The Twin Cities Ukulele Club has meetings all over the Metro—including Woodbury—where ukulele players gather for jam sessions. Photos: Chris Emeott
Ukulele jam sessions prove that friendship isn’t found; it’s created.
“People are funny,” says Pat Solstad, member of Twin Cities Ukulele Club (TCUC). “You tell them you play the ukulele, and they giggle. They think it’s cute.” Pat, who has been playing since 1960, notes how special the community around ukulele is.
After moving into Stonecrest, a Woodbury senior living community, with her husband, Paul Solstad, Pat missed her previous ukulele group, so she got to work organizing. “I really wanted to involve people in my new community,” she says. “I have a ukulele outside my door here at our apartment. So when people meet me, they say, ‘Oh, you’re the gal with the ukulele,’” she says with a laugh. “I guess I just love making music with people.”
Tony Anthonisen, TCUC coordinator, credits Pat with getting the Woodbury chapter up and strumming. “She reached out to me and then found a location at the YMCA, so she really got the whole thing going,” he says.
Since November 2025, when the club started meeting, YMCA executive director Tara Monack has noticed people stopping to listen to the jam sessions and inquire. “Ukulele club really is as delightful as it sounds,” Monack says. Given the longstanding mission of the YMCA to foster community, hosting the club’s jam sessions is a natural fit. In addition to the weekly jam sessions, TCUC has an active gig schedule and hosts the Great Minnesota Uke Gathering every year in November—this year, it will be held in October at Woodlake Campus of the Crosstown Lutheran Church in Richfield. “There’s nothing better than bringing music to people,” Anthonisen says.
“It’s just a marvelous thing we have,” Pat says of both the club and the jam sessions. She describes a moment when people lean over to help one another while a guy in the back is cracking jokes—there is a genuine spirit of sharing. They sit in the semicircle and take turns choosing a song to play. “The person calling the song will sometimes tell a little story or share some background knowledge about the song,” Pat says. “There’s always some chatting. It’s just a happy, happy place.”
The songs called out during the jam sessions live in a shared Google folder, and there are hundreds. Bluegrass, folk, rock ’n’ roll, spiritual—there are all types of genres covered. Anthonisen quotes a saying from Harlan Howard about country music being “Three chords and the truth.” He notes that this reflects the attitude of TCUC toward making music too.
The Tuesday morning jam sessions are open to ukulele players of all levels. From the lifers with decades of experience to the “never-evers,” as Anthonisen calls them, everyone is welcome. “It’s totally noncompetitive,” he says, sharing that members regularly say that the welcoming and encouraging environment is among their favorite things about the jam sessions. “It doesn’t make any difference how good you are. If it’s getting people into playing music, that’s what it’s all about.”
As the Woodbury group continues to grow, Pat hopes to bring ukulele performances to Stonecrest, where her fellow residents could experience what the Tuesday morning jammers already know: Making music together builds community.
