It's not exactly a con report...

[catsittingstill]

Last night, late, I got back from Dave Alway's Memorial Fen and Filk. I sat down to write a few words about it this morning and it got long.

Our story begins Thursday afternoon, when I saw patoadam's post of his new song about Dave. I thought it was really great, and since I knew Patoadam probably wasn't going to make it to the Fen and Filk, I offered to sing it there for him if he could get me the melody by 10 am Friday (leaving a little padding for my actual scheduled leaving time, because I always take longer getting ready than I think I will).

Friday morning I opened my e-mail and found words, chords, midi and Finale files for After The Con (lyrics and chords are on patoadam's livejournal). A little fiddling later I had fed the midi file into garage band and done a little cutting and pasting to have verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, because I would be learning it while driving the car and wouldn't be able to spare the processor power to do much more than glance at the lyrics and hum along (or attempt harmonies) with the melody. From Garage Band I exported to iTunes and downloaded to my little mp3 player-recorder; my mainstay for jobs like this.

Friday morning I also packed up clothes, including a sober navy dress for the service, in case it was formal, mando (just one instrument as the circle would be crowded) plus picks, and capo (turned out to be useful), music stand (the circle was so crowded I ended up not using this because there were music stands to spare for borrowing), music book, mp3 player-recorder, power cord for same, camera, extra battery for same, mini tripod (not sure what I was thinking on this one; it never came out of the bag), food in the foodbag, toiletries, oh, yes, respectable shoes to go with the dress, computer (in case I wanted to work out harmonies with braider and write them down in Finale—it could happen). And bedding, since I'd be staying one night on the floor at Glimmerglass. At the last minute (he judges these things to a nicety) the dratted mimmoth crawled into my pocket; by the time I would find him, it was too late to turn back.

Only fifteen minutes late, I hit the road. I drove up to Braider's house, learned (more or less) After The Con on the way, and Braider kindly put me up for the night. We played through a few songs, and realized that James Keelaghan's Everyone Dies might be a good song for this Fen and Filk, and Braider obtained the words from the Internet, and I worked out the chords, and Braider worked out a harmony. We played mando and bouzouki together a little. I ran various songs past Braider and considered a few tweaks. Braider ran an Irish song about a musician who died (I think it was called Peter's Song past me and I improvised a bit of a harmony. A grand night was had by all until we looked up how far we had to go to get to Kalamazoo (well, Otsego, really) and said, "Gracious" (I'm paraphrasing here) "We have to get up at 6:30am; we'd better go to sleep soon!"

Up at the crack of birdsong, we threw our stuff together and hit the road. On the way up we talked of many things, sang a bit—I tried to play the mandolin and run through After The Con again. It has four chords I didn't know on the mandolin. I worked them out from first principles, but I probably don't use the versions most mandolinists do. And I figured out on Sunday that one of them sounds funny because I worked it out wrong and was playing the 9th rather than the 7th. Oops. It went by fast enough that it probably didn't matter. The mimmoth had much to say, most of which is not repeatable in a public journal (he gets pretty mouthy when there's someone else around, because he knows I don't dare wring his neck with a witness.)

We missed our turn in Otsego, drove through the town and out the other side, turned around and asked directions, and pulled up at the correct street (couldn't park in front of the house; there must have been 20 cars there already) with about half an hour to spare. We signed in, rang the gong, found a place to change into our nice clothes and were decorously in place when the ceremony started. I left the mimmoth in the car, knowing there was no hope he could behave himself through even the memorial ceremony, let alone a whole circle to follow.

I had no idea (well, after reading the livejournal posts I had some idea) of how many lives Dave's influence had run through. Both family and friends spoke of his many kindnesses, and his regard for childhood as a time of joy and learning. I had realized from talking to peteralway that Dave had kept his filk life and his family very compartmentalized and discrete from each other, as was his right. (I mean, I love my family, but they're not very interested in filk so I don't make any effort to keep them up to date on that part of my life.) His sister and several of his brothers spoke about not knowing about Dave's connection to the filk community. Dave's brother bigbumble also explained about being red-green colorblind and expressed a very interesting analogy. Apparently for him and Dave, red was a color that didn't exist. It looked roughly like a very dark green, almost black. Orange only kind of exists. When you live in a world where other people constantly are trying to draw your attention to things you can't see (or can barely see), it becomes easy to believe in fairies and other invisible things. Walter, another of Dave's brothers, sang us a song (part of it was "a tall ship, and a star to steer her by," and Patoadam and Occams_pyramid have identified it as Sea Fever by John Masefield). By a few lines in we were humming along and humming harmonies. I hope it was okay with the family; it seemed very right and moving to me at the time. Bigbumble commented that it was the only memorial service he'd ever been to where the audience harmonized with the speaker. Peteralway finished out the main ceremony by leading us all in Come By The Hills, one of Dave's favorite songs.

