The Royal Mail Uke Group

The Royal Mail Ukulele Group (RMUG) calls the Royal Mail Hotel, 92 Brisbane Terrace, Goodna, its home. Join us on a Sunday from 11:00 am. Everyone is welcome.

When COVID-19 put a dash in our 2020 performances and jams, Jeni posted live every Sunday morning from 11:00 am on our Facebook page and kept us all making beautiful music. We’re now able to perform again together — happy days.  To find out what’s happening, join our Facebook group.

In July 2021, the RMUG celebrates its 6^th birthday. The group was established when Andrew Café, the current publican, wanted to diversify what the pub offered the community from bass guitar and harmonica to ukulele lessons. Vic Kena was engaged by Cath Butler, a celebrated band promoter, and Dot Gollner put her hand up to be the ukulele group coordinator.

Vic’s first big challenge for us was to perform at the pub in October 2016 for the 30^th anniversary of Andrew’s management. Vic led us in the performance and the crowd was so supportive. We all had so much fun, it inspired us to carry on. Jeni Bush became our Musical Director after joining the group in time for our first performance, and served an apprenticeship with Vic. Jeni now runs all the other performances and jams.

We play a variety of folk tunes such as Pearly Shells, Dirty Old Town or covers like Bad Moon Rising (CCR), Eight Days a Week, All My Loving, Octopus Garden (Beatles), Freight Train–Folsom Prison Blues (medley), Can’t Help Falling in Love, Streets of London, Green Door, King of the Road and Where have all the Flowers Gone.  We’ve performed at birthday parties, school fetes, SPRUKE, 4EB community radio and Christmas parties.

In 2017, with Vic’s help, we performed at SPRUKE 2017 at South Bank TAFE Campus. Jeni led us through the performance and although our stage presence was a little underwhelming, we nailed all the songs, engaged the audience, and had an amazing day. We performed first thing Sunday morning, so it was lucky we brought our own crowd. But we enjoyed it so much that we fronted up again to perform at SPRUKE 2019 at the Sunnybank Peforming Arts Centre.

Vic also organised and directed our performance at the Yeronga State School fete, by this time we were old hands. So we just rocked up and had some fun.

Our first performance on our own fulfilled a BUMS Inc gig request for the St Francis Xavier State School fete, at Goodna. It was a little daunting to perform for two hours. But once we got going we found our voices, and really learned how to play and sing loudly. The theme was “country”, so our set included songs like “Home Among the Gum Trees”. But we were really nervous and not really very country. It wasn’t until we started playing our jam songs that we were able to loosen up and enjoy ourselves. We’re looking forward to more gigs as COVID-restrictions ease.

 

Core members of RMUG are Jeni, Dot, Judy, Jimmy, Vicki, Shu-Wha, Janice and Barry, Alan and Anna, Kath, Juliana, Max and Margaret.