Before you get too excited, it's not a national concert tour, it was just me and a ukelele and someone else with a guitar singing after church this weekend.
Didn't you do this before? Why, yes, I did have a singing party of sorts for my birthday a while back, but this time it involved two people playing instruments. Does that make it a hootenanny?
In any case, after a brunch-y potluck at church, about 20 of us got together with some songs, some egg shakers, a person who knows about three or four good ukelele chords (me), and a person who knows many more guitar chords (not me). Again, we found that the attention span of the kids was, well, considerably shorter than that of the adults (I do not yet have that commanding stage presence). Starting the singing at 11:45 AM or so probably wasn't the wisest move on our part, either.
But we did have fun... let's see, what did we sing?... "Pay Me My Money Down," "Polly Wolly Doodle," "John the Rabbit," "Kookaburra," "What a Wonderful World" (we closed with that one), "O Mary Don't You Weep," "Peace Like a River," "Little Liza Jane" (we have Elizabeth Mitchell and Ida Pearle's lovely songbook to thank for those two), "I've Been Working on the Railroad," and, if memory serves, "Jesus Loves Me." There were a couple others that were spur-of-the-moment things.
All the songs seemed to work pretty well -- I think some of the songs could definitely be improved upon with additional thought and arrangement (there's no reason why "John the Rabbit" shouldn't lead to kids shouting, "NO MA'AM!"). Also, I really need to master the G-major chord on my uke. (Gotta practice for the Dan Zanes show, of course.)
The national tour's probably a ways off, though.
