The club is now back in action and working hard on our forthcoming gigs, but before all that…
Due to the COVID pandemic we were unable to raise money for our last selected charities – the Brae Riding for the Disabled and Ninewells Hospital Ward 22 Endowment Fund. This played on our minds a little bit until someone had the bright idea that we could still make a donation from our club funds and do a full year of fundraising when we are allowed. Well, we’re allowed now and are happy to accept gigs again for all kinds of events – festivals, special nights, maybe you’ve just missed us for a while. While you’re thinking about it have a look at the presentation photos from February.
On the 22nd of January we had our big presentation and party night at Kingsway Farm. We raised a whopping £3000 last year which was shared equally between our two charities – Insight Counselling and Age Concern Dundee. You can read the Courier article below.
There were loads of photos taken of the night which can be found at our Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/happyukes/ Many, many thanks to Shirley for helping out with the Facebook stuff (I’m hopeless).
Our charities this year are (drum-roll please)…
Wellbeing Works (formerly Dundee Association for Mental Health) and the local branch of the Salvation Army. We have already started our fundraising for 2019 and look forward to dishing out another couple of oversized cheques this time next year.
I thought I’d written these every year but it turns out I haven’t actually done one for three years. Woops. It’s just as well I’m the only one who knows how to work this or I’d get sacked.
2018 was a cracker for Happy Ukes. We raised a whole lot of money for our charities – Age Concern Dundee and Insight Mental Health Counselling – but I’ll save the grand total for our presentation. Thank you to every sheltered housing complex, festival, pub, supermarket and anywhere else that was brave enough to let us show up and play. Thanks also to everyone who chucked money in one of our buckets at Christmas. When things are getting more difficult financially it always astounds us just how generous people can be.
We’d really like to thank the lovely people at Bield Douglasfield Shelter Housing for their hugely humbling support in 2018. We held our big presentation there at the start of the year, played repeated gigs and even managed to rehearse there when the Admiral was being refitted. Lovely folks. St Ronan’s care home has also allowed us to take up a regular residency which keeps us on our toes having to constantly refresh the play list. Also, Pete struggles to express in words just how much he loves the sausage rolls. We have to keep him away from the microphones as they pick up the noise of his slavers forming a puddle on the floor when the oven door gets opened.
2018 saw lots of new members join the club. Some of our new members had very little experience with the uke on joining and we still managed to get them out performing in public.
Speaking of performing in public…
2018 was a great year for gigs. We love visiting our regular haunts and it was great to see all of the familiar faces singing and occasionally dancing along (we also enjoyed the odd heckle too – some of them very odd). Hopefully we can go back and visit our old friends again this year. We were delighted to keep our relationship with Marie Curie going although nobody seems to remember just how many times we’ve actually played in the City Chamber at their Big Tea Party. It’s always one of our gig highlights of the year and the cakes are tremendous – these two facts may or may not be related.
We had a number of brilliant one offs like this throughout the year. There was a very special night playing at a fundraiser for the Brae Riding for the Disabled at the Glass Pavillion. The audience were fantastic and responsive which was fantastic for us as there was so much going on. We were worried that Pete might take one of his Mariah Carey-esque tantrums at the lack of sausage rolls on offer but the food given to us was amazing. One or two songs were delayed as bowls of chips and trays of other tasty treats were passed up and down the line. Tremendous.
Left to right – Garry, Alex, Ian, Linda, Colin and Peter. John had left before anyone had the sense to take a picture.
At the start of the summer John, who has organised fantastic outings in the past, suggested booking the Magdalen Green bandstand for a wee event/picnic/open mic afternoon. “What a fantastic idea!” we all cried, and we were right. It was the hottest summer since the 1976 heatwave and everyone was right up for it. What could possibly go wrong? In case anyone was wondering – yes, it was the only wet and windy day of the summer. We still went ahead though with music stand, folders and cheese pieces flying everywhere. It takes more than that to put us off.
