Tuesday, September 05, 2006
OUT OF THIS WORLD FILKING
The good music gods must be out and dancing around this time of year. Last Thursday was a better-than-better-than-average night at the Open Stage I run at Fiddler's Dream. Then, this past weekend I was at CopperCon, the local sci-fi convention, and I spent more than the typical amount of time in the filk (that's science fiction folk music for you non-skiffies) room.
The musician guest of honor this year was one Seanan McGuire. She is loud, she is unashamedly, unapologetically and entertainingly brash, she is talented, she is funny as hell, and she can sing like nobody's business.
Did I mention she's funny as hell?
Filk is kind of a weird genre. You can alienate a lot of people with it especially if you write songs about things that much of your audience neither knows or cares about. There are three basic ways to approach writing filk music: A) ignore the fact that most of the world (even 95% of the people at science fiction conventions) is avoiding you like the plague and write about what you want anyway (i.e.: Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, individual scenes from obscure Robert Heinlein novels that only you and Bob himself read), or b) Keep the subject matter SO general (i.e. Big Subjects: Vampires. Space Travel. Cats. Baseball. Pie.) that everybody can identify with it, or c) Master the art of writing about specific subjects in a way that the non-informed listener can come away with a meaning from the song and be entertained by it, even if they don't get the media reference. Ms McGuire is one of the people who's successfully mastered version C. She entertains the broadest group of listeners possible most of the time. In other words, when you hear Seanan's tunes you might not even realize you're listening to "filk" music, per se. She pulls you in and makes you listen.
The fact that she actually "entertains" when she performs (to the point of Striptease, at one point) is just icing on the cake. She must be a helluva lot of fun at parties.
Check this lady out if you have any kind of interest in sci-fi folk music.
------
Which is not to say that Ms. McGuire was the be-all and end-all of the amassed talent that showed up at CopperCon. My good pal and "filk wife" (as one friend has taken to calling her) Nancy Freeman played a nice show on Saturday night during halftime at the con masquerade contest. Not the easiest audience but Nancy did a nice job keeping them in their seats.
Chris Dickenson, the aforementioned coiner of the "filk wife" phrase, sang some very nice duets with a woman whose name I didn't get, pretty much off-the-cuff. And everybody else in the room, on both nights, was just ON.
Sunday night, the filk circle included one of the grande dames of filk music, the literally legendary Leslie Fish. The author of literally thousands of songs, she proved once again that you can ask her to play pretty much ANYTHING she's ever done, no matter how old, no matter how obscure, and she'll play it like she just played it yesterday. Leslie owns one of the most mellow-sounding twelve-string guitars I have ever heard. It's like BUTTAH.
Personally, I hardly write anything of a science-fiction vein, but my songs seem to fit into this whole melange pretty well.
------
This weekend I will be playing at the Mesa Women's Center, once again opening for farts even older than me: the incredible Violet Wing! Put on your 60s duds and dance the frug this Saturday at the Mesa Women's Center, 200 N. MacDonald. Doors open at 7, I open at 8, dressed like a f&%^in' hippie. There will be go-go girls, an oil/water light show, everything but the dope! $10 admission and worth every penny -- you'll see!
------
The preliminary schedule for the Prescott Folk Festival has me busy this year. On Saturday, October 7 I will be performing from 11:20 - 11:40 in a mini-concert and from 2-3:40 as part of a songwriters' circle. Both events will take place in the Sharlott Hall building. This turn of events will piss off my family to no end, since, while they like to go to Prescott for the weather, they can't STAND the Prescott Folk Festival and they pretty much exhaust walking around downtown Prescott in about an hour. But that's their burden to bear. I LIKE the PFF. A lot. And so will you. More info as it approaches.
TT
The good music gods must be out and dancing around this time of year. Last Thursday was a better-than-better-than-average night at the Open Stage I run at Fiddler's Dream. Then, this past weekend I was at CopperCon, the local sci-fi convention, and I spent more than the typical amount of time in the filk (that's science fiction folk music for you non-skiffies) room.
The musician guest of honor this year was one Seanan McGuire. She is loud, she is unashamedly, unapologetically and entertainingly brash, she is talented, she is funny as hell, and she can sing like nobody's business.
Did I mention she's funny as hell?
Filk is kind of a weird genre. You can alienate a lot of people with it especially if you write songs about things that much of your audience neither knows or cares about. There are three basic ways to approach writing filk music: A) ignore the fact that most of the world (even 95% of the people at science fiction conventions) is avoiding you like the plague and write about what you want anyway (i.e.: Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, individual scenes from obscure Robert Heinlein novels that only you and Bob himself read), or b) Keep the subject matter SO general (i.e. Big Subjects: Vampires. Space Travel. Cats. Baseball. Pie.) that everybody can identify with it, or c) Master the art of writing about specific subjects in a way that the non-informed listener can come away with a meaning from the song and be entertained by it, even if they don't get the media reference. Ms McGuire is one of the people who's successfully mastered version C. She entertains the broadest group of listeners possible most of the time. In other words, when you hear Seanan's tunes you might not even realize you're listening to "filk" music, per se. She pulls you in and makes you listen.
The fact that she actually "entertains" when she performs (to the point of Striptease, at one point) is just icing on the cake. She must be a helluva lot of fun at parties.
Check this lady out if you have any kind of interest in sci-fi folk music.
------
Which is not to say that Ms. McGuire was the be-all and end-all of the amassed talent that showed up at CopperCon. My good pal and "filk wife" (as one friend has taken to calling her) Nancy Freeman played a nice show on Saturday night during halftime at the con masquerade contest. Not the easiest audience but Nancy did a nice job keeping them in their seats.
Chris Dickenson, the aforementioned coiner of the "filk wife" phrase, sang some very nice duets with a woman whose name I didn't get, pretty much off-the-cuff. And everybody else in the room, on both nights, was just ON.
Sunday night, the filk circle included one of the grande dames of filk music, the literally legendary Leslie Fish. The author of literally thousands of songs, she proved once again that you can ask her to play pretty much ANYTHING she's ever done, no matter how old, no matter how obscure, and she'll play it like she just played it yesterday. Leslie owns one of the most mellow-sounding twelve-string guitars I have ever heard. It's like BUTTAH.
Personally, I hardly write anything of a science-fiction vein, but my songs seem to fit into this whole melange pretty well.
------
This weekend I will be playing at the Mesa Women's Center, once again opening for farts even older than me: the incredible Violet Wing! Put on your 60s duds and dance the frug this Saturday at the Mesa Women's Center, 200 N. MacDonald. Doors open at 7, I open at 8, dressed like a f&%^in' hippie. There will be go-go girls, an oil/water light show, everything but the dope! $10 admission and worth every penny -- you'll see!
------
The preliminary schedule for the Prescott Folk Festival has me busy this year. On Saturday, October 7 I will be performing from 11:20 - 11:40 in a mini-concert and from 2-3:40 as part of a songwriters' circle. Both events will take place in the Sharlott Hall building. This turn of events will piss off my family to no end, since, while they like to go to Prescott for the weather, they can't STAND the Prescott Folk Festival and they pretty much exhaust walking around downtown Prescott in about an hour. But that's their burden to bear. I LIKE the PFF. A lot. And so will you. More info as it approaches.
TT
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