NEFilk 21: Contata 6

Guest of Honor: Judi Miller

By Judi Miller

Judi Miller has been a long-time member of the filking community. She started life in fandom as a teenager back in the early 1980s, joining an Anne McCaffrey fan club, where she met filkers, and jumped in head first. One might say she grew up in fandom, and never left.

Judi is a special education teacher, working as an English teacher with troubled teens at a behavioral treatment facility. Some of her students have been deaf, and Judi uses ASL to communicate with them. In the filk circles, Judi started to sign along with the songs, and found that people really enjoyed watching just as much as she enjoyed performing. Bit by bit, Judi's performances crept onto the stage with more and more perfomers.

A Columbus, Ohio resident, the Ohio Valley Filk Festival is Judi's "home" convention. Each year for many years, Judi has been a fixture signing the Friday Night Pegasus concert, all the songs up for the filking community's awards. In 2006, Judi received a Pegasus award herself, for Best Performer.

Now, a favorite, time-honored tradition in filk is "How Can We Break Judi?" either by polyharmonics, sheer length (hello, Wild Mercy!), foreign languages (guten Tag, Lord Landless - um, Lord Bandless), or for typical, topical, patter (hello, Tom Smith, who holds the record for breaking her.) This seems fair, as performers should be warned that watching the signer can make them lose track of their own lyrics faster than Frank Hayes disease.

Recently, Judi has been expanding her filk in actually singing - and playing, including her grandfather's banjo, Burton. In the past two years, she has joined Douglas and Juliana McCorison in a trio called We're Not Koi.

[From the webmaster] Also, you can see several videos of Judi's amazing signing on YouTube.

Toastmaster: Tom Smith

By Tom Smith

Tom Smith has been singing for over a quarter-century, and no one's quite sure how to stop him. He has twenty albums, a stuffed bear who controls his life, and a few too many web pages (tomsmithonline.com, filkertom.livejournal.com, tomsmith.bandcamp.com, and filkertom on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter). Tom's most notable achievement is to have inexplicably befriended a whole lot of the best people on the planet, including an unusually high percentage of beautiful women. He is not moved to complain.

Listener Guest: Deb Wunder

By Marc Glasser

You have to listen to Deb. You can hear her clear across the room. This was a useful ability in her recent job at a New York City high school. It's also come in handy in other cat-herding situations, such as at S.C.A. (House Three Skulls) functions and when working security at several Dexcons and a Contata or two.

But she's the Listener Guest this time. So what does she listen to?

Well, in her previous secretarial jobs, she listened to a lot of bosses' orders. As a filthy pro published author, she's listened to a few editors (Mike Resnick, Esther Friesner, Cecilia Tan) who've told her to write stories for their anthologies. Lately she's listened to the siren call of the 'Net and blogged extensively on music, food, weight loss, fandom, personal finance, and how to achieve each one in spite of all the others. And for quite a few years, she's listened to me complain about how she never listens to me...

Mostly, though, she's listened to music, as much music as any of us, spanning more decades than either of us would like to admit, and more genres than most people can claim to appreciate.

As an adolescent in the 1960s, Deb listened to folk and rock 'n roll music, not to mention those vital influences on filk, Allan Sherman and Tom Lehrer. She listened to her share of classical music (Texaco Sunday Opera, anyone?) and show tunes with her mother. (She notes that her junior high school music teacher and Jon Anderson also helped her appreciate the classics.) Later she listened to rock of the progressive style while working as a roadie for an assortment of bands. More recently, her work at the aforementioned New York City high school exposed her to rather more current pop and hip-hop than many of us would care to hear, but that didn't stop her from listening; after all, even Sturgeon's Law concedes that 10% of anything is worthwhile. And of course, for a couple of decades now, she's been listening to filk. A lot of what she's listened to has stayed with her, as anyone who's played a game of Encore with her can attest. And some of it emerges again in her occasional contributions to the world of filk ("Wonderous Convention," "Fanac", "Woad" [to Phil Ochs' music for Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells"], our collaboration "On Broadband").

In between listening, she's been on the concoms of all the Contatas but one. And at many conventions, she's been the listener who's told me what great music went down in the filk room an hour after I went off to bed...but that's another complaint for her to listen to.

Interfilk: Lord Bandless/Pavlov's Duck

Written by Maja "Thesilée" Ilisch
edited by Christoph "Peredar" Rullich
refined, revamped and with finishing touches by Steve Macdonald

It's a little weird to start a story with the end, but weirdness has always been one of Lord Landless' trademarks. When Thesilée founded the band in 2000 with fellow singer songwriter Silva, they chose the catch phrase "MediEvil Music" - not because they didn't know how to spell, but because of the nature of many of their songs. Both cheerful and bitter, their signature songs feature the plague, dark mistresses, disasters and evil triumphant. The band grew into a quartet in 2005 as the partners of both women, Kjenjo and Peredar, were offered (tied up and forced at knifepoint) places on the stage.

When invited as Interfilk guests to Contata, it became obvious that Lord Landless would not last that much longer: Both couples had moved; and with half of Germany separating Lord from Landless, band life had grown difficult. The final curtain was drawn when Silva fell ill with vocal problems and the decision was made that Thesilée and Peredar would travel to Parsippany on their own. But no matter how many they are, they'll still bring along everything Lord Landless has been notorious for: The fun, the oddity, and the medi-evilness. (Yes, that is a word. Because I said so).

Thesilée, in real life, is a librarian and writer. Given the opportunity, she'll talk about her stories... and talk... and talk... Raised in the folk tradition by her parents, Thesilée was introduced to filk in 1999 by a friend. This friend gave her the membership for her very first filk con as a birthday present, and she has stuck with it ever since. She is a keen singer and guitar player and did most of the songwriting for Lord Landless. Also, she loves puns. So, you could say that this gift has kept on giving...

While Thesilée can be somewhat chatty (see previous paragraph, in case you forgot...), Peredar is the quiet one. A medical engineer by profession, he is following in the footsteps of the long tradition of geeks and scientists in filkdom since he was dragged to his first convention by Thesilée in 2003. Peredar plays most things that have keys, except for the accordion (and the keys in his pocket), and has learned to stay patient when Thesilée tells him to go "Diddly-daddly diddly-daddly klong klong klong", instead of writing down notes. He also likes to sing. Oh, and he puns, too. It is, after all, the highest form of humor. Both Thesilée and Peredar are avid role playing gamers and known for their sheer endless trivia. They live in beautiful Aachen; amidst centuries of history and new excitements around every corner.

And together, they are Lord Bandless. And Pavlov's Duck. And at Contata 2011. And they are never confused.