The club was invited to play at a lot of festivals this year. We managed to squeeze in the Bell Tree beer festival for the second time and had a cracking time at the Tay Park House Hotel in the summer. One of our favourite gigs is the Dundee Flower and Food Festival at Camperdown Park and 2018’s event was no exception. There was an alarmingly large crowd there to see us…or so we thought. It turns out we were playing after Mr Bloom off CBeebies. Coming to think about it, the audience did seem a couple of years younger than usual.
Two of the year’s outdoor events will definitely stick in the mind for a long time. It was an honour to be asked to play at the Relay For Life held at Arbroath Cricket Ground in September. We played two sets that evening. The first was on the back of a truck to keep the walkers entertained for half an hour as they marched round and round in the name of Cancer Research. The second was a short while later in the marquee in front of a fantastic noisy crowd who had been enjoying the food and wine on offer. I’ve never seen a dance-floor as full as when the first few notes of Beautiful Sunday were thrashed out. There was a cracking scrum as bodies crawled over each other to pour onto the floor. Who knew that the Slosh was so popular in Arbroath?
Muriel, Colin, Garry (and Ian sneaking in)
Ian, Willie and Peter say ‘cheese’
Yvonne and Elean
My personal highlight of the year was at the Abernyte Festival, also held in September. The afternoon was almost magical: glorious weather; rolling hills surrounding the site; fantastic food and drink available; amazing food and flower competitions; kids in fancy-dress wheelbarrows; singalongs with the other musical acts; the world’s most confident and professional primary school aged compere and a Happy Ukes Tug of War victory to round it all off. Brilliant. We just hope they ask us back next year to defend our title.
Happy Ukes providing three fifths of the winning team.
The gang in front of our view from the stage.
This is just a sample of what my poor, befuddled brain has been able to hold this year. If I have missed something obvious then I’m very sorry but we really did manage to get up to all sorts. Thanks again to everyone who has put us on but my biggest thank you is to the rest of the club. The reason it all works so well is that we have so many kind-hearted, generous and downright bonkers people showing up to club nights every week and concerts all over the shop. It’s thanks to all of you that we have managed to raise as many pounds and smiles as we have over the years. We’re all right, you know?
That’s it. All done. No more outdoor gigs for the year, and what a cracker to finish on.
We were invited to do a double-header at the Arbroath United cricket ground for the hardy souls taking part in the Relay for Life, a twenty-four hour group walking challenge to raise money for Cancer Research. Our first set was on the back of a lorry near the trackside for the walkers with another followed almost immediately afterwards in the big marquee for the paying customers at the cheese and wine event.
The lorry gig was good fun if a little chilly and it was great seeing the walkers singing, dancing and waving as they went past. If anything it was nice to know that the sound of the PA was travelling that far. We had the occasional audience member bravely approach but it was much more fun watching the walkers get involved.
At the end of our time it was a case of grab our stuff and run for the marquee. We we herded to our table where we were very kindly provided with our own cheese and wine but we were up on the stage before we had the chance to get properly stuck in.
It’s difficult to know how to pitch some gigs and which songs to play but this crowd were so up for it we probably could have played a half hour set of Boyzone b-sides and they’d have sang along…well, that might be a step too far. With other acts still to come we took it one song at a time and enjoyed the audience’s reaction. There was a wonderful moment when Beautiful Sunday produced a tidal wave of bodies pouring on to the dance floor for the Slosh, although I think that the wine might have been a contributing factor.
The time passed all too quickly and it seemed like we had no sooner started that we ended up back at our table along with the cheese, wine, crackers and fruit. The following acts were great and for the third weekend in a row we had the opportunity to play then hang out together with some food and drink. Smashing.
Well done to John for being dropped in from a plane from Miami and landing on stage with his bass in a phenomenally sleep deprived state. Thanks also to Linda for getting us in there in the first place.
As I left I walked through the field which was lit up by lanterns. The walkers were still going in the wind, rain and dark. These folks are awe inspiring in their fund-raising and it was very humbling to play for them.
