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FilkContinental 2001

Where: Castle/Youth Hostel Freusberg, near Cologne, Germany
When: September 29-October 1, 2001

Well, we finally got our shot at being Guests of Honor: FilkContinental, Germany's (and continental Europe's) own filk convention. We were ecstatic to be asked, and very surprised, since our group has never been in Europe before. But scouts from the concom had heard us at FilkOntario and Consonance, and decided to invite us. Unfortunately, due to last-minute personal obligations, as well as the added stress in air travel since the September 11th disaster, Alisa and Luis had to cancel at the last minute. Our German hosts and audience were very understanding, though, and we pulled in as many talented folk a we could get our hands on to help fill in the gaps during our concerts. {Taunya: And let me tell you, it took a lot of people to make up for Alisa and Luis!}

(Just so you know, Taunya and I had met Katy, Ju, and Rika at FilKONtario 3 and 4 years ago, and I had met Anke, Kirstin, and Volker at Consonance two years ago. All the other German filkers were new to us. But Kirstin and Volker are filk dealers, and had sold a number of our CDs in Germany, so some of the audience were not strangers to our material.)

Set 1
Duration: 1 hour
Set List:
My Jalapeño Man
Where the Magic is Real
Homecoming
Fly Freedom
Lucky Man (w/ Steve Macdonald)
Stop Singing Ose
Caledonia
Diamonds & Rust
Artificial Means
StarCrossed
It Ain't Easy (Das Ist Blöde)
Maple Tree
Urban Legends (w/ Katy Dröge, Rika Körte, & Steve)
(Encores:)
Volcano
Why Am I Painting the Livingroom?

Set 2
Duration: 1 hour
Set List:
In & Out
$1.50 Movies
Nuts
Persian Rose (w/ Steve & Rika)
Dark Man (w/ Katy, Rika, & Juliane Honisch)
Jean's Odyssey (w/ Ju on penny whistle,
Rika on bohdran, & Katy on accordian[!])
'Tain't Neither (w/ Steve)
Joyride
Skin
Sir Brian (Ritter Gandolf) (w/ Katy & Franklin)
Takin' a Walk
Born Out of Time (w/ Steve)
Danger Man (w/ Steve and The Dangerettes)
(Encore:)
Ramblin' Time (w/ Steve)

Taunya and I arrived in Frankfurt airport at about 9:30 PM. Kerstin "Katy" Dröge & Juliane "Ju" Honisch met us right outside of customs. There was an immense feeling of "Wow! We're actually here! In Germany, Guests of Honor at FilkContinental!" So we all jumped up and down and hugged for a while to celebrate this, then headed to Katy's car to drive back to her boyfriend Robert's house for the night (in a small town near Frankfurt with a long name that I forget). Anke Teschke was already there, preparing the badges for the con. The badges were shaped like jigsaw puzzle pieces, in honor of Puzzlebox's album design. Also, they were making a jigsaw puzzle version of the logo picture from Steve Macdonald's "WorlDream" project. The pieces were to be used as poker chips for a "poker chip bardic" circle, with the pieces being re-assembled during the circle for sale at the auction.

So we chatted, laminated, and clipped into the night (well, I didn't personally cut things out; I don't think they trusted me to do as good a job as Taunya). We also sang a song or two. Then, with Taunya and I hoping that jet-lag would be kind to us, we all went to bed. (And yes, the patron saint of intercontinental flight was fairly kind.) By the time I awoke on Thursday morning, Katy was on her way back to the airport, to pick up Steve Macdonald. They returned, we all ate, and we ran through several songs with Steve (he had agreed, at the last minute, to help us fill some of the gaps left by Alisa). We also met Franklin (Frank Gunkelmann), who had shown up that morning with his minivan, to help us get all our people and luggage to Castle Freusberg, where the con was being held (3-4 hours' drive away). Franklin was the convention's Master of Ceremonies. We hadn't met him previously, but had communicated in e-mail. It quickly became evident that Franklin is, well, a dedicated punster. He also saved our bacon so many times during the con that Puzzlebox owes him big-time. But more of that later.

