Sunday at FKO
Again, thanks so much to Walter for letting me use his photos for these reports. All photos are his unless otherwise stated. You can find his entire FKO set here.
Let's finish this up. Lots of photos in this final part.
We met Rand and Erin Sunday morning and headed a few blocks over to the Golden Griddle for brunch and conversation. And then we headed back to the hotel to move everything in our room down to the function space before the afternoon concerts began.
(Errol in the songwriting contest.)
Sat in the back of the room and listened to all of fun entries in the Penguin Awards insta-filk contest. To enter you had to receive a list of words at registration on Friday and then use those words to write a song during the convention to perform in the Sunday competition. Filkers able to do that are braver souls than I am! Lots of entertaining entries, but I think I was most amused by Walter making stuffed penguins dance and fly during Gary McGath’s song :). It is rather scary and funny to see how completely Walter has been assimilated into filk culture in the last few years!
Results for the Peguin Awards came soon afterward and congratulations to Jen, Bill and Errol for taking prizes in the competition! Jen is in the photo about there accepting first place.
Before starting the Filk Hall of Fame concert, the Hall of Fame initiated a new tradition. Thanks to an idea and a generous donation by Victoria Borean, there is now a Filk Hall of Fame Inductees’ pin. All Filk Hall of Fame Inductees were invited up onto the stage to receive their pin from Vicky. And UT was greatly honoured to be among the newest inductees receiving our pins!
All of us hugged Vicky as we accepted our pin, but I think I like this photo of Dave and Vicky best:
(photo by me)
When I got home I wanted to find somewhere very safe to keep my Hall of Fame pin, so I’ve pinned it to the middle of a piece of hardanger I made last year and I have it hanging near my office computer.
Howard, Ellen and UT were the featured performers at the Hall of Fame concert this year and, as is tradition, we took turns performing during the concert or inviting other performers to come to the stage and perform at our request. Deb, Jodi and I chose to sing songs we hoped would be familiar to the audience so they would sing along with us as we performed. The songs we sang were “A Neurotic Love Song”, “Puppies Cooked In Brine”, “The Lady”, “Monday”, and “Starsoul”.
We pulled out props for the ever-popular "Neurotic Love Song" :). Just before Deb pulled out this prop we sang the line "When the series ended I cried showers/I thought it was the end of you and me/But now I can still talk to you for hours/As I caress the screen of my TV." (...and my iPad2 :))
A last minute addition to “The Lady” and “Starsoul” was Amy McNally on fiddle. Yay! Yay! Yay! We always ask Amy to perform with us when we are at conventions together, but being that this concert had to be kept secret we weren’t able to ask Amy to be involved. So when Amy approached us on Sunday requesting if maybe, possibly she could come on stage to accompany us on a few songs she already knew, we were thrilled and delighted. Thank you, Amy! (Amy for Best Performer!) And thank you to the sound crew who were so accommodating on that last-second addition.
Howard and Ellen also sang an excellent selection of songs and invited friends and members of their local filk communities up to sing with them. It was a wonderful atmosphere and an emotional afternoon.
(photo by Phil Mills)
And Jodi and I even managed to keep our voices until the end of the concert! And there was great rejoicing.
Again, keeping with tradition, the convention ended with the British and German filkers coming to the stage to lead us in “Sam’s Song”.
And then Deb, Jodi and I again were privileged to close FilKONtario with its theme song, “Home To FilKONtario”. For the first time, though, the FKO concom stayed on stage to sing with us and that was awesome and I hope it becomes tradition from here on out. The energy (and relief! :)) we could hear in their voices from another FKO well-done was a grand way to finish off the con.
I headed for home shortly after that, being that exhaustion and my lingering cold were starting to get the best of me. The last thing I heard as I left the concert room was GoH Barry Childs-Helton leading a rollicking filk jam on the other side of the room, just as he does at OVFF every year. I LOVE Barry’s filk jams.
Thanks again to the FilKONtario concom for a fabulous weekend. Thanks so much to the Filk Hall of Fame committee and filk nominators for welcoming us into the fold.
And next year’s Guest of Honour at FilKONtario is Meg Davis!!! Along with Julia Ecklar and Technical Difficulties, Meg was one of my absolute idols in my earliest days of filk. I’m really looking forward to hearing her perform after so many years. And the rest of you out there in the filk world? You’re not going to want to miss it!
