Getting Inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame (FKO- Part 3)
Photos by Walter, unless otherwise stated. You can see his full set of FKO photos here.
This part of the report is going to get somewhat self-indulgent. Forgive me. It only happens once in a filker’s career :).
On an evening in January I got an unexpected call from Dave Hayman. “Urban Tapestry has been chosen to be inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame at this year's FKO!”, he announced.
Wow.
So I said the typical incoherent things that people say at such moments and Judith was chiming in from the background of Dave’s call and more than anything it just gave me this tremendous feeling of deja vu, reminding me of a similar phone call from Judith Hayman on an evening back in early 1993 when she announced to me that Urban Tapestry had been chosen as an Interfilk guest to go to ConChord in LA, the first time we had guested anywhere. That phone call came only about eight months after UT first got together and Dave’s phone call eighteen years later just emphasized for me what an incredible ride it has been through those eighteen years and how fun it is that both sides of our time as UT has been punctuated by important phone calls by Judith and Dave.
There are so many things I could say about how emotional I am that the filk community thinks enough of us to induct us into the Filk Hall of Fame. Debbie has said many of those things very eloquently here. Perhaps I will eventually get my thoughts together enough to post further about that, but for today, let’s go back to my FKO report and talk about the Filk Hall of Fame Banquet.
So when Dave called to give us the good news, we knew there were two things that we needed to prepare for FKO- a speech to give at the Filk Hall of Fame Banquet and five songs to sing at the traditional Filk Hall of Fame Concert on Sunday afternoon.
May I just say how very HARD it is to keep a secret like being inducted into the Hall of Fame from everyone for two months??? We had friends asking “Are you performing anything at FKO this year?” “Oh, no, no. Nothing. Just open filking.”. And it got even more fun as we actually got to the con and had to smuggle props for our non-existent concert past our friends and make sure things were well-hidden in the room. We had Walter convinced our well-wrapped “Neurotic Love Song” props for Sunday were actually posters for our DVD release party on Friday night :). But every time someone rang the hotel room to come up and visit we had to case the room to make sure there were no hints that we had carelessly left around!
All three of us agree we are very bad liars. So whenever anyone at the con wanted to play FKO’s favorite party game “Who is here who shouldn’t be and therefore may be going into the Filk Hall of Fame Saturday night?”, we had to be very straight-faced in deflecting attention away from ourselves. We’d say, “Who’s here from FAR AWAY, I mean FAR FAR AWAY FROM TORONTO. They must be the inductees.”.Even though we knew two of the three inductees this year (UT and Howard) live no more than a stone’s throw away from Toronto :).
Wow, was I nervous during the banquet. I hardly ate a thing and just pushed rice and chicken around my plate. People couldn’t understand why I would be nervous- someone commented later -concerts- would be much scarier :) - but going into the Hall of Fame was just such a big amazing thing and knowing that within the hour all the filk world would know just had me totally tied in knots. I will be so aware at the FKO Banquet from now on that there are three or four people in the room feeling that same way!
After some very stirring and emotional words from FKO’s guests, Dave Hayman got up to speak and it’s become fond expectation now that Dave will get emotional when introducing the Filk Hall of Fame he’s created and still runs. There were only two things I packed into my purse before heading to the banquet- notes for UT’s speech and LOTS of Kleenex :). Both came in handy!
The first person inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame this year was Ellen Kranzer. Congratulations, Ellen, and well-deserved!
It seemed very right that the person that got up to read Urban Tapestry’s citation and induct us into the Filk Hall of Fame was our fellow local 2011 inductee Howard Scrimgeour :). Hearing our citation read aloud in that room was hugely moving. I can remember breaking into tears at the FKO banquet in 1999 when Dave Clement was inducted because I recognized phrases from my nomination for Dave in the official citation. Being on the other side of that situation this year it was wonderful to know that the words in UT’s citation were phrases and feelings that had been sent to the nominating committee by fellow filkers. Really, we can’t ever thank you enough.
We had prepared notes for our acceptance speech, truly, but by the time we got up there to talk we were all at various stages of emotion and the speech was a bit more improvised than we had discussed :). We did manage to get in everything important to us- the support of our wonderful local filk community, how happy we were to be accepting this honour at our hometown con. How thankful we were to every concom who had the faith to invite us as guests and had given us such fabulous experiences. Interfilk, for sending us to ConChord and for introducing us to filkers from around the world. All the filk artists who have ever collaborated with us whether it involved concerts, filk circles, workshops, CDs, DVDs, on-line message boards. Yeah, in our rambling I think we managed to reference all that :).
And then it was lovely to sit back down and see Howard Scrimgeour go from inducting us to being inducted himself :). Howard gave a very eloquent, thoughtful speech about the power of filk and the purpose of the Hall of Fame and it was the perfect way to finish the evening. Congratulations, Howard!
We headed up to the Dessert Buffet in the con suite after that where I discovered I -was- now hungry and that coffee and nanaimo bars were much appreciated! Thank you Sheryl and Bob for your marvelous hosting in the con suite!
It took me a bit of time to come down from the banquet experience so I opted for quiet time with friends for the next hour or so. Word has it, though, that the auction for Interfilk and FKO was extremely successful, which was great to hear.
And now that UT could admit that we were indeed one of the featured performers in the Filk Hall of Fame concert on Sunday afternoon, Jodi and I could admit how worried we both had been all weekend that we were sick with coughs and hoarse voices and were a bit concerned just how much singing we would be able to do! As a result we did decide to coddle our voices by not singing in open filk on Saturday night (sniff! sad!). I did wander about listening for awhile, though, and there were three dynamic circles going strong when we finally chose to go crash.