Taunya and I rode up to the castle in Franklin's car, along with Anke, and of course Franklin at the wheel. We initiated the "phrase of the day" with "Vo ist die Tanksteller?" ("Where is the gas station?") During the ride, I had a lot of fun bonding with Anke over musical skills: seems we share a common trouble with improvising vocal harmonies, contributing to a shared frustration with having nothing to contribute in a "jam" situation. Right on, Anke-sister! We reach! {Taunya: Boring old Taunya slept through most of the drive. ;) }

The drive included a graphic demonstration of the "Stau" ("Stall") signs, used to indicate a traffic jam. Franklin and Anke pointed out the pointlessness of these signs: if you can see the sign, you're on the autobahn, and have probably already realized there's a traffic jam. We all had a laugh at the German traffic department's expense.

Eventually, we came to Castle Freusberg. No doubt about it: this was a castle. Like most castles, it was located at the top of a tall hill. It was also surrounded by a moat (less than full) and a high, thick wall. We walked through the gate, past a beautiful view of the hills, valleys, and village below, and up to the castle proper. The inside had mostly been modernized: while the outside was made of naked stone, the interior walls were mostly plaster and brick. They had also installed electricity and running water, of course. Some of the stairways were still the original, narrow, tightly-coiled circular stairs, though, and a few other places were deliberately left in their original state, to show how the place used to look and work. There was no missing the fact that castles were all about military defense: the original walls were 5 or 6 feet thick.

We hauled our stuff into the castle, and met some of the early arrivals: Rika Körte (a German transplanted to England, whom we'd met at FKO a couple of years ago) and her S.O. Dave (British, in charge of taping the event), Keris (British filker who was running their PA equipment), Valerie Housden (British), and I believe Ju reappeared at this point, as well.

This was where I had my first mishap. Actually, I'd made my blunder a couple of hours earlier, but this is when I realized it: my wallet (which I usually carry in a back pocket of my pants) had become uncomfortable on the long ride up, so I'd put it on the seat between my legs. At one point, in Siegen, several miles short of the castle, we'd stopped for a minute to get our bearings, and Taunya asked me to get a picture of the beautiful old church across the street. You've probably guessed what left the car with me and failed to re-board: my wallet. I searched the car, and Franklin reminded me of my very brief extra-vehicular jaunt. Gah!! So he drove me back down to town (while the rest of the con-folk patiently ignored their hunger and waited for us). We had no trouble finding the spot (other than the half-hour drive), and naturally my wallet wasn't there. The local police station was closed, so we went back to the castle. Franklin called the police station in the next town down the road, which was open all night, and yahoo!! They had my wallet!

Dinner tasted much better, knowing I'd get my wallet back in the morning. We went to a Thai restaurant. Kirstin and Volker joined us there, and with a major surprise: Kathy Mar. Watching Katy's face when Kathy walked in was probably worth the whole trip, all by itself. :{)} She smiled and waved hello, then stopped and just looked blank for several seconds as she realized something was out of place, and her sleep-deprived brain tried to put the pieces together. Then she exploded with a shriek and a big smile and went running over to hug Kathy. Apparently, Kathy had been conspiring with Kirstin and Volker for months to surprise Katy, and I can attest that it definitely worked. I also got to meet Nicholas, Kirstin and Volker's son, who is just a week or two younger than my twins (Casey & Riley). Nicholas cried when I first said hello to him, but I guess it was just all the noise and excitement of the greetings going on. I don't think I heard him cry the whole rest of the weekend. What a great baby. He was sort of my surrogate son, so that I didn't miss my boys quite so much.

Attendee-wise, there was something of a dearth of British filkers (due largely to a filk baby boom in England). In fact, I suspect this FilkContinental will end up being unique, in that-between us, Steve on his WorlDream mission, and a couple of surprise appearances-there may have been more Americans than Brits.

Thursday night, Taunya slept up in a tower room with Katy, Anke, and Steve. Apparently they yakked away, late into the night. My roommates were more serious about their slumber: no ghost stories, no s'mores, no Truth or Dare. <sigh> ;{)} Ah well, my sleep cycle was probably helped by it, although I still spent portions of the night awake. {Taunya: And I absolutely LOVED being the princess in the tower for one night. {sigh}}

Friday: let the con begin. I was about the last person up, but people had generously saved me some food from the breakfast that was included in the room rate. (All meals were included, in fact. Castle Freusberg is a youth hostel, but not so much in the teenager-travelling-the-continent sense that we might think of it. Ju explained to us that it was pretty standard for school children to take a week-long trip to some educational spot, and this castle was one such place. Indeed, on Friday hundreds of kids left the place, and on Monday different hundreds moved in.) While Taunya went to do