Here’s a preliminary list of the ukulele festivals scheduled for 2012. If you have details on any others leave a comment or send me a message. USA and Canada 18th ‘Ukulele Festival of Northern California Location: Chabot College Performing Arts Center, 25555 Hesperian Blvd., Hayward, CA 94545 Date: April 1, 2012 10:00am – 5:30pm Performers: [...]

If you haven’t already, make sure you get your nomination in for the Ukulele Video of the Year 2011. Current high-flyers are Lisa Hannigan, LP and Eddie Vedder. If you think someone else deserves a look-in head over to the post and make your nominations in the comments.

A quick bit of time sensitive news before we get down to business. There’s finally a legit and legal download of the tab for Jake Shimabukuro’s version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Even better you can access it for free today. It is a bit complicated, though. If you have Guitar Pro (the tab [...]

The guy playing ukulele in this clip is Benny Wenda. He’s also a leader of the movement to free West Papua from Indonesia. He’s been living in the UK since 2003 when he was granted asylum after escaping arrest and torture in Indonesia. He now faces arrest and deportation after the issuing of an Interpol [...]

A couple of weeks ago the BBC aired Frank Skinner’s documentary about George Formby. You watch the full documentary on YouTube and it’s well worth it. I enjoyed it and learned a fair bit too. In the clip at the top, Frank visits Karauke in London to find out why modern ukers don’t play Formby [...]

I had a trawl through Project Gutenberg for references to ukuleles. There were a few passing references from people you might expect like F. Scott Fitzgerald and P.G. Wodehouse. You can read those – and plenty of others – on Backwards Ukulele Player’s posts on this subject. But it’s obvious the writer most fond of [...]

I’m not entirely sure it’s worth reviewing something that’s officially out of print. The ukulele songbook for Eddie Vedder’s Ukulele Songs album was available as a limited edition and was sold out before it was released (apart from a few copies sold on Flea Market Music). It is still sort of gettable. If you’re willing [...]

About three years ago I put together a tab ebook to benefit Ukuleles for Peace with the help of some friends. Since then it’s raised over $3,500 for them. It’s done so well that Ken Middleton has put together a follow-up featuring tabs from me, Colin Tribe, Michael ‘Ukulele Mike’ Lynch, Herman Vandercauter and Ken [...]

A healthy crop of ukulele acts, as always, at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Here’s a quick rundown of the acts I’d be going to see if I was there. Helen Arney – Festival of the Spoken Nerd and Alchemy Comedy ukulele nerd and star of Uke Hunt podcast #8, Helen Arney will doing a whole [...]

I’m taking a couple of weeks off the blog. I’ll be back on 5th August with plenty of new stuff.