myself, especially as at our "dress rehearsal" I had started three times due to making what I thought were bad mistakes.

On the day, still nervous, I felt that I rushed through the song because of those nerves but managed to cope and even get over a couple of errors without the listening audience realising - I hope! It certainly felt good to have done it and got it out of the way. I now feel as if I am ready for more, so am now practising a few "different" songs which are not yet part of the group's repertoire.

The song? It was one which Joe Brown popularised by playing it to finish the Concert For George. Many of you will know, I am sure, that it was "I'll See You In My Dreams". A lovely song written in 1924, with lyrics by Gus Kahn.

See my last post for an early (for me) version of this number.