I decided to travel light and took my ukulele and banjo along to this afternoon’s session. Two instruments but still lighter than either electric or upright bass!

My first offering was a medley of Ain’t She Sweet, Five Foot Two and Yes Sir, That’s My Baby. All three work well on ukulele and I wanted to get them in early as another regular attendee sometimes pulls out one or more of them. Mind you, someone else then performed another song I had laid up – Wayfaring Stranger – so I guess that serves me right!

When it came round to me again, I’d switched to the banjo for a loosey-goosey version of Larry Norman’s Twelve Good Men. I took that down to D (I’ve normally played it in E on other instruments) and that gave me a chance for a proper road test of a small banjo 5th string capo I downloaded and printed last month. I’d posted about the idea but found someone else had already done one. The first version wasn’t perfect but they quickly responded to my comments and their revised (higher and wider) edition meant I could quickly and reliably switch the thumb string from G to A to fit the key.

My final contribution was another old favourite on the ukulele but tried out on the banjo (back to regular G tuning): Enjoy Yourself. As another 3 chord song, it is an easy one to join in with and my fellow players did so with gusto.