Finishing this up tomorrow.
This part of the report is going to get somewhat self-indulgent. Forgive me. It only happens once in a filker’s career :).
On an evening in January I got an unexpected call from Dave Hayman. “Urban Tapestry has been chosen to be inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame at this year's FKO!”, he announced.
Wow.
So I said the typical incoherent things that people say at such moments and Judith was chiming in from the background of Dave’s call and more than anything it just gave me this tremendous feeling of deja vu, reminding me of a similar phone call from Judith Hayman on an evening back in early 1993 when she announced to me that Urban Tapestry had been chosen as an Interfilk guest to go to ConChord in LA, the first time we had guested anywhere. That phone call came only about eight months after UT first got together and Dave’s phone call eighteen years later just emphasized for me what an incredible ride it has been through those eighteen years and how fun it is that both sides of our time as UT has been punctuated by important phone calls by Judith and Dave.
There are so many things I could say about how emotional I am that the filk community thinks enough of us to induct us into the Filk Hall of Fame. Debbie has said many of those things very eloquently here. Perhaps I will eventually get my thoughts together enough to post further about that, but for today, let’s go back to my FKO report and talk about the Filk Hall of Fame Banquet.
So when Dave called to give us the good news, we knew there were two things that we needed to prepare for FKO- a speech to give at the Filk Hall of Fame Banquet and five songs to sing at the traditional Filk Hall of Fame Concert on Sunday afternoon.
May I just say how very HARD it is to keep a secret like being inducted into the Hall of Fame from everyone for two months??? We had friends asking “Are you performing anything at FKO this year?” “Oh, no, no. Nothing. Just open filking.”. And it got even more fun as we actually got to the con and had to smuggle props for our non-existent concert past our friends and make sure things were well-hidden in the room. We had Walter convinced our well-wrapped “Neurotic Love Song” props for Sunday were actually posters for our DVD release party on Friday night :). But every time someone rang the hotel room to come up and visit we had to case the room to make sure there were no hints that we had carelessly left around!
All three of us agree we are very bad liars. So whenever anyone at the con wanted to play FKO’s favorite party game “Who is here who shouldn’t be and therefore may be going into the Filk Hall of Fame Saturday night?”, we had to be very straight-faced in deflecting attention away from ourselves. We’d say, “Who’s here from FAR AWAY, I mean FAR FAR AWAY FROM TORONTO. They must be the inductees.”.Even though we knew two of the three inductees this year (UT and Howard) live no more than a stone’s throw away from Toronto :).
Wow, was I nervous during the banquet. I hardly ate a thing and just pushed rice and chicken around my plate. People couldn’t understand why I would be nervous- someone commented later -concerts- would be much scarier :) - but going into the Hall of Fame was just such a big amazing thing and knowing that within the hour all the filk world would know just had me totally tied in knots. I will be so aware at the FKO Banquet from now on that there are three or four people in the room feeling that same way!
After some very stirring and emotional words from FKO’s guests, Dave Hayman got up to speak and it’s become fond expectation now that Dave will get emotional when introducing the Filk Hall of Fame he’s created and still runs. There were only two things I packed into my purse before heading to the banquet- notes for UT’s speech and LOTS of Kleenex :). Both came in handy!
The first person inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame this year was Ellen Kranzer. Congratulations, Ellen, and well-deserved!
It seemed very right that the person that got up to read Urban Tapestry’s citation and induct us into the Filk Hall of Fame was our fellow local 2011 inductee Howard Scrimgeour :). Hearing our citation read aloud in that room was hugely moving. I can remember breaking into tears at the FKO banquet in 1999 when Dave Clement was inducted because I recognized phrases from my nomination for Dave in the official citation. Being on the other side of that situation this year it was wonderful to know that the words in UT’s citation were phrases and feelings that had been sent to the nominating committee by fellow filkers. Really, we can’t ever thank you enough.
We had prepared notes for our acceptance speech, truly, but by the time we got up there to talk we were all at various stages of emotion and the speech was a bit more improvised than we had discussed :). We did manage to get in everything important to us- the support of our wonderful local filk community, how happy we were to be accepting this honour at our hometown con. How thankful we were to every concom who had the faith to invite us as guests and had given us such fabulous experiences. Interfilk, for sending us to ConChord and for introducing us to filkers from around the world. All the filk artists who have ever collaborated with us whether it involved concerts, filk circles, workshops, CDs, DVDs, on-line message boards. Yeah, in our rambling I think we managed to reference all that :).
And then it was lovely to sit back down and see Howard Scrimgeour go from inducting us to being inducted himself :). Howard gave a very eloquent, thoughtful speech about the power of filk and the purpose of the Hall of Fame and it was the perfect way to finish the evening. Congratulations, Howard!
We headed up to the Dessert Buffet in the con suite after that where I discovered I -was- now hungry and that coffee and nanaimo bars were much appreciated! Thank you Sheryl and Bob for your marvelous hosting in the con suite!
It took me a bit of time to come down from the banquet experience so I opted for quiet time with friends for the next hour or so. Word has it, though, that the auction for Interfilk and FKO was extremely successful, which was great to hear.
And now that UT could admit that we were indeed one of the featured performers in the Filk Hall of Fame concert on Sunday afternoon, Jodi and I could admit how worried we both had been all weekend that we were sick with coughs and hoarse voices and were a bit concerned just how much singing we would be able to do! As a result we did decide to coddle our voices by not singing in open filk on Saturday night (sniff! sad!). I did wander about listening for awhile, though, and there were three dynamic circles going strong when we finally chose to go crash.
Finishing this up tomorrow.