Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

About Me

11 ukuleles and a double bass rocking it on the four-string in the capital city of New Zealand. The dozen-strong strummers of the WIUO faithfully reproduce hit songs from across the musical spectrum. They are a consistent sell-out act in their home country, where the ukulele has been a beloved instrument since its appearance on the first official New Zealand pop single.
The orchestra provides harmonious and hilarious renditions of classics, rock hits and folk tunes as well as songs in their countryâ€™s native tongue. The comedy comes from the witty banter, but when the WIUO bursts into song it could go several ways: the sweet sounds can silence a room in a nanosecond, or bring a crowd of thousands to their feet.
At their gigs, you can expect inviting sing-a-longs, outstanding instrumentals, well-dressed individuals, sparkling harmonies and comic banter. The WIUO has rocked rock venues, botanic gardens and vineyards, and they've also been known to rock libraries, museums, art galleries and the inter-island ferry.

We edited our profile with some awesomely basic html code including the classic "marquee" command (it still works!) and Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.1 , however some amongst us are way better at web design, particularly if you visit Alto, just for example.
Our tribute to Prince: I Could Never Take The Place of Your Man

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 6/26/2006
Band Website: ukulele.co.nz
Band Members: Age, Andy, Bek, Bret, Carmel, Dan, Francis, Gemma, Megan, Nigel, Sam, Steve.

Influences: More than we can list here, but let's just say a bottle of single malt, a little Justin Timberlake and the lights turned low are all we need to get goin'...
Sounds Like: skeletons pissing on a tin roof
Type of Label: None

My Blog

A Song from Sam

The Lonesome Cowboy is comin' home... next month Sam returns from sAmsterdam where he's been living for the past year. And he sent us a song home ahead of himself to remind us that we miss him, "We'll...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:33:00 PST

Talking Ukes - New Song

We've loaded up the live version of Talking Heads' Road To Nowhere onto our MySpace player. You can watch us recording it at the Red Bull Studio sessions (see last blog) and we've also whacked a coupl...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:14:00 PST

Something to look at...

Hey so the other month we were invited to the Red Bull Studio to lay a few tracks down. They filmed it, so go and look at us (and Andy's haircut) here.For the ladies, head straight to 'Heartache' (and...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Tue, 27 May 2008 05:13:00 PST

USA 2009

Ummmmmm.... No, we're not going to the USA in 2009. But we want to. So we figured if we just stated our intention (all Oprah-style like "tell the Universe what you want because if the Universe doesn't...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:32:00 PST

New Friends, New Dates, New Ukes, New News

Hello! It's been a busy summer of almost disastrous but ultimately successful gigs... First there was the Waitangi Day gig in Porirua, which was fantastic, even if we did have to thank everyone on be...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:57:00 PST

The Eagle Has Landed!

Our first recording, The Heartache EP, is on sale now in good New Zealand record stores, at the lovely Deluxe Cafe, and on TradeMe.co.nz. If you live overseas, we're still getting o...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:08:00 PST

Jim’n’Sigourney!

What a ripper of a week it was, last week. First of all, the excellent NYC-by-way-of-Hawaii theatre director Jim Simpson (from the Flea Theater) came over and jammed with us at band practice. Then the...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:08:00 PST

The First Recordings of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra

Friends! We're delighted to present two of the five songs from our forthcoming EP... 1. "It's A Heartache" (by the late Ronnie Scott, immortalised by, among others, Bonnie Tyler, Juice Newton and Rod...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:37:00 PST

We Did It!

The orchestra are tired little ukeleleists after a long weekend in an enclosed space... but our first recording session was an excellent time of red wine, chocolate, and Hungarian throat sausage. More...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Mon, 01 Oct 2007 08:41:00 PST

Yes ok alright then we’ll do it...

We're recording! This month! So watch this space for a hokey & gorgeous old Kiwi Christmas song, and some rather more contemporary numbers... coming to a media player near you in the soon future.&...
Posted by Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra on Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:16:00 PST