I had been thinking of taking the banjo to today’s sing around session but there was a particular song I wanted to take along so it ended up being guitar and ukulele instead. The song in question was one by Andrew Peterson, which he played and explained how he created and developed it at the Keswick Convention a couple of weeks ago:

I haven’t got to the point where I can play and sing it like this or even particularly well but I wanted to cement where I’ve got with my own rendition of it. I’ve been working it with a drop-D tuning. Maybe now I’ve done the initial stab, I’ll go back and observe this live video more close to try and figure out exactly what Andrew is doing, even if I don’t necessarily keep all of that for my own version.

The other two songs I contributed were Free-Fallin’ (Tom Petty), which is built around a simple repeated riff so easy for others to join in and I find it easier to lead that one on guitar than other instruments, and You’ve Got to Move, a solid gospel blues that is also easy for others to join with and which I’ve done happily on electric bass, double bass, banjo and more.

Where did the ukulele come in? For backing up some of the other musicians. Sometimes it seemed to fit better than (yet another) guitar. For information, the next session isn’t on 24th August but 7 September, also in the hall of Thorpe Acre Church.