Urban Tapestry

Allison and Jodi came downtown last night for an Urban Tapestry practice. We ran through our concert set for Conchord as well as practising some other songs we might do in open filk that we haven't played in a while.

We've accumulated so many songs in our binders that we've decided to bring a subset to Conchord, leaving behind songs we wrote and sang back nine years ago that we will likely never sing again, for example, or songs that we don't like well enough to keep practising. I estimate that we've learned at least 200 songs over the years we've been together, maybe more. It's reached the point where it's physically impossible to bring all our music to conventions, or at least without risking serious physical injury. :-)

We'll be going into the recording studio on Monday to add some flute and vocals to Chris Conway's new CD, on his "Alien Jellyfish" song. Urban Tapestry covers this song pretty frequently because it's fun to do and gets a great audience response. Chris (who writes as "christo" in Blatherchat) is an incredibly talented songwriter and musician, and one of the only filkers I know who makes a living as a full-time musician. He's played with Peter Tork (ex-Monkee!) and members of Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention. You can listen to some of his music on his site.

Chris Conway is doing the mastering and most of the mixing for our next CD, which will be a selection of live recordings from various concerts we've done over the years. Chris Croughton helped with the initial mixing process and also did the recording for our UK concert. We're pretty excited about this project, which will be our first new product since Myths and Urban Legends in 1997. To avoid the high-stress time crunch of last time, we've avoided committing to an official release date for this CD. It'll be ready when it's ready. :-)

Both Chris's are in the UK; Jodi's been exchanging MP3s with both of them through e-mail, then working with Allison and me for feedback and comments. I love the Internet.

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Today's Blatherpics:

Annie and Sara watching "Shrek" on my laptop at the cottage during some downtime.