The main ceremony over, we moved the chairs to a long oval around the walls of what I was already thinking of as the Great Hall. (Aside: I really like Glimmerglass House. Among other things, it's tall enough. The great hall has a ceiling so high there's no chance of me putting a hand into the ceiling fan with a careless stretch. The counters in the kitchen are high enough that I don't have to bend over to use them. The showerhead in the bathroom is higher than my head. I can't express how unusual this is. I would love to have a house like that someday, even ignoring the Great Hall, which is a wonderful place for filking).

Our fearless leader Susan distributed playing cards for an unusual form of Bardic—we went by card order instead of by where we sat in the circle. Susan was quite good at keeping things moving along briskly, but there were a lot of filkers who had come to pay their respects to Dave, or to attend a Glimmerglass filk while there was still a chance, so it took about four hours to get around the circle. When my turn came, I'd meant to do Remembering Dave but realized that the mood was low and needed lifting. The audience seemed to think so too, so I fell back on Everyone Dies with Braider assisting with bouzouki and vocal harmony. Jan also kindly requested I Meant to Do That which I had fund doing, and which people seemed to enjoy.

After the first round we had a break for pizza. Then we assembled again and members of the Alway family performed for us. Peteralway performed on prosthetic piano (I believe this was when he recruited shadowriderhope to play saxophone with it, which was great), Dave's niece (an engineer and a belly dancer) performed a marvelous dance and invited other dancers in the audience to join her, to much applause, and Dave's nephew played prosthetic piano also—a modern-sounding piece that I didn't recognize, but my ignorance of music should not be underestimated. I'm not sure I'm remembering all the family members who performed—I apologize for any I may have misremembered or overlooked.

Then cards were distributed for the second round of filking; card swapping was encouraged to allow those who had to leave before midnight to perform before they had to go. The second round (I did After The Con, which got a very warm reception, and by Peteralway's request, Remembering Dave) finished at about 11:30, and nearly everybody cleared out, which was okay, because I'd gotten up early that morning and was ready to inflate my aerobed, pull out my sleeping bag and go to bed.

Songs that particularly struck me during the evening—mrgoodwraith wrote a song—I remember that the verses all ended with "Always"—a play on Dave's last name, of course. I'm pretty sure I have it recorded, and it seems to be posted on his lj. sazettel, an author who spoke movingly of Dave's encouragement during the early stages of her career, sang a hysterical song which mbumby identifies as Orange Cocoa Cake—a recipe for cake given over the phone and interspersed with interjections to the speaker's children. I nearly burst myself trying to hold in the laughter long enough to hear it all. Several songs that Dave liked to perform were handed around as singalongs; besides the one that finished out the memorial service itself there was one that started each round of the circle (Peteralway reminds me they were A New Irish Drinking Song for the first round and The Locktender's Lament for the second), plus a traditional song (The Parting Glass) that finished the second round of the circle. My little mp3 recorder pretty much ran out of juice during the evening, but I happened to be sitting next to a plug-in, so I got most of the performances. I haven't yet listened to them to see how they came out, and I spent the first 3/4 of the evening recording in .wav by mistake (the files are 10 times as big as mp3s) so I'm not entirely sure Garage Band will be able to handle them (size-wise; I know it can handle the format). But cross fingers, hopefully I'll have them all. Someone (I think it was Art) commented that this might be his last chance to perform at Glimmerglass, and he'd spent some time thinking about a piece that was sufficiently cool to live up to the occasion; that made me realize how seriously people were taking this.

In the messing-around-getting-ready for bed stage I got to hear Mrgoodwraith do his parody of Stray Dog Man, which was a lot of fun. Glimmerglass house ended up fully occupied, but not uncomfortably full; there were only 3 of us sleeping on the floor in the Great Hall.

Morning came too early, but it was worth getting up to hang out with the small group of filkers grazing on the leftover goodies from the day before. I got the chance to really meet Robin, and her venerable Martin mandolin, and her husband (Alex? Alan? I think Alex) and hear his concertina, which is a very cool instrument that I don't get to hear very often in filk. I tried to play along on a couple of sea chanteys, but I'm afraid I'm not very good at playing along yet. I also tried to play along with Peteralway and Braider while they were noodling on dulcimer and bouzouki (before? After? The morning blurs in my mind) and did, I think, a slightly less suboptimal job, though the fact that I didn't know the tune meant I couldn't always predict what chord we were heading for, and made a few flubs. Slowly we packed up, drawn away frequently into conversation and music, and eventually started taking things out to the car. At which point the mimmoth snuck into the house. Ozymandyas the mimmoth had been stuck in the car all day and all the freezing night, and he was Upset. He and Peter pounded out angry mimmoth songs in ominous organ music for some time before he calmed down.

