conchord sunday

After pushing herself so hard yesterday for the concert, Allison crashed pretty hard today, and stayed in bed most of the time.

Jodi and I went for breakfast at the Clipper Cafe (hotel restaurant) and were soon joined by Joey Shoji, Tony Fabris, Jeff Bohnhoff, and Kathleen Sloan. Dessert: Krispy Kremes, courtesy Seanan (thanks, Seanan!) and Joey Shoji (who had asked Seanan to buy a dozen plain glazed KKs). They were still warm from the oven and were VERY yummy, better than the microwaved sample I had a while back in Port Elgin.

Jodi and I dropped by one of the open filks, where Jeff and Scott had traded guitars and were jamming, then sat in on the Windbourne filk circle. I had the opportunity to chat briefly with Karen Rodgers and Rilla Heslin, both very friendly as well as extremely talented. Wish we all lived closer; it would fun to jam with them sometime. Their version of Stan Rogers' "45 Years" made me teary-eyed, mainly because Lee and Barry Gold were singing along, obviously to each other.

I really enjoyed getting to know Lee and Barry a bit better - very cool people! Wish we had more of a chance to chat. They've been married 33 years!! I asked them what their one piece of advice is for staying happily married that long. Their answer: "Don't give up." :-)





Jodi and Callie Hills performed a really beautiful song in the second set of one-shots. After the one-shots was a performance by Jordan Mann and the Hodgetts Clan, which was actually three mini-concerts. Jordan was accompanied by Blake Hodgetts, who then performed his own set, and then accompanied Ash Productions (Angelica & Athrylis Sather Hodgetts).

Hearing Ash Productions for the first time was definitely a con highlight for me. These two are incredibly talented young women, the eldest of whom is fourteen. They're both good singers, they harmonize. They write their own lyrics, and their lyrics are good. All their songs appeared to be humourous parodies, and showed a much more sophisticated level of humour than you'd expect from youngsters that age.

There were several other extremely talented young filkers at this convention. If this is any indication of what we can expect to see from the next generation of filkers, I'm mightily encouraged.

After the concerts were the Kazoo Awards. Each kazoo award was a unique creation designed by David Okamura. Here's the award given to Urban Tapestry:





Comment from David: "I was wondering how to incorporate a tapestry-like decoration for your kazoo, and it wasn't until fairly late when I decided to have it
hang on a T-post. I took a photo from the Official Toronto website and
printed it on linen stationery paper for the right texture."

Several filkers had invited us out to dinner (thank you!) but Allison was pretty sick, so Jodi and I opted to have dinner at the hotel. Thanks to the Snyders and Kwinn/Gladney clan for keeping us company. We ordered in pizza; Allison slept through most of it, but came out somewhat groggily near the end of the evening to have a frozen fruit bar I had picked up in the hotel shop.

The end-of-con filk took place in the con suite. Jodi was starting to come down with Allison's cold symptoms so opted to go to bed early. I hung around for a while longer, mostly listened but did some flute-playing. Thanks to Bob ("Blars") Blarson for requesting something from me in the bardic circle; it gave me an opportunity to ask Callie to do some flute playing with me! She played on her bass flute; I played on regular. Earlier in the evening, I also had the opportunity to play with Callie, Blake on keyboard, and another flautist whose name I didn't know who played a wooden flute.

Fun to hear Leslie Fish perform a chocolate song she had written during the evening. Lots of great music, but I had to crash around 10 pm or so; I was dead tired after the weekend, plus my scratchy throat told me that I might be coming down with Allison's cold.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Callie and Jodi do a one-shot.
	Ash Productions.
	Urban Tapestry Kazoo award.