No action shots this week because we were all on stage but we did manage to get the now traditional ‘stuffing of the faces’ shots.
Muriel, Colin, Garry (and Ian sneaking in)
Ian, Willie and Peter say ‘cheese’
Yvonne and Elean
The sound gear came from Abbey Music in Arbroath. They also sell ukuleles and provide lessons. If you’re in Arbroath and want to play the uke then go see them then come and see us.
Ukuleles, stunning scenery, locally produced beer, six beans grown to an equal length and a stunning Tug of War victory. Is there anything that Abernyte Festival 2018 didn’t have?
When we accepted the chance to play at the festival we didn’t really know what to expect other than the stage would only hold about six of us. We decided to chance our luck with seven and had Iain playing bass off the back of the stage. It was probably the safest place for him because all of his usual dancing would have left him smashing his head off one of the beams. On arrival at the field it was obvious that this was going to be a friendly event: lots of people browsing the stalls; eating the huge number of rolls and kebabs coming from the barbecue gazebo; drinking the locally produced beer and generally having a good old time milling about blethering.
I am not going to spend too long talking about our performance other than to say we did pretty well. Lots of people sang along and nobody threw any of the fruit and veg from the various competitions. Result. All our fun came from the goings on around the field during and after our set.
There were regular pauses during the music for announcements from the phenomenally confident and capable young MC from the local primary school. And what announcements they were. We had a slight pause for the children to parade their decorated wheelbarrows (the boy in the Red Bull race car was robbed if you ask me) and there was another wheelbarrow event out on the main field when they were raced but you couldn’t see that from our vantage point.
After our set we took full advantage of everything that was on offer – burgers, cakes, booze, books, music and a good old cup of tea. The other musical acts were great and it turned out that they must have been checking out the Happy Ukes songbook on this very website because shared loads of tunes which made it all the easier to sing along. We heard the winners announced for the various competitions – four stoned fruits, six string beans of equal length, various categories of competition involving potatoes and many, many more. We watched sack races, wheelbarrow races, the potato and spoon race and countless others before three of us ended up taking part.
Our MC announced that they needed volunteers to take part in the men’s and women’s tug of war competition. It was a call to arms that we couldn’t ignore and up stepped Willie, Iain and Garry. We all knew that the result (even our female Happy Ukes who provided the support/laughter) would be a foregone conclusion and after a little bit of toing and froing to let the opposition think they actually had a chance, we applied the right amount of pressure to ensure victory.
Happy Ukes providing three fifths of the winning team.
The entire afternoon was great fun in amazing surroundings with a fantastic community of wonderful people. Thank you for having us, Abernyte. Hopefully we’ll see you again.
Happy Ukes played at the Dundee Flower and Food Festival for the third consecutive year this afternoon and were delighted to avoid the rain for the second year in a row. There was the slight feeling of trepidation as we walked to the music stage towards a massive crowd singing along with a very cheery band. There were a few more young children than we would typically expect but we’d just go along with it as we normally do. It wasn’t until we were right next to the stage that we realised that we were following Cbeebies gardener Mr Bloom and his band. Why do the weird things always happen to us?
It wasn’t too long before before Mr Bloom beetled off and, despite our pleas, took his set of large inflatable fruit and veg with him. I can’t speak for the rest of the club but I won’t rest until I’ve played a kazoo-embellished Johnny Cash song in front of a ten foot tall aubergine.
Sadly we didn’t manage to keep the enormous crowd of under fives and their parents but we did keep a sizeable crowd of our own who laughed at the right times (yes, there were right times), sang along when they recognised what we were trying to play and even danced at times (although that was a group of very young ones who were possibly left over from Mr Bloom because their dad hadn’t finished his chips).
We were lucky enough to be allowed to play for an hour and we made the most of it – pausing only to announce song names, tell the occasional tall tale or allow Iain the time to pick up a low flying music stand.
