conchord friday/saturday

On Friday morning, we discovered from the hotel that our suite was ready, so we moved everything over. Very nice room! Two bathrooms, two rooms, a giant bed plus a pull-out couch, lots of space to practise in. We unpacked and then headed to the reception, which was also a CD launch of Nancy Louise Freeman's newest project, Blues For Dumuzi, which also features Jeff Bohnhoff, Debbie Baudoin, and Maya Bohnhoff. The album was produced by Jeff at Mystic Fig Studios; I'm really looking forward to listening to it.

The hotel had somehow double-booked programming in the original room scheduled for the reception, but the confusion was quickly sorted out and another room found. The concom had arranged a yummy spread of fruit, cheese and crackers, and Nancy's CD played as background music. I enjoyed catching up with filkers I haven't seen in a while, plus met some new people.

We also browsed through the program book and read the bio that Tom Jeffers and Dave Clement wrote for us. Thanks so much, Tom and Dave! :-) We'll get you for this, of course. I'll post the bio online sometime in the near future.





Partway through the reception, Allison, Jodi and I were told that we had to switch hotel rooms; apparently the hotel had given us the room meant for children's programming at the convention. We packed up our stuff and moved to a suite on the floor above. We had just finished unpacking again when Nick came to get us for a radio show interview.

The host, Warren James, of
Mike Hodel's Hour 25 was great, very easygoing. He also had one of the most radio-friendly voices I've ever heard. By radio-friendly, I mean that if you happened to hear this guy order his food in a restaurant, you'd know he was a radio personality. According to David Okamura, Warren is also a filk enthusiast, and you can find an interview with Karen Willson in the archives.

He also interviewed Nick Smith, Leslie Fish, Mary Creasey, Nancy Freeman, and Erwin "Filthy Pierre" Strauss (the Interfilk guest at Conchord). The show is supposed to be accessible online in a few weeks; I'll post the URL when I find out more. Allison, Jodi and I always vow not to giggle when we're interviewed, but inevitably we end up having too much fun. We still have fond memories of being interviewed by Tom Jeffers for his Winnipeg radio show. :-)

Dave Weingart had sent a copy of the Interfilk songbook to the hotel, by the way, for me to take around and try to get some of the West Coast interfilk signatures. Thanks so much for supporting Interfilk this way, Dave!





Allison had the beginnings of a sore throat on Friday night. When she woke up on Saturday, her sore throat had progressed into a full-blown cold. We were all pretty worried about how she'd do in our Guest of Honor concert later that night, so we decided it was probably best for Allison to get as much rest as she could in the afternoon, even if it meant having to miss some programming.

That's one of the advantages of being in a group, I find...if one of us gets sick during a guest gig, the other two can cover. In the eight years we've been together, this hasn't happened that often. I've been sick once, Jodi twice, Allison a few times.

I was pretty pleased with how our songwriting workshop went on Saturday morning. It's always a tricky thing, having a workshop like that when the attendees have such a wide range of experience and aptitudes.

The first part of the workshop was an open discussion of a variety of songwriting topics, such as finding inspiration, the songwriting process (lyrics or music first?), collaboration. Then we worked on the practical exercise: writing a song that we could all perform in the Urban Tapestry Guest of Honor Concert!

First Allison, Jodi and I taught them the chorus of a song I had written called "If Everyone Ate Some Chocolate" as well as a sample verse to give an idea of the lyric scansion. Then everyone split up into groups to write part of the song for 20 minutes, after which we got back together and decided on the order of the verses (and a bridge, which one group had written), and rehearsed the whole thing a few times.





After a quick lunch and getting ready for the Totally Tasteless and Tacky Review, we headed down to the main concert room to listen to the Special Guest, Throwing Toasters (Grant Bacciocco). Very entertaining fellow with some great songs.

Many thanks to Jeff Bohnhoff, Nick Smith and Paul Kwinn for helping us perform Library Boy as our contribution to the TTTR. Jeff Bohnhoff played guitar with me; on whim, I had asked him to play along during a quick rehearsal. JeffB is an AMAZING guitarist, for those of you who don't know. He picked up the not-too-complicated chord structure of Library Boy with no difficulty and started adding some very cool twiddles and stuff to my basic rhythm guitar part. I was so excited I started jumping up and down.

Nick Smith played the part of the Library Boy, while Jodi did the torch song bit. Since I never DID see what they were doing during the song because I was concentrating on my guitar part, I will have to rely on the reports of an onlooker for a description of what happened. I only know that Jodi started the song looking very demure and dowdy, and then gradually got more and more torchy (took down her hair, threw off her shawl, took off her glasses, etc.). Near the end of the song, Paul Kwinn played the part of a security guard that Nick finally calls in to try dragging Jodi offstage.





