Sunday saw our ukulele group perform at the Hayling Island Ukulele Festival. It’s typically a twice yearly event (May and November) with last weekend’s event running from Friday 3rd to Monday 6th at the Royal British Legion Club.
On offer this year were performances from about 20 local ukulele groups and bands. The diversity of ukulele bands has grown considerably over the last several years. Our group is pretty traditional, with mostly ukuleles and the odd mandolin or banjo, and all unplugged except for a few microphones. Some groups now use percussion, basses, backing tracks, pretty much anything. I’ve always considered this slightly cheating ;-) but like I said, diversity and inclusivity rule, and on balance it makes for a far more interesting festival.
Many of the Coustics club perform with other groups, so actually for a lot of people it’s a pretty full on weekend with loads of performance opportunities and workshop activities to get stuck into. I was only able to attend from about 1pm on the Sunday, up until immediately after the Coustics performance at 6pm, so I only saw a fraction of what was on offer, but I’m going to share a few odd photos of the groups I saw, and a little bit about what they did. If you want to have a look at a wider range of photos and video, I’d suggest checking out the discussion tab on the facebook event, where people still seem to be uploading content.
1. The D’Ukes Of Hayling
Good group, well lead, featuring bass and percussion, with good attention to detail. Lots of groups (including us!) gloss over difficult bits in songs because we don’t really rehearse per se, but this group went the extra mile with a lot of their tunes. Good work!
2. VULGA (Ventnor Ukulele Lubbers General Assembly)
Great name! A smaller group with a more traditional approach, like us, but also great attention to detail. Audience participation in ‘Nelly The Elephant’ was a highlight. Many of this group played with ‘Rebuked’ immediately before us later on, but I didn’t get a picture!
3. Victoria Sponge & Earl Grey
Double bass and ukulele, with an additional banjolele! This duo, like us, have a pretty wide range of influences, with songs running from ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ to ‘Ace Of Spades’ (albeit incorrectly identified as Black Sabbath and not Motorhead, shame on you ;-) ) This performance made a good break from the more standard lineups.
4. Uke Tok
I first encountered Uke Tok last year, and they are really the ultimate in large group participation. It’s a duo with backing tracks, (live ukulele and vocals), but the backing tracks are synced to ipads given to the audience, which stream real time chords and lyrics. No heaps of photocopies or words on a projector screen too far away to read. It’s very slick and incredibly good practice for those who have issues with their timing.
5. Coustics
And now it’s time for us. Good turnout, 15 including me, which is pretty much ideal for these situations, enough people to make a noise, but few enough to stay in time with each other. I was very pleased how everybody did, everybody seemed to enjoy it and I got a lot of compliments afterwards.
Our set was:
C’mon Everybody (Eddie Cochran)
Good Riddance (Green Day)
Paint It Black (Rolling Stones)
The Tide Is High (Blondie)
Don’t Stop Believin’ (Journey)
Pictures Of Matchstick Men (Status Quo)
Bring It On Down (American trad.)
Don’t Bring Me Down (ELO)
Heart Of Gold (Neil Young)
Losing My Religion (REM)
Lady Madonna (The Beatles)
Route 66 (Chuck Berry)
Crocodile Rock (Elton John)
Fat Bottom Girls (Queen)
It proved to be a good mixture of rock’n’roll, sad songs, ‘songs played a bit too fast’ songs and a good dash of silliness. The full on crowd only singalong of the ‘La la la la la’ bits in ‘Crocodile Rock’ was a highlight considering it was totally improvised, and everybody dealt with it really well. We probably should have left it there. Particularly as I started ‘Fat Bottom Girls’ with completely the wrong tempo :-( my profuse apologies!
Onwards then to the group’s performance at this year’s Southdowns Music Festival in Bognor in September, where we often play a set in the performance marquee. In the meantime though, club nights on the fourth Thursday of the month - new members always welcome!
I would like to extend the group's thank to Sam, Kevin, and everybody else involved in the running of this season's festival, it was a pleasure to play, as always!
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