UT's Winnipeg Report

By Allison Durno

(I must start by saying that UT was in Winnipeg last weekend through the kindness and generousity of The Winnipeg Musicians' Hat Fund, who financed both our transportation and accommodations for the weekend. Debbie, Jodi and I are honoured that they chose to invite us to share KeyCon with them this year. Thank you so much to all the musicians and supporters who involve themselves with the Hat Fund. We will always be grateful.)

Jodi flew to Winnipeg on Wednesday and Debbie and I followed her two days later. If you want to hear what Jodi did during her pre-UT adventure, you can e-mail her :) .

My report, though, begins on:

Friday, May 16, 1997

Deb and I flew into Winnipeg together and the trip was very smooth. We had really fun flight attendants who gave away pretzels and chocolate bars to passengers who recognized certain lines from TV commercials. Debbie and I didn't win anything :) (Deb: but Allison could have won stuff! she knew most of the answers!! she was just too shy!!!). Dave Clement, Tom Jeffers and Jodi met us at the Winnipeg airport and the weekend was officially started with lots of giddy chatter and even more hugs (Deb: wow, can those Winnipeggers hug, too).

First stop was the legendary Bhigg House, home of Dave and Elizabeth Clement, Ruth Anderson and, so it seemed, home at one time or another of half the Winnipeg fans we met on the weekend :). The Bhigg House is a large rambling place with three floors, many hallways and nooks and crannies and lots of rooms with affectionate names like "The Balloon Room", "The Puzzle Room" and "The Music Room". I've come to the conclusion it is one of the most welcoming places on earth. Dave served us a bowl of his delicious chili (Deb: I still dream of this chili...yum) and slices of home-made bread, which Jodi informed us is baked fresh at the house every morning! Mmmmm...

We travelled on to the KeyCon hotel from there and settled into our room for the weekend. We moved from there to the "Muse and Music" circle that was part of the con. Muse and Music :). Isn't that a cool name for an open music circle? It was our first opportunity to meet many of the Winnipeg area musicians who we would be glad to call friends by the end of our visit. We were re-acquainted with Nate Buckland, John Speelman and Kylea Fulton, all who we knew and had met at other cons. We met new people, too, including Ruth Anderson, who impressed me immediately with her performance of "The Rattlin' Bog" (Ruth and UT are going to exchange children's tapes!), Peggy O'Neill, who caught our attention with her expressive bluesy voice and excellent songs, Krissy Benders, with her pretty ballads and wonky humour songs and Peter Rempel, who serenaded us with intricate classical guitar pieces.

We were most impressed with the high-caliber of music in the circle and we couldn't wait to sing much, much more with the Winnipeg music community! At 3 am, though, it was time to head to bed. We already had all kinds of plans made for Saturday :).

Saturday, May 17, 1997

We got up and left our hotel room on Saturday at the crack of noon and went road-trippin' with Kylea Fulton. She kept promising in e-mail that she was going to take us to one of the coolest toy stores ever and she delivered on that promise! She took us to the greatest store called "Toad Hall Toys", a quaint brick building stuffed with the most incredible collection of toys that you could ever hope to see. We spent an hour there and we could have easily spent ten (Deb: oh dear lord yes...I could also have burned a hole in my visa card big enough to jump through). They had an amazing collection of models, books, musical instruments, science gadgets, craft supplies, wind-up toys, stuffed animals, etc. Jodi bought baby gifts and Debbie bought strange and bizarre musical instruments (Deb: I also bought a make-your-own-mug and three pairs of Groucho Marx glasses) and I bought children's books. Just as we were leaving, the resident magician pulled us over to his display and showed us some astonishing card tricks. You should have seen Debbie's face when he turned the eight of hearts in her hand into a ten of diamonds :). Thanks so much, Kylea!!! Wow, that was fun.

We met Tom Jeffers back at the hotel and went road trippin' again. First stop on the Tom tour was at Home-made Music, official music store of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. What a great store! It was full of CDs and music books and guitar supplies and T-shirts and musical instruments. Deb bought a mini-rainstick and I bought a cool Winnipeg Folk Festival t-shirt and some guitar picks.

From there we travelled on to The Forks, a rustic, touristy mall at the forks of the (rather swollen at the moment) Red River. We were there on the weekend of the Buskers' Festival, the time when buskers compete to earn passes to play for the following year, so we heard a wonderful assortment of solo singers, duets and groups wherever we went in the mall. And we bought stuff... of course :). Also we found Jelly Bellies and Jodi bought delicious strawberry chocolate fudge and we all had cheesecake ice cream cones (Deb: no way! I had a banana ice cream cone, yum. I also bought some yogurt-covered apricots and candied ginger that Allison scoffed at, the culinary heathen :) ). Nutrition rules. Tom also took us up in the Forks tower so we could explore the area. It was from there that we could see the most sobering effects of the flood Manitobans have been battling for the last few months.

We had a -great- time travelling around with Tom! Hey, Tom Jeffers, you make us feel fine!

We headed back to the hotel to meet up again with Dave and others and then we went out to Dave's favorite Ukranian restaurant for some authentic Winnipeg-style food. Yum! We were joined by Peggy, Ruth, Nate, Erin McKee as well as Dave and Tom. We stuffed ourselves with perogies, cabbage rolls, soup and sausages.

After that, UT went back to prepare for our KeyCon concert. The concert went extremely well and we had good support from the Winnipeg area musicians. It was fun, too, bringing Dave, Tom and Kylea on stage with us to perform the songs they had helped us with on our new CD, "Myths and Urban Legends".

We moved from that into more "Muse and Music" and enjoyed the company of many of the same musicians we had sung with the night before. And around midnight, when we had just about given up hope, in sauntered Graham Leathers, fresh from his journey from Kenora, Ontario :). It was great to see Gray again and we got to spend more time with him on Sunday. We played and sang 'til the wee hours and then crashed after a very eventful day.

(Unfortunately Part 2 of this report has been lost during one of the Urban Tapestry site moves. :-( )