LloydAndLauren.com

This is a temporary location for information for the Nebraska Flea Flickers – the name for our uke group until someone comes up with a better one. We meet once a month (Second Saturday) in Bellvue (Omaha) at the Confluence Bookstore, Bistro & Conference Center – an all-around fabulous place. The staff there – Regis, Pam and the cute young cook – takes very good care of us. Some of us gather for dinner at 5:00 to eat in the bistro. Be prepared that the menu is a little pricey, but delicious. If you can’t come for dinner, we still want to see you! Arrive around 6/6:30 and we’ll be making our way upstairs to one of the conference rooms to play.

ALL levels of experience are welcome! We have some amazingly talented players that will make you weep with the beauty of their playing, and also beginners who are picking up a uke for the first time. We guarantee that you will learn a couple of chords and have a great time.

We usually bring sheet music for you to use, but this past time we hooked up a laptop and used the conference room projectors to show music from some very wonderful websites. If you’d like to check them out, they are:

• www.alligatorboogaloo.com
• www.doctoruke.com (Click on the song title, not the word BAR. BAR has the chords for baritone uke. That’s probably not what you’ll play.)
• www.tropicalstormhawaii.com has many beautiful Hawaiian songs if you’re interested.

On a personal note, I just want to say that playing the ukulele is very satisfying. If you look on these sites, you will see so many songs that can be played on the uke! Beatles, oldies, campfire songs – the sky is the limit! Best of all – FOUR STRINGS. Not six, like a crazy guitar. Do YOU have six fingers on your left hand? I sure don’t anymore. Ukes are perfect.

Ok. Now we come to the best/most disappointing part of this page. I wanted to take pictures of all the players during the March meeting and post them with names (that’s the ‘best’), but due to my poor photography skills and sick affinity for an inadequate camera, they are very, very blurry (disappointing).

I’ll try to re-take them I’ll ask someone else to take them next time, but here they are anyway.

So, starting at the left, that’s Luke (Shelley’s son – his first time), Shelley (Luke’s Mom – she has a new fancy ukulele!), Pam (her second time with us), Beth (in the green shirt – she’s Mark’s wife and is a better player than she says), Bryan (he’s a pastor!), Daniel – sitting way in the back doing a crossword (his wife, Shelley, says he needs a life coach.  I volunteered.), Frank (black hat) and Palani (red & black hat) are a father & son team who are amazing (there’s another brother but he wasn’t there tonight), and Kenny (denimn hat – he builds ukuleles!).  You can see just a bit of Neal, and the back of the head belongs to Sharon.

There’s Lloyd (yay, Lloyd!  Self-proclaimed worst player), Mark – our fearless leader (he’ll make you cry with how well he plays), Jack (another ukulele builder – and he’s from Seward, too!), and Sharon (friend of Mark, Beth & Scott).

Shelley and Neal are picking up sheet music for the night. Using the projectors will make this a very ‘green’ event, and will save Mark & Beth a ton of money on paper!

That’s Don, Scott (he’s a runner – I can’t understand that, but I like that he’s a uke guy ), and Luke.

This is the least blurry picture I took, and I’m glad it’s of Don!  He plays and sings very well.

Ok, is that everyone?  If I forgot, please forgive me.  Our next meeting is April 11th and we’d love to see you there!  I’ll leave you with a few more photos, blurry though they are:

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April Uke Night – We had some ‘new’ faces! Well, technically not new, but new to this page.

Confluence was setting the regular room up for their Easter Buffet during our playtime, so we got to sit in the swanky conference room in their fabulous chairs – all facing the front screen. Very comfy.

This is Bob. He played a baritone ukulele, and got to sit by the buffet servers, but sadly, they were empty.

This is Kevin. I didn’t get to sit by him, so I can’t tell you much about him. He’s a uke guy, though, so he’s automatically a good guy.

And lastly, this is Mike. (He went to Concordia Ann Arbor!) He said that he’s only been playing the uke for 2 weeks, but he’s a guitar player, so he had some wicked skilz.

And how did I not get a photo of Annette?? She joined us and sang along wonderfully – and came in on the ‘C’ chord whenever it came up! (She was also our photographer.)