Riverfolk!

[beige_alert]

chirosinger and chasophonic of Riverfolk were at alymid‘s in Waukegan on Saturday for a house concert. Pretty much everybody showed up to hear them...I found a fairly comfortable spot to sit on the stairs in back by Angel and Deirdre. I had a fantastic time, and it looks like everyone else did, too. I have photos up on Flickr.

Becca and Chas led a few songs that they insisted were official singalongs, as opposed to the other songs where everyone just happened to know the words. We all know the words for a lot of them. Steve Macdonald added some spectacular kazoo work on one, sort of stunning Becca. Chas and Becca are just tons of fun, and I don’t get to see them often enough. As has been observed before, if we could somehow get Becca In A Bottle, our energy problems would be over.

We had a nice filk circle after the concert. billroper and daisy_knotwise sang their two popular duets, “My Husband, the Filker” and “Apology,” and Bill sang a few of his newer ones. There were a few songs about cats, both as food and as roadkill, and also a more positive song. Steve Macdonald displayed impressive guitar skill and his twisted sense of humor. Given the size of the crowd I brought just my flute up from the basement, and when my turn came I asked if people would like Celtic or Baroque. jerusha said “go for baroque,” adding, “someone had to say that.” I don’t think my run through Bach’s Fugue in G minor was all that great, but people seemed to like it. Becca and Steve both had nice things to say about it. We got Ex Libris from Eloise. Some great autoharp from Deirdre. Eric Coleman being Eric (“How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away”).

As usual, it was just great to see everybody. It is wonderful to have so many friends. Sometimes these get-togethers remind me of how things have changed in my life---Becca hugged me more times than someone who was at the time my best and closest friend did over the course of several years in high school and college.

Comments

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you had a good time a the show. We had a blast playing for you all. It was really good to see you and Joyce. I loved your flute playing in the song circle. Your photos are really fun. I love that you caught Eloise and me looking rather astonished at Chas prior to singing "Pale Colours". It's funny but Tom Jeffers has made the very same comment to me on bottling my energy too (Becca in a Bottle). I look forward to seeing you again soon. FKO? DucKon?

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

I'm delighted by how well the flute is received. The back of a dimly lit room is not ideal for photography, but the timing was good on a few of them. I think Art Warneke is the person I've heard suggest Becca in a Bottle. We'll be at DucKon, and one of these years I want to go to FKO, but it isn't going to be this year.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

The back of a dimly lit room is not ideal for photography

Word up, brother. Sigh. Most of mine are uck. If I used my zoom at ALL it became too dim to distinguish anything.

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

I tried a bunch in the ambient light, but never got the cool artistic kind of motion blur, just the blur kind. The wimpy on-camera flash wasn't quite up to the task at full range and I wasn't even trying to mess with my external flash and flaky optical trigger. Oh, and red-eye from hell. I retouched (clumsily) some of the photos of Becca so that she didn't have quite the daemon from hell look. I never used the flash all that much with the SLR, and when I did I usually had it held far from the lens, so the on-camera flash snuggled cozily right up next to the lens thing is kind of a new thing for me.