Eventually we had to get on the road. I was sad to tear myself away from Glimmerglass, and from the filkers there, but we'd lost an hour because of the time change, and I had a long way to go. Ozymandyas was still mad, and promised to poop in every shoe we owned, but got distracted trying to open a bottle of diet mountain dew by himself (with an eye to spilling it all over the seats, I think.) That didn't work out (it takes a fully trained team of mammoths to open pop bottles—don't ask me how I know), but by then he'd forgotten about the shoes. On the way back Braider suggested that if I wanted to get better at playing along I should practice arpeggiating various chords and playing songs by ear in several keys. I'm going to do that and see if it helps.



One thing that struck me about this event was that it seemed to me it was an opportunity to stitch the two halves of Dave's life, family and filking, together. The filkers present certainly gave a good demonstration of what filking is like, and what performing for a filk circle is like, to any of Dave's family who might be interested. I don't know if anything will come of it, but that's okay. It is enough that it happened, and I was glad to be part of it, and grateful for the opportunity that Dave's family gave us to join in remembering him.

Comments

[allisona.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for this wonderful retelling of the day.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) You're very welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed reading about it. It was a wonderful day, and I'm very glad I could go.

[patoadam]

Thanks for singing "After the Con"! I'm sorry you had to do extra work to get ready to learn it, I should have thought of putting all the verses in.

I'm glad you got "Remembering Dave" in. I would have felt bad if you had been unable to sing that because of me.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) I figured I'd probably get to do both, and it turned out to be no problem.

Don't worry about "After the Con"--you had enough to do just getting all the melody entered. Putting in the repeats with Garage Band was a matter of a few minutes of fiddling with it--no biggie. (I like Garage Band--for a free program, it does a lot). And if I hadn't been so pressed for time I had to learn and drive at the same time it would have been no problem to just leave it the way it was.

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realized you'd not done "Everyone Dies" before.

Orange Cocoa Cake by Lou & Peter Berryman.

Lyrics here. (http://members.aol.com/berrymanp/alyrics/orange.html)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) Thanks. No, that was my first time to perform it in public. I've noodled through it a few times at home, though not recently. I just happened to think of it, because _After the Con_ reminds me of it a little.

Orange Cocoa Cake by Lou & Peter Berryman. Thanks. I'll try and incorporate this in the event report.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

The first time I heard James K. sing Everyone Dies was at a concert in Portland about eight to ten years ago. He said it was inspired by a question from his nephew after a funeral.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Wrong song. I was thinking of "Who Dies?"

[occams_pyramid]

Another of Dave's brothers sang us a song (part of it was "a tall ship, and a star to steer her by," but I don't remember the name of it).

Possibly John Masefield's "Sea Fever"?
http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/MasefieldSeaFever.htm

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Possibly John Masefield's "Sea Fever"?
Thanks. Yes, both you and Alan Thiesen (in e-mail) identified this song for me. I'll try and incorporate it into the event report. :-)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Thank you for coming, thanks for letting me drag you into a few extra minutes of musicmaking in Glimmerglass House, and thanks for writing it up in vivid detail.

I don't know if anything will come of it, but that's okay.

I don't think you'll ever see OVFF stormed by an army of Always, but My brother Dan mentioned that he wanted to encourage the kids in his son's Boy Scout troop to sing around the campfire. I gave him Dave's copy of Rise up Singing to use with them. We tested it out by singing "Rackabye Sweet Baby James" with uke accompaniment. He said he'd like to find a selection of songs in it to photocopy and take to the next camp-out.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thank you, and your family, for letting us have this gathering to honor and remember Dave!

I'm very pleased to hear that Dan is thinking about using songs from _Rise Up Singing_ at Boy Scout campouts. Singing around the campfire is one of my treasured memories from the few camps I've been to (my family went camping, but I didn't do the troop thing very often.)

[mdlbear]

If you play guitar, the easy way to derive mandolin chords is to take the low four strings of a guitar chord (EADG) and flip them upside down (GDAE).

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this. I had actually heard it before. But there are plenty of standard guitar chords where one just doesn't play the lowest string(s) (D, A, easy F, etc), which wouldn't work as well on mando.

I just ended up working them out from first principles. For instance I needed a D7, which is a D with a Cnatural in it; I already know D (G fretted 2 up makes A, open D open A, E fretted 2 up makes Fsharp), so if I add a C, say by fretting A 3 up, I have a D7. That kind of thing. But I can't do that on the fly, so I had to think it out beforehand and draw on the paper.