Allison had to go crash in our room in the afternoon. Jodi and I had been asked by Devon Black, the wonderful Con Suite Goddess, if we could sing "Rumours About Redheads" for her. This was a song that Jodi, Rand and I had written as a surprise for Allison a while back, and I had sent it in to be included in the Conchord songbook (without Allison's knowledge, of course). Devon had travelled about 400 miles to do the con suite, and had to ask a scheduling favour from her boss at a brand-new job to do it. Thank you, Devon!!

After that, we went to check out the one shots. I held Zoë while Scott and Amanda performed their now infamous "Rudy" (yes, they brought the fish). Zoë clapped her hands and jumped up and down on my lap. The afternoon concerts were by Lynn Gold and the Interfilk guest, Erwin "Filthy Pierre" Strauss. I had never met Erwin before and was a bit nervous by the "Filthy Pierre" nickname...would I feel like leaving the room every time he sang? Turns out the nickname had origins in college, and didn't really have anything to do with being filthy. We had a chance to chat with him on Friday night; he's a nice fellow, very friendly.

Erwin's concert was unique in that he had a projector screen set up and had all his lyrics on slides, so that the audience could sing along on everything if they wanted.





We opted to have dinner in our room because Allison still wasn't feeling well and because we wanted to have enough time to warm up and do sound checks before our concert.

To Jodi's and my relief, Allison and her voice were fine for the concert. The afternoon of rest and the Dayquil helped, I think. My personal highlight of the concert was when our songwriting partipants came up to perform "If Everyone Ate Some Chocolate" with us; some people in the audience waved their imaginary lighters in the air (initiated by Jane Mailander), and the whole room ended up participating on the chorus, which was very cool. Then David Okamura started dangling a Hershey's Kiss in front of the audience. Additional comment from David: "That was too much temptation for those sitting behind me. While I was distracted by a femme fatale, Barney Evans grabbed the chocolate and made off, with me in hot pursuit brandishing a chair over my head. (He never did return that Hersey's.) ;-)"

Here are the lyrics to the song.

The other highlight of the concert was chatting with someone from the audience who was attending her first filk convention.

Many thanks also to Scott Snyder and Joey Shoji for helping us during the concert (Scott for "California Dreamin'" and Joey for "Star Sisters").

Nancy Louise Freeman's concert was after ours. GREAT concert; it made me even more excited about listening to her new album. My favourite song in the set was one about being a fangirl. Jeff Bohnhoff accompanied her on some of the songs.

The Interfilk auction was fun to attend. Our interfilk package was bought by Kathleen. Tom and Dave had contributed a unique Urban Tapestry t-shirt which was bought by Jeff Bohnhoff (I'll have my revenge, Tom and Dave...you too, Jeff! :-)).

Saturday's open filk was great. Allison, Jodi and I decided to attend the regular open filk rather than join the Bawdy song circle; as much as we enjoyed the TTTR, bawdy just isn't our thing. There are some very funny songs in the Bawdy Song Circle, of course, but inevitably there are one or two songs that just make me outright uncomfortable.

One of my personal highlights at the Saturday open filk was hearing Jeff Bohnhoff sing in public for the first time! He usually plays guitar while his wife Maya sings ("Why would anyone want to listen to me when they could listen to Maya?"). For me, Jeff's decision to try singing in public embodies the spirit of the filk community so well...people being encouraged to sing and/or perform in public who normally wouldn't. I know I would never have started singing if it hadn't been for Allison and Jodi, and encouragement of other filkers.

After Allison and then Jodi went to crash in our hotel room, I knew I couldn't perform anymore Urban Tapestry material, but I just enjoyed listening.

The atmosphere in that late Saturday night filk was wonderful, had achieved the special chemistry that open filks strive for, with everyone taking turns without bickering or competing, supporting and encouraging newcomers and shy types, just revelling in the sharing of each other's music. I especially enjoyed hearing so many filkers I had never met before, new songs I had never heard.

Around 3 a.m., I was still enjoying myself too much to be tired, but I realized that if I didn't go to bed soon I'd suffer the consequences the next day, so reluctantly left the filk room to get some sleep.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Allison feeding Casey and Riley Kwinn. Allison had been staying with Beckett and Paul in Fremont for the week before Conchord.
	Jeff Bohnhoff, Jodi, Allison, and Nancy Louise Freeman, at Conchord's Friday night reception and Nancy's CD launch.
	Scott Snyder on stage, about to help us with California Dreamin', the first song in our concert.
	Registration desk at Conchord, with Devon Black and Nick Smith.
	Warren James interviewing Nick Smith for "Mike Hodel's Hour 25".