Monday, February 18, 2013

Classic Poorhouse Bistro Ukulele Open Mic!

So I'm off work this week, however, no road trip after all...I'm still trying to get over the most awful cold that never seems to end ever...Today I belted out the first draft of my instructional manual for Tech Writing, and now the sun is sort of peeking out from the clouds as it's been raining. I gotta bundle up and go out for a while!


Last night, at the last minute, I decided I'd make it to the Poorhouse Bistro Ukulele Open Mic -- wasn't sure if I'd go since I had NO voice the day before...in San Francisco. But how could I miss it? Cara Arellano did a fabulous job of running the show in Steve Martin's absence in spite of the huge crowd making loads of noise before the Pink concert at HP. I loved all of her friends and their kids who were major Beatles fans!
Leonard Kaufer opened the uke jam with a few cool songs from his famous book, with Mark Fenichel accompanying on harp...then James L. Johnson and me sang several songs from Cara's packet and songs we'd picked...All My Loving; Give Me Love; She Loves You; All You Need Is Love...ahhh, whenever I think of LOVE, I think of THE BEATLES!!!! :) oh and we sounded pretty good on Across the Universe in spite of my voice...it was fun to plug in my KALA ukulele!

One of Cara's friends joined in on singing She Loves You with us! so cool. Then the "Old Broads" (the Uke ladies) played and sang some awesome bluegrass stuff...and Jeff Smith brought his mandolin and played both mandolin and uke throughout the night. I absolutely LOVE the mandolin! James wowed us with a Green Day song, Kat, his daughter played and sang a beautiful song, Jennifer Hood and James wowed us with Cinnamon Girl...and Leonard's Grateful Dead song was awesome...!

A couple actually went up and played Irish Celtic music on ukulele as well...which goes to show you ANYTHING can be played on ukulele. LITERALLY ANYTHING!

But the funniest part of the night was when James asked me to come up and accompany him on the song, "Love Stinks" that was in our packet. I only really know the chorus...and didn't realize he didn't know the song either! so we were like, oh no, what will we do? He said we played it too happy (but how does one make a ukulele sound NOT happy?)...so we just winged it happy Hawaiian Beatles-esq style making up words between "Love Stinks Yeah, Yeah!" and ending with "She Loves You!" James said he felt like he was on a Saturday Night Live episode...it was really funny.


(there's lots of background noise because all these people showed up before the Pink concert at HP Pavaillion, but nonetheless, you get the drift!)

Jeff saved the day by running up with his awesome chord rendition of I Saw Her Standing There, and we rocked out, back in the comfort zone...!! it was a good night.

I think I'll go out for a while...so much for "resting" on my time off, huh?

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