12 years of Urban Tapestry, boskone

Urban Tapestry at The Gathering, Dec/2003

Allison, Jodi and I had a successful Urban Tapestry practice yesterday in Newmarket. My right arm had recovered enough from my fall on the ice that I was able to play flute, yay!

It took me two hours to get there. First, an hour of fitful starts and stops on the underground Toronto subway system, including my train inexplicably going out of service three stops away from my destination. Then an hour on the York Transit Newmarket "B" bus, listening to my German language lessons on my iPod (only eight months left until Filkcontinental, after all!). Jodi picked up Allison and me at the bus station in Newmarket.

It's always a bit of a challenge for the three of us to get together these days because of the distance between us. I live in downtown Toronto, Allison lives in Richmond Hill and Jodi lives in Newmarket. Because of the travel time involved, getting together for a practice during the work week is a major undertaking; 3.5-4 hours round-trip travel time for what basically amounts to 2 hours worth of actual practice not counting dinner, tuning instruments, warming up, etc. It quickly became clear that weekend practices made much more sense.

If we haven't got a gig coming up, we usually try to get together anyway at least once or twice a month, along the north end of the subway line. As I have mentioned in earlier Blatherings, the three of us are friends as well as music partners, and we enjoy each other's company even outside of our musical fellowship. We meet for dinners, see movies together, cry on each other's shoulders. We have the occasional spat, but our disagreements never last long.

Urban Tapestry beaded keychains designed and made by Michelle Bottorff. Click image for detail.

This July marks the 12th anniversary of Urban Tapestry. 12 years! During a practice at Allison's place last month, we went through some old videotapes of our early performances, including the very first time the three of us performed together. At that time, we had no idea how strong the bond between us would grow, both musically and in friendship.

With Allison's husband help, we plan to put together a DVD compilation of some of these Urban Tapestry archive clips and donate the DVD to some Interfilk auctions. I'm excited about having a copy of my own. :-) If you haven't already, please do check out the wonderful 10th anniversary scrapbook that Allison put together a couple of years ago.

We leave for Boston and Boskone this week! We will be performing an hour concert, a 40-minute children's concert, instrumentalists' panel, introduction to filk panel, and participating in a Firefly panel and a "Life, the Universe and Everything" concert. Should be fun, and we hope to see some of you there! You can find out more information about the convention at the Boskone Web site .

Concert at Digeri-Douze in UK, 2000. Photo by Godfrey Joseph.

OUR BOSKONE SCHEDULE:

FRIDAY

7:00 pm Can't Take Firefly From Me

"How long can 14 episodes hold a fandom, anyway? Sure, the world Joss Whedon created in his short-lived series Firefly is a richly embroidered tapestry. And now we've got the feature film Serenity to look forward to in the fall. But just what is it about Mal, Jayne, Zoe, and the rest of the motley gang that holds our intrigue? How little source material is the minimum needed to sustain a fandom over the long haul, anyway?"

Keith R. A. DeCandido, Allison Durno, MaryAnn Johanson (m), Jodi Krangle, Debbie Ridpath Ohi

8:00 pm - Filk 101: An Introduction to Filk
Allison Durno, Jodi Krangle, Lois H. Mangan, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Erwin S. Strauss

SATURDAY

1:00 pm - Urban Tapestry Concert

SUNDAY

10:00 am - Urban Tapestry Concert for Children

12:00 noon - Concert: Life, the Universe, and Everything
"Themed concert by many performers, including Urban Tapestry."

1:00 pm - The Instrument Panel
"Filk isn't just voice and guitar; many other instruments can be and have been used. Panelists talk about the instruments they use, how they fit into a filk performance, what it takes to learn them, and show off their use." With Allison Durno, Joseph Kesselman, Jodi Krangle, Gary D. McGath, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, Hillary Sherwood

Confluence/2004 concert. Photo by John Hall.

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friendship, poetry, music...and some Lapsang Souchong

The drawing above is a collab entry for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Friendship."

