April gives me feelin's of movie' on by.......

I forget exactly when, but around the early 80's I was sharing a house with a couple of folk minstrels, vagabonds of the road and music.

The one great thing they did for me was drag me out of the house one night, and introduce me to the sounds of the great Elisabeth Cotton. She happened to be preforming, even though in her 90's, at one of our local Universities. She was and is a pure authentic musician of folk song.

She taught herself to play guitar left handed and upside down, and then wrote our April song, Freight Train, when she was 10 or 11 years of age.

Check it out on downloads page.

I'm Irish... he's Irish.... she's Irish.... we're all Irish in March.

I pulled this from the 2010 book.... 'cause everyone wants to sing 'When Irish Eyes are Smilin'...... just like the nice folk in the picture.

So grab yourself a pint of Guiness and get over to our download page. And no stopping' for some dang rainbow.....

Oh.... and go look at the March handout on the sidebar - "Pickin' the Chromatic scale"

February's gone Calypso with a I, IV, and V.

Keep that Calypso beat, while you stomp you feet to two great Harry Belafonte songs from his Calypso album of 1956. I have to admit I went to see him in concert, in San Francisco, when this album came out. ( I am soooooo old).

Keeping our "Get Back to Basics" theme, both of our songs are using a simple 3 chord progression of I, IV and V. What's doing with doz Roman numbers you ask.... I'll tell you this coming 3rd Sunday the 19th.

So run your little mouse over to our download page to get your copy of "Island in The Sun" and "Jamaica Farewell".

Also, January's handout "Getting to Know Your fretBoard" is posted over to the right, in the sidebar... under 'WikiWiki Handouts' if you didn't keep your copy last month.

And if you need more, the 2011 Songbook has been compiled and is posted on our download page.

See you Sunday the 19th.

January 2012... We go walkn' With some back to basics.

Yup! Back to basics for the New Year.

We now have in our musical collection of the past two years, oddles of songs that are more intermediate to advanced intermediate level, and fewer songs of the basic 2 or 3 chord variety. Which I am finding that if I am to teach beginners and to have them leave not confused or frustrated, then we need to get more focused on and back to these basic learning steps.

That's not to say... we won't have a few brain teasers. But more along the way of mini-workshops (mainly handouts) of chord studies or progressions, Relative tuning, Transposing, etc.

So let's get started. Our first song of this new year is "These Boots are Made for Walking". It's 3 basics chords in A-- A, C and D.

I'll have a combined book of all the songs we did in 2011 posted to our Wiki website in the next few days. So check on back.

See you all this Sunday the 15th.

December Songs - just in time for the Holidays

It's that time again. When the cold brings us inside... then the shopping pushes us outside back into the cold cold cold... then for some odd reason, afterwards, when we're back home or with friends, we all feel like singing and playing our ukuleles.

To help you along with song... we have the return of some of our more traditional, in our Holiday Song book, a multi-page (8 pages) download.

We're also bringing back last years favorite - 'The Chanukah Song' by Adam Sandler.

What's the Holidays without something new...our new song is - 'The Burglar Song - Jesus is Watching You' .

Have fun and see you Sunday the 18th.

Songs to munch Turkey by.....

It's November and Happy Turkey Day.

For this month I finally was able to dig up two Thanksgiving songs.... it was hard... really! If anyone knows of any others please let me know for next year.

We have an old traditional Thanksgiving song -- Over the River (yes, it's a Thanksgiving song not a christmas song)

And a new song - The Gobble Song. You have to watch the YouTube link to watch all the fun it can be.

So come and enjoy and I hope to see you all at the next Ballard WikiWiki on November 20th.

WikiWiki Jam on Alki Beach taking a hiatus

With the cold weather closing in on us the WikiWiki on Alki is going to hibernate... taking a hiatus... getting out of the cold... Zip... Kapow.... I'm outta here!

But just for the winter months. See you next summer for sure. For now I've left you with the perfect song, from another time, that says it all.

We'll Meet Again....

See you all at the Ballard WikiWiki song circle... our next one is on November 16. I'll have those wonderful holiday songs.