{"id":665,"date":"2011-09-15T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=665"},"modified":"2011-09-15T20:32:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T20:32:00","slug":"dragoncon-2011-pictures-part-2-filk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/dragoncon-2011-pictures-part-2-filk\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragon*Con 2011 Pictures, Part 2: Filk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(In case you missed them: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/forums\/entry.php?661-Dragon*Con-2011-Pictures-Part-1-My-Friends\">Dragon*Con Pictures, Part 1: My Friends<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\nThis year I&#8217;ve discovered that I <em>really<\/em> enjoy filk (genre-related folk music) and filking (playing and singing same). Part of that is the warm reception &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NG7-Jw03Bgg\">The Monster Hunter Ballad<\/a>&#8221; has received over the last few months, and part of it is an immense sense of joy at doing something I never thought I could: writing and performing original music.<\/p>\n<p>How did I get into this filking thing? It was an overly long journey:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Way back in the mid-90s I penned Titan-rocket-program-related lyrics to a number of different Beatles tunes.* So far as I know they&#8217;ve all been lost, and probably just as well. But I didn&#8217;t play an instrument, so I never considered the possibility of writing an original Titan tune.<\/li>\n<li>In 2000 I got stationed overseas, where during my off hours I wrote a novel** and learned a few chords on the guitar. For my farewell dinner at Thule Air Base I wrote &#8220;Home on the Tundra&#8221; (to the tune of &#8220;Home on the Range&#8221;). As proof, you can look at the last page of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zianet.com\/tmorris\/thuletimes1sep2001.pdf\">the September 2001 issue of the Thule Times<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>In 2008 I wrote the first of what has become an annual series of songs for the Industrial Extension Service: &#8220;The I-E-S Song.&#8221; It hasn&#8217;t made it onto YouTube yet, but there&#8217;s still hope &#8230; though you can watch the video montage for the 2009 song, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=WUYXi8HY0qk\">The Economic Recovery Blues<\/a>.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>At MarsCon this January I got the idea for a Dungeons-&#038;-Dragons-based song, which eventually became &#8220;Saving Throws&#8221; (sung to the tune of &#8220;Edelweiss&#8221;). And somewhere along the line I got the idea for the Monster Hunter song, which I debuted at StellarCon in March.<\/li>\n<li>And at ConCarolinas this June I actually took part in a &#8220;Filk Circle&#8221; for the first time, and had a great time &#8212; which naturally led me to look up the filk track at Dragon*Con.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nI played a few songs on Friday night, and went back on Saturday night to listen even though I had a headache. Then I was back again to play on Sunday night &#8212; where I took pictures!<\/p>\n<p>First, the director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dragonconfilk.com\/\">Filk Track<\/a>, Robby Hilliard:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pix\/blog\/Filk-Robby.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(Dragon*Con Filk Track head honcho, Robby Hilliard.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\nThat guitar he&#8217;s playing looks awfully familiar. (I actually loaned my guitar out a couple of times.) Robby did a great job organizing the track, and his whole staff was very friendly.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/tlgtunes.com\/\">Alex Boyd<\/a>, who on Sunday night set himself the challenge of playing only original filk that he had made up that day. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pix\/blog\/Filk-Alex.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(Alex Boyd.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\nOne of the songs he did was, &#8220;Don&#8217;t Bring Your Guitar to Dragon*Con.&#8221; Given the difficulty of maneuvering through the crowds, he had a point. I bought one of his CDs.<\/p>\n<p>And here&#8217;s Tally Deushane, singing &#8220;The Dragon*Con Song&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pix\/blog\/Filk-Tally.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(Tally Deushane.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\nTally got very tired of singing &#8220;The Dragon*Con Song&#8221; by Sunday night; she probably sang it a dozen times over the course of the weekend. After Dragon*Con she posted on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TallyDeushaneLive2TiVo\">her Facebook fan page<\/a> that she had been named one of Glamour Magazine&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.glamour.com\/magazine\/2011\/09\/top-10-college-women-the-entertainer\">Top 10 College Women of 2011<\/a>.&#8221; If I&#8217;d known we had a celebrity in our midst, I would&#8217;ve asked her to autograph her CD when I bought it.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, guitars and ukuleles were not the only instruments to be found in the filk circle:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pix\/blog\/Filk-Accordion.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>(The anonymous accordion player who wowed us all on Sunday night.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\nIn summary, a splendid time was had by all.<\/p>\n<p>And meanwhile I keep coming up with new song ideas, which is both a little scary and (to me, at least) a little cool. <\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n*I included some of this history in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/forums\/entry.php?387-Economic-Recovery-Blues\">a previous blog post<\/a>. <br \/>\n**It was okay, not great. 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missed them: Dragon*Con Pictures, Part 1: My Friends.) This year I&#8217;ve discovered that I really enjoy filk (genre-related folk music) and filking (playing and singing same). Part of that is the warm reception &#8220;The Monster Hunter Ballad&#8221; has received over the last few months, and part of \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/dragoncon-2011-pictures-part-2-filk\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[57,164,21,75],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-convention","tag-fantasy","tag-music","tag-thule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}