Return to main page
My Recollections of FilKONtario
by Allison Durno
FilKONtario '97 was a great time!! Very special congratulations to Judith and
Heather for heading a terrific con and for all the work they've done on FKO
through the years and my best wishes to them and Carolyn and Peggi as they
pass the torch for conchair next year.
Here's some of my highlights of the con that was (with additional notes by
Debbie):
Friday night
Jodi and I arrived at the hotel around 6:00 and headed up to our room to meet
up with Deb, Paul Kwinn and Rand Bellavia, who had been lucky enough to have
had the freedom to be exploring Toronto together most of the day. First
highlight of the con, bar none, was when Rand handed us our copies of Ookla
The Mok's CD, "Less Than Art" :) :). Congratulations to Rand, Adam and Luis!
[Debbie: cool package! cool CD artwork! I forgot to get mine autographed, though :-( ]
The packaging looks terrific and the music inside is even better. I recommend
everyone get this CD (so, hey, UT sings on one of the songs- we're not -too-
biased or anything :)). After that, we did all the typical early con stuff-
registration, reunions, lots of hugs and dinner.
We went to the mini-concerts after that and I enjoyed the variety of music
very much. I had only heard Mary Bertke. and Becky McGraw once or twice before, but I particularly enjoyed their
Celtic music and wonderful harmonies. Paul commented that their music
especially seemed to "call to my Celtic blood" :).
We left the open filk room to visit for a bit after that, but came back to
catch the end of the Dorsai filk when word kept reaching us that John Hall was
going to disown us if we didn't come back and sing our one and only Dorsai
song "Like The Dorsai" :). Pretty amusing for a group who would hardly know a
Dorsai book if they fell over it, though singing "Like The Dorsai" is always
tons of fun. We love it when everyone sings "Arrrrgggghhh!" with us.
[Debbie: And face it...yelling AARRRRGGGHHHH is wonderfully therapeutic!]
We moved into open filk after that and it was great. We got to sing harmony
with Dave Clement and Tom Jeffers again which is always a treat. UT is getting
very excited about our trip to KeyCon in Winnipeg next month, thanks to
Dandelion Wine and Dave Clement's Musicians' Hat Fund! UT sang Debbie's "Hey
Tom!" for Tom and Tom and Dave countered with Tom's song "Debbie-O" for
Debbie- Jodi and I enjoyed singing both and it foreshadowed more "tribute"
songs later in the weekend :). We got to hear the Interfilk guest, Doug Wu,
for the first time and I enjoyed his harp music a lot.
Paul parodied Mark
Osier's "Monster and Man" and may pay for it with his life
[Debbie: LOVE this parody!!!!]
, if Kathy Cogswell
has her way :). Mark Bernstein, Gary Erlich, Ookla The Mok, Bill Wells and others did a lot of good music. And then there was this woman
across the circle from me who immediately demanded my attention from her first
song because of her fine voice, good guitar work and excellent rhythms. I was
impressed and wondered who she was. Then Judith came in and called her by name
and I realized that I had -finally- had the opportunity to hear Talis
Kimberley. By the time she finished her "book" song with Mark Bernstein, I was a fan for life. I would have plenty more reasons to be impressed
with Talis before the end of the weekend!
Well, after that we stayed up talking and catching up with Paul and Rand until
way too late before finally crashing at 4:00 am.
Saturday
Slept in late and finally got up in time for lunch, where we ate with a large
group at Pat & Mario's that included Mark Osier and Kathy Cogswell, Clif
Flynt, Mary and Becky, Paul and Ookla. A good time was had by all.
[Debbie: and I got to spend a bit of time with Diana, Shelby, and Jan di Masi,
who were at a nearby table. Diana & Shelby had given me a jar of
Milky Way and were giving me tips on how best to make use of it. ;-) ]
After that, Debbie went to accompany Clif and Carol Flynt on the flute in
their featured concert. I was sorry to miss
the concert, but needing to grab opportunities where we could, Jodi and I went
back to our hotel room to work on our Debbie parody of "TechnoNerdboy".
Fortunately, UT's technonerdboy, Paul, was with us and provided us with the
perfect ending for the parody. We were all ready for open filk that night :).
[Debbie: Clif and Carol's concert was great! I had lots of fun listening and
participating.]
As I was heading down to the concerts, I ran into old filk friends of mine,
Pat and Andrew Williams, who I didn't know were coming to the con! Pat and I
go -way- back. I met her at the first filk I ever went to (Ad Astra '85) and
she let me crash in her hotel room that night when I stayed at my first filk
until 4:00am and there was no more buses to take me home :). We also hosted
umpteen Toronto filks together in the late 80's/early 90's. We took off to Pat
& Mario's for coffee and conversation.