Let's finish this up. Lots of photos in this final part.
We met Rand and Erin Sunday morning and headed a few blocks over to the Golden Griddle for brunch and conversation. And then we headed back to the hotel to move everything in our room down to the function space before the afternoon concerts began.
(Errol in the songwriting contest.)
Sat in the back of the room and listened to all of fun entries in the Penguin Awards insta-filk contest. To enter you had to receive a list of words at registration on Friday and then use those words to write a song during the convention to perform in the Sunday competition. Filkers able to do that are braver souls than I am! Lots of entertaining entries, but I think I was most amused by Walter making stuffed penguins dance and fly during Gary McGath’s song :). It is rather scary and funny to see how completely Walter has been assimilated into filk culture in the last few years!
Results for the Peguin Awards came soon afterward and congratulations to Jen, Bill and Errol for taking prizes in the competition! Jen is in the photo about there accepting first place.
Before starting the Filk Hall of Fame concert, the Hall of Fame initiated a new tradition. Thanks to an idea and a generous donation by Victoria Borean, there is now a Filk Hall of Fame Inductees’ pin. All Filk Hall of Fame Inductees were invited up onto the stage to receive their pin from Vicky. And UT was greatly honoured to be among the newest inductees receiving our pins!
All of us hugged Vicky as we accepted our pin, but I think I like this photo of Dave and Vicky best:
(photo by me)
When I got home I wanted to find somewhere very safe to keep my Hall of Fame pin, so I’ve pinned it to the middle of a piece of hardanger I made last year and I have it hanging near my office computer.
Howard, Ellen and UT were the featured performers at the Hall of Fame concert this year and, as is tradition, we took turns performing during the concert or inviting other performers to come to the stage and perform at our request. Deb, Jodi and I chose to sing songs we hoped would be familiar to the audience so they would sing along with us as we performed. The songs we sang were “A Neurotic Love Song”, “Puppies Cooked In Brine”, “The Lady”, “Monday”, and “Starsoul”.
We pulled out props for the ever-popular "Neurotic Love Song" :). Just before Deb pulled out this prop we sang the line "When the series ended I cried showers/I thought it was the end of you and me/But now I can still talk to you for hours/As I caress the screen of my TV." (...and my iPad2 :))
A last minute addition to “The Lady” and “Starsoul” was Amy McNally on fiddle. Yay! Yay! Yay! We always ask Amy to perform with us when we are at conventions together, but being that this concert had to be kept secret we weren’t able to ask Amy to be involved. So when Amy approached us on Sunday requesting if maybe, possibly she could come on stage to accompany us on a few songs she already knew, we were thrilled and delighted. Thank you, Amy! (Amy for Best Performer!) And thank you to the sound crew who were so accommodating on that last-second addition.
Howard and Ellen also sang an excellent selection of songs and invited friends and members of their local filk communities up to sing with them. It was a wonderful atmosphere and an emotional afternoon.
(photo by Phil Mills)
And Jodi and I even managed to keep our voices until the end of the concert! And there was great rejoicing.
Again, keeping with tradition, the convention ended with the British and German filkers coming to the stage to lead us in “Sam’s Song”.
And then Deb, Jodi and I again were privileged to close FilKONtario with its theme song, “Home To FilKONtario”. For the first time, though, the FKO concom stayed on stage to sing with us and that was awesome and I hope it becomes tradition from here on out. The energy (and relief! :)) we could hear in their voices from another FKO well-done was a grand way to finish off the con.
I headed for home shortly after that, being that exhaustion and my lingering cold were starting to get the best of me. The last thing I heard as I left the concert room was GoH Barry Childs-Helton leading a rollicking filk jam on the other side of the room, just as he does at OVFF every year. I LOVE Barry’s filk jams.
Thanks again to the FilKONtario concom for a fabulous weekend. Thanks so much to the Filk Hall of Fame committee and filk nominators for welcoming us into the fold.
And next year’s Guest of Honour at FilKONtario is Meg Davis!!! Along with Julia Ecklar and Technical Difficulties, Meg was one of my absolute idols in my earliest days of filk. I’m really looking forward to hearing her perform after so many years. And the rest of you out there in the filk world? You’re not going to want to miss it!