Rocky Mjos Letter || Homespun Story Telling with Music

Hello, Jeff:

I hope you are well. I’m still a regular follower of your Humble Baritonics blog — you do a great job!

I enjoyed seeing Rob MacKillop show up this week. I helped him with the the Early Guitar and Vihuela Ning site and he then passed on the administration from him many years ago. I’ve never been in touch with him regarding ukes — just baroque guitar and lute things!

You were so nice to feature Ukulele Drive in the past, I thought I’d let you know about another project that was just put online this week. A couple of weeks ago I was in a community TV cable station with a friend and my wife, to tape some bits of a storytelling plus music program we have been doing. Peggy and Noel were school friends growing up and I met him through Peggy after we moved back to Minnesota after living abroad for many years.

Noel had been performing as a storyteller and then wrote one collection of stories, then another. He thought it might add some more interest to his show by having some music added and he thought of Peggy and me. We brought over some pieces we were already doing in Ukulele Drive, added a number of others, and we soon had a full show.

Noel contacted Quad Cities TV and they were interested in taping part of our show for broadcast.

Here’s a list of the music we do along with their start times. I do play a tenor on the first number, then switch to baritone for the rest, with Peggy singing and joining on tenor uke for a couple of tunes.

Recollection: 00:03 (actually a short version of Tobias Elof’s “Erindring"):

Don’t Fence Me In: 5:30

Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens: 11:25

Norwegian herding call (kulokk): 17:15 (voice only)

Cow Cow Boogie: 18:52

Dream A Little Dream of Me: 29:25

Blue Bayou: 37:05

Somewhere Over The Rainbow: 45:13

http://reflect-qctv.cablecast.tv/vod/7040-Homespun-Storytelling-with-Music-Leslie-6-20-20-High-v1.mp4

The show was a live performance before an audience, and about the only cut was that they edited out some extra jokes I ad-libbed at the end about writing a book.

I don’t know yet if we would be allowed to edit excerpts and post on YouTube. So for now it’s just the 55-minute show.

Peggy and I are still playing with Ukulele Drive. This community station has expressed interest in a show about our six-member group, perhaps doing some some filming at a rehearsal and combining that with some performance filming at a gig. So I may be contacting about that before the end of the year.'

Thank you again for your blog!

Best wishes,

— Rocky Mjos