Well, it started with my boss wanting us to sing out the retiring director at his retirement party. I brought my banjo, the boss and two others brought their ukuleles and one guy had a guitar. We rehearsed in the unused wafer lab at lunch time. We were pretty bad. For the retiring director's luncheon, we sang and played "Aloha" and "Hit The Road Jack" I can't recall if there was a third song. So the guitar and the banjo and the three uke players decided to keep on keeping on one day a week at lunch back in the wafer lab. My boss was the first to drop out- she wasn't a performer she said. Then I invited a guy that worked up on the 12th floor to come join us. He played harmonica and mandolin. He had a long beard - like ZZ Top. I found some simple 2 or 3 chord songs for us to play. Then the guitar player and the programmer uke player brought in other songs. We had a copy of "El Paso" that kept gaining and loosing lyrics and changing keys occasionally because the guitar player couldn't ever remember which version we were playing. I brought in Gulf Coast Highway by Nancy Griffith, I think. We also played "Roll In My Sweet Arms" and "Wabash Cannonball" and "Back Home Again" oh and "Tom Dooley" The guitar player was the only singer. The programmer Uke player sang with barbershop quartets, but would not really sing with us. The Techie Uke player kept coming to play. I could hardly play in front of anyone and had to go warm up before hand. I slowly got over being anxiety driven.
The Programmer Uke player finally quit, saying he didn't have time to practice and I was sooo thankful that I didn't have to play El Paso any more. Then we decided we would move the activity to my house on a Friday night and practice there. The Tech Uke player came and sat on my couch and played without saying a word and came a second time and then dropped out because he couldn't keep up and wasn't practicing at home.
So it was just me and the guitar player and the guy with long beard. This is like six months later I think
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