[mdlbear]

There are several chords, like D and F, where I fret the bottom string with my thumb. On mando you mostly end up using the barre chord patterns, which become a lot easier.

Somewhere in my vast collection of junk, the notebook where I worked out mandolin chords has been languishing for over three decades. I think I remember running across it back in the 1980's.

How I kept up with Tempest's Lief Sorbye at a Dublin Irish Festival jam

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

There's a little book from Mel Bay that I wish I had whipped out of my mando case to show you. It's the Music Pocketbook, Mandolin version, with Chords/Notes/Tablature/Strums/Solos, and it incorporates the greatest number of open strings in the chords it presents.

Of course, this makes it anathema to the Bluegrass musicians that are probably thick on the ground in your neck of the woods. They prefer the chord shapes with all four courses fretted. Besides making a moveable shape that can move up and down the fretboard, it facilitates using the mando in place of a drum.

Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass Music, played the mandolin. When he wasn't doing solo runs of notes, he would "chop:" strum the closed chord, then lift the fingers to stop the sound. This gave a percussion effect that the rest of the limited bluegrass instrument spectrum couldn't do.

My copy of the book is old enough to be 95 cents. Here is the link to the current product:

http://www.melbay.com/product.asp?ProductID=93703&Heading=Mandolin%3A+Tunebooks&category=M22&catID=111&head1=&head2=Mandolin&sub=1&sub1=&mode=browse

I haven't had a chance to scope out the $5 Deluxe version(s), but the sample showed the same chordshapes as the one I have.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* that's what a memorial should be like. Story and song and meeting of minds and dratted mimmoths to lighten the mood. Doing them across a time change is suboptimal... but that's Dubya's fault.

Well written, too. Just glad the mimmoth didn't see fit to attack the keyboard... :)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

The mimmoth actually did attack the keyboard--in Church Organ mode with the volume cranked up all the way.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

No, her keyboard, not yours. :)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Which was noisy, but better than the guilt trip he's trying now. ;-)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I thought too. I'd be happy to think I would have a memorial like that.

I didn't let the mimmoth anywhere near the computer keyboard. Maybe by next week he'll have forgotten about it.

He has taken to trying to make me feel guilty by staring at me, weeping big, slow mimmoth tears, and wiping them away ostentatously with his ears.

It's working.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Another of Dave's brothers sang us a song (part of it was "a tall ship, and a star to steer her by," but I don't remember the name of it).

The brother was Walter--my youngest brother--three years older than me.

By a few lines in we were humming along and humming harmonies. I hope it was okay with the family; it seemed very right and moving to me at the time.

I was quite impressed.

peteralway performed on prosthetic piano (I believe this was when he recruited shadowriderhope to play saxophone with it, which was great)

You are correct. She is one fine musician.

Sarah, an author who spoke movingly of Dave's encouragement during the early stages of her career, sang a hysterical song called Orange Chocolate Cake or something like that

She's sazettel. I also noticed that she's nearly as good a belly dancer as my niece.

Several songs that Dave liked to perform were handed around as singalongs

They were "Come by the Hills" at the end of the formal part, "A New Irish Drinking Song" at the start of the first circle, and "Locktender's Lament" at the start of the second circle. "A Health to the Company" ended the second circle.

the fact that I didn't know the tune meant I couldn't always predict what chord we were heading for

When I was leading, I didn't even know what tune I was playing. It's my favorite form of music making.

On the way back Braider suggested that if I wanted to get better at playing along I should practice arpeggiating various chords and playing songs by ear in several keys.

Or try playing along with "A Prairie Home Companion."

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Oooh, belly dancer? Gotta hook her up with jenkitty... of course, how is a problem. Counterpoint, maybe?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) Well, I'm not sure she'll be interested in Cons in general. But maybe.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

he brother was Walter--my youngest brother--three years older than me.

I did actually pick up most of the sibling's names; I just wasn't sure they/you would be comfortable with having them mentioned on the Internet. I notice that a lot of lj-ers don't give "real names" when they talk about people, but just abbreviate to a first initial or something.

Thanks for giving Shadowriderhope and Sazettel's correct lj handles, and the correct orders and names of the songs. Now that I know them, I'll put them in my event report.

Playing along with recorded/radio music is probably a good idea; I just find starting out full speed like that a little intimidating. :-)

[mdlbear]

BTW, would you mind if I put a few of your songs from cflute and tibicina's concert at Consonance up on my website? They'd be in this directory along with the Tres Gique (me, Callie, and Joyce Uggla) concert, which followed it in the program.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all. I'd like to hear them myself, as a matter of fact :-) I'm flattered that people like them enough to perform them, and wouldn't dream of standing in the way if you want to share them.

[mdlbear]

Thanks! They're up now, on this page.