Time flew by and when we got back to the filk room it was time for the
Interfilk auction. The con made a good profit for Interfilk, thanks to filker
generousity. And our thanks to Ingrid for buying our "Myths and Urban Legends"
package! Keep supporting Interfilk, everyone! They do good work.
[Debbie: Three cheers for Interfilk!]
As was proven next when Doug Wu performed his concert. I really enjoyed his
combination of songs on the harp and on the omnichord. It was great meeting
Doug and UT is glad to hear he'll be at The Second ConCerto, too, where we'll
be GOH. Hey, any filker who offers to try to play Partridge Family songs on
the harp for us is OK by me :).
[Debbie: I liked Doug a lot. Wow, Allison, I'm impressed you know what an
omnichord is (I didn't until you told me).]
Talis Kimberley was up next and her concert is one we'll be talking about in
the local filk community for years to come. Rarely have I seen such presence
and emotion from a performer. Her concert was mesmorizing. She left some
people in tears [Debbie: Like Jodi!!! HAHAHA!!! I'm so cruel.]
and everyone in awe. It was wonderful to get a chance to talk
to her as well- Talis is a warm, generous, friendly person. I do hope she
comes back to a con I'm at sometime again soon.
[Debbie: This woman is *amazing*. Move to Toronto, Talis! Please!!!]
When the concerts were over we went with Paul and Ookla to prepare for our
evening Rendezvous and a few of us put the finishing touches on some music
prepared through e-mail for the open filk that night.
Saw most of the songwriting competition at 9:00 and there were many excellent
entries. Congratulations to Howard, Diana, Shelby and Kathleen for winning
awards in that competition.
At midnight, we set up for our Rendezvous with Paul Kwinn and Ookla The Mok.
We also invited along Mark Osier, Dave Clement and Tom Jeffers and Kathleen
Sloan to perform with us. We had a -great- time and the energy in the room was
fantastic and our Rendezvous quickly evolved into a high-spirited open filk
with many fine performers. Highlights for me included surprising Debbie with
the TechnoNerdboy parody,
"It's Always The Quiet Ones..." , singing "Merry Minuet" with Paul and Rand (we had been
planning for months to do some folk music together at FKO), singing "Secret
Rose" with Mark Osier, hearing Talis Kimberley's rendition of "Velvet"
(wow...) and the second rousing rendition of "Debbie-O" from Dave and Tom with
everyone harmonizing on the chorus :).
[Debbie: I think I almost keeled over with embarrassment and shock. I had no idea how
conniving my music partners could be. :-)]
Once that filk started to thin out, we moved over to the main filk room, where
there was excellent music happening, too. I enjoyed hearing Kathy Mar, MEW,
Gary, Diana, Kathleen, Talis and many others. Also enjoyed hearing Kevin Davies at a local
filk again and hope he comes out to more filks. I really enjoyed hearing
Debbie play flute with him on "The Medic Song".
[Debbie: I screwed up my flute part terribly, I think. But it was pretty late and a few
years since I had played on that song! I'm glad Kevin was there, too.]
We also sang Cat Faber's "Song
of the Stars" for the first time since hearing Alan Theisen sing it in
concert at OVFF last year- we love that song. Paul, Rand and I got to sing
again, too, performing Phil Ochs' "The Scorpion Departs But Never Returns"- I
love that song, too. We plan to prepare some more music together for The
Second ConCerto. The filk was still going on at 5:30am when we left for bed.
Sunday
Had my traditional "Sunday brunch at any con that both of us are at" brunch
with Paul. We headed for the breakfast buffet across the street from the
hotel. Good food, great company.
[Debbie: Jodi, Rand and I had brunch together at Pat and Mario's.]
Came back in time to meet Deb, Jodi, Gary and
Steve to discuss final details for
programming at The Second ConCerto this year. We hope you'll all come to our
first GOH and the debut of our CD
"Myths and Urban Legends"! Talis stopped
Debbie in the hall and sang her a song in Japanese- that was pretty cool :).
[Debbie: Unbelieveably cool. My own mini private Talis concert. I was in ecstasy!]
We never did get a chance to do any music on Sunday, just lots of talking and
long good-byes to people we miss as soon as we get home and never have a
chance to see often enough. But with KeyCon and The Second ConCerto so close
on the horizon, we know we'll see a lot of you soon and that makes us just a
tiny bit less sad.
So, Heather Alexander is the GOH at FilKONtario next year and Don Neill is the
Filk Waif. Wow :) :). Can't wait!!!
The End
|