With any luck we can return next year in a blaze of terrible jokes, big choruses and, dare I hope, a ten foot tall inflatable aubergine.
Waiting for Mr Bloom to finish (and the crowd to leave!)
Nearly ready to go.
Some of the audience.
Photos courtesy of Danny Flynn. More will be added to the photos page as they are sorted through, along with a couple of videos once they are edited. If you managed to take any photographs or videos of us that you think we’d like then get in touch at happyukes@gmail.com
If you have the sudden urge to go shopping for garden ornaments, jam, a hot tub and maybe some kind of wooden thing with a snazzy pattern on it then, if you can hold off until Sunday, come to the newly renamed Dundee Flower, Food and Ukulele Festival (*) and you will be able to watch us for an entire hour.
We’re playing on the music stage between 3.15 and 4.15 pm. The area is surrounded by food and drink stalls so treat yourself to an early tea if you aren’t already skint and watch some ukulele shenanigans from us lot.
(*) This is a complete lie on my part. They knocked back my request to rename it again this year but we live on in hope.
We’ve enjoyed a long-running association with Marie Curie for many years now and today we had our annual visit to their Big Tea Party in Dundee’s City Chambers. We tried to count how many times we have played at this fantastic event but couldn’t figure it out…is it five years in a row? If someone can figure it out then leave a comment and put me out of my misery.
It was great to catch up with all of the familiar faces who volunteer and work for Marie Curie and several of us were talked into buying raffle tickets which Danka used to keep up her incredible winning run.
Our first session flew by very quickly although I have to admit a little disappointment that we couldn’t get a decent slosh going to Beautiful Sunday. Perhaps a plush room filled with decades worth of huge portraits of Dundee’s Lord Provosts and large cake -covered tables surrounded by happy guests wasn’t the best venue for line dancing.
After the first set we took advantage of our host’s wonderful hospitality. I suspect we keep getting asked back due to our insistence on getting paid in cakes. There was a rumour that Isabel may have had more than one strawberry tart.
Thanks to everyone involved with Marie Curie. We love playing at your Big Tea Parties and we hope that our relationship continues for many years to come.
Next up is our third visit to the Flower and Food Festival on Sunday the 2nd of September from 3.15 – 4.15 p.m. See you there!
September is getting pretty busy and the gigs are flowing thick and fast but there are three that are out in the public and it would be great to meet some of you there.
Sunday 2nd September 2018 – Dundee Flower and Food Festival, Camperdown Park, on stage 15:15 – 16:15. Come for flowers, jam, hot tub sales etc., stay for the Happy Ukes.
Saturday 15th September 2018 – Arbroath Relay for Life, Arbroath Cricket Club, Keptie Road, Arbroath. 17:45 – 18:30 on the back of a lorry then a quick sprint to the marquee for 18:30 – 20:00.
If you are at any of these events then come and say ‘hi’. We won’t bite (well, most of us won’t).
This was booked ages ago and somehow managed to fall on the only day of rain in six weeks. Never mind, we still made the most of it.
We were going to have a picnic, a strum and maybe a spot of sunbathing. In the end we only managed the strum bit but we managed to do it really well. It takes more than a bit of rain to dampen our spirits. We had to negotiate the weather, roadworks, holidays, the Edinburgh Festival, trains and the circus on the other side of the tracks but we managed to have a ukulele get-together on the Magdalen Green Bandstand and a good laugh while we were at it.
All of our song choices inevitably ended up being weather related and Beautiful Sunday, I Can See Clearly Now and Mr Blue Sky all ended up being played along with the more appropriate Have You Ever Seen the Rain among many, many others.
Thanks to John McBeath for all of his organisation and hard work putting it all together and it was fantastic seeing our long distance member, John Rankin, again along with the audience he brought with him. Let’s try again next year!
Thanks to everyone involved with Marie Curie. We love playing at your Big Tea Parties and we hope that our relationship continues for many years to come.
Happy Ukes 