Thanks for your answers about tea, everyone; I'm definitely inspired to try some of the teas you've been mentioning. I'm especially curious about Lapsang Souchong now, and loved Andy's comment on this type of tea: "Everyone should drink a cup of Lapsang Souchong before they die. It is a foretaste of hell, and will urge them to spend their days in repentance and good works."

:-D

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Erin "tagged" me, so I'll give it a shot even though I don't tend to do the meme thing that often:

1. What is the total amount of music files on your computer?

5.22 GB.

2. The CD you last bought is:

Erasure's new Nightbird CD. My friend Craig brought it over for me last night!

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

All This Time Still Falling Out Of Love (from the Erasure album above).

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you:

Something True - Einstein's Sister
When I Fall - Barenaked Ladies
Song For Jim - I wrote this when my brother & his wife died
Forever Young - Alphaville (one of my brother's favourite songs)
Days We Spend Together - Allison & Jodi wrote this

5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?

Allison, to see if she'll do it.

Rand, because I know he won't.

Beckett, because I'm curious. :-)

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Seanan posted her "Iron Poet" invitation recently, where users could give her three words and a poetic form, and she'd come up with a poem. I gave her "Allison," "Jodi," and "wicked" and told her any form was fine.

THANK YOU, Seanan, for the wonderful poem!

URBAN TAPESTRIES
By Seanan McGuire

Allison reads 'Wicked', and she dreams of Oz at war;
The Deadly Desert's shifting sands are painted red as dawn,
While through the morning, cats tell tales
Of days so long forgotten,
And spiders in the corners spin
A blanket for her hopes.

Jodi dances in the hallway, stocking feet light on the floor;
She dreams of golden ballgowns, and of slippers made of glass,
While songs unwritten set the score
For all the ball to waltz to,
And magpies in the ice-bound trees
Sing softly, 'wait and see'.

Debbie weaves a web of light and casts it in the ocean,
Catching fish with silver scales and eyes as bright as dreams.
'Throw us back,' they beg her,
And she kisses them so gently,
Then bears the memory home
To grace her urban tapestries.

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unpickled puppies

Explanation of photo above: When Urban Tapestry was invited out to the UK as guests at Didgeri-Douze about five years ago, I was presented with a bottle of "pickled puppies" in honour of my song, "Puppies Cooked In Brine" (my very first filk song, and included on our Myths and Urban Legends CD). I kept the bottle for ages, but recently decided to release the poor puppies from their confinement and give them to my nieces. :-)

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Only 2 1/2 weeks until Boskone! Allison, Jodi and I are the Featured Filkers as Urban Tapestry, and we'll be performing a regular concert, a children's concert and participating in a theme concert.

I've never attended Boskone before and am really looking forward to checking it out. Hosted by The New England Science Fiction Association, Boskone takes place February 18-20, 2005 in Boston, MA. The guests this year:

Guest of Honor: Orson Scott Card

Official Artist: Alan Pollack

Special Guest: Mike Glyer

Featured Filkers: Urban Tapestry

Hope to see some of you there!

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Recent interesting purchases at St. Lawrence Market:

- Maple tea. Yum.

- Canadian Ice Wine tea. The name sounds better than it tastes. 'Tis ok, but I was somewhat disappointed.

- Boschetto Tartufo cheese made with white truffles, from Tuscany. Very strong, distinctive flavour. I really like it right now, but I can also tell that if I have too much of it I would end up really hating it. :-)

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Moving: Stage 2, Tranzac session

Hudson Movers came today and took away the rest of our old apartment to put into storage: the furniture, kitchen, most of our books. It was strange to see the place so empty afterwards; it seemed both bigger and smaller at the same time. We're looking at more houses this weekend.

Attended my third Irish music session at the Tranzac earlier this week (I've already posted about my first and second sessions). This week's "slow session" involved learning a new tune by ear. I'd never done this before, and found it easier than I expected. Whether or not I actually remember the tune weeks from now, however, remains to be seen. I'm hoping to have a microphone hooked up to my iPod soon to record some future sessions as well as my whistle lessons.

Before the move.

The tune we learned was called Dusty Miller, except I was warned that there are many tunes by this name; later on, I was unable to find the same Dusty Miller tune online. And this is one thing I'm discovering about learning tunes: almost every tune has more than one name. No wonder so few players know the names of the tunes they're playing, plus most of them seem to have grown up with the music since childhood.

I suppose I'm a bit off my gourd, leaping into the whole Irish session thing at this stage in my life. But then part of me thinks it's better to leap in now than never. And so far, it's been well worth the effort.

I've been enjoying listening, for example, as well as learning the tunes. And I was ecstatic when a few came up at the session this week AND I WAS ABLE TO PLAY ALONG WITHOUT SHEET MUSIC (!!!): Thrush In The Straw, Maurice Manley (Ballydesmond #2), Ballydesmond, Egans. And later in the evening, someone launched into Dusty Miller, the same tune we had learned in the slow session.

Toronto was bone-chilling cold that evening, everyone with scarves wrapped around their faces, noses and cheeks numb as they hurried along the snowy streets. Inside the Tranzac, however, we were cozy in our circle around the fireplace, coats tossed on a table in the corner.

And our pipes, whistles, flutes, banjos, accordians and fiddles filled the room with music.

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first iTunes purchase

Jodi and me. Photo by Rand.

Today's photos were taken by my friend Rand at a Marcon a while back. Got them from him yesterday along with a truly horrifying one that Jodi and I took with Rand's camera when he wasn't looking. And no, it won't be posted. RIGHT, RAND?!? :-)

Thanks so much to Luisa, who came over after work to help us do purging and packing at our old condo. She had a brief conversation with Edna and was unfazed by the latter's rude assessment of her fashion sense.

I recently made my First Purchase at the iTunes Canada music store! On Rand's recommendation, I bought K.D. Lang's "Hymns of the 49th Parallel"; I listened to samples from each track, loved each of them and realized that I might as well buy the whole album. $9.99 Canadian, including taxes. No shipping fee, of course. Wow...I think I'll be buying more albums this way. We're also looking into how to get Urban Tapestry songs onto iTunes.

I also was overcome by a nostalgic hankering for some oldies in my workout music mix, and also bought "Stray Cat Strut" (Stray Cats) and "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" (Cyndi Lauper) for 99 cents each. In case you're curious, here's my current iPod workout music playlist:

Stray Cat Strut (Stray Cats)
Girls Just Want To Have Fun (Lauper)
Alien Jellyfish (Chris Conway)
Barbie Girl (Aqua)
Lollipop (Chordettes)
Jealous of your Cigarette (Hawksley Workman)
Hockey Monkey (Ookla the Mok)

Jodi, Joe, Andrea and me. Photo by Rand.

Buffalo, CA (Ookla the Mok)
One Week (Barenaked Ladies)
Closer To Fine (Indigo Girls)
A Hard Day's Night (Beatles)
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (ABBA)
Striptease (Hawksley Workman)
She Loves You (Beatles)
Super Trouper (ABBA)
What About Everything (Carbon Leaf)
Out Tonight (Rent soundtrack)
Super Powers (Ookla the Mok)
Born To Hum (Erin McKeown)
Life Less Ordinary (Carbon Leaf)
Dancing Queen (ABBA)
Raise the Roof (Carbon Leaf)
Hey Julie (Fountains of Wayne)
The Rest of My Life (Sloan)

Me. I usually hate photos of me but actually don't mind this one. Photo by Rand.

I shuffle-mix this list for variety, and will likely change it each week. I find this is also a great list for private dancing. In the evenings, I like turning off all the lights in my mom-in-law's living room, which has a spectacular 180 degree view of the city and the frozen lake. Then I happily bop around in the dim light from the skyscrapers...sounds a bit silly, I know, but it's wonderful for de-stressing, and just plain FUN.

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