Document title: Notes from WUC Steering Committee Meeting Feb 12, 2025

Present:  Steven Lazarus/ Dan McDonnell/ Bruce Burchsted/Brooke Cadett/ Jerry Reid/ Mary Williiams/ Mary Alice Timek/ Paul Wade/ Pam Carey/ Beth Peters/ absent: Gina Dunlap/ Judy Bannon

We spoke about the goals of the club: many joined to meet new people, have fun and to learn from others. We agreed that we don’t want new members to feel discouraged from joining, and that at present it is difficult for newbies  to be “thrown into” fast rehearsal sessions with harder songs. We decided to revise the description that the library publishes about the club, to read: “ Every club meeting starts with a short intro for beginners. The first couple of songs are generally easier warm-ups, followed by intermediate level songs. All are welcome to observe, sing along and strum as they are able.”

We agreed that to help any pure beginners, Bruce would prepare a 2 or 3 page packet to hand out, with tips/advice, some of it culled from Jim Beloff’s Tips and Tunes. In addition, we may have a willing member/members do a very short one-on-one session with real newbies, at the beginning of a session, to help them along.

Although some felt that performance is an important part of the club’s objectives, it is not the only objective, and the feeling was that we should not just be rushing through 15 new songs to get them ready for a performance. We decided that 5-6 songs of the current repertoire would be picked out (subcommittee: Jerry, Pam and Beth) to  practice, with a goal to performing them sometime in the future, and that those  5 or 6 could be supplemented by other favorites that we already know from  porchfest. We would also strive to have a mixture of genres and difficulty levels in those songs.

A suggestion was made to ask the library to purchase a few ukuleles for loaning out, and also copies of Jim Beloff’s books. Beth said she would speak with Rachel Taylor about doing this, as well as about changing the club description that the library publishes.

There was much interest in purchasing more of Beloff’s books, (Bruce passed out a form during the regular 6:30 session) and Bruce asked if possibly they could be shipped to the library.

Finally, Steven mentioned that he hoped that in future, individual members of the club would choose a song to lead, (counting in, playing, singing) which would be helpful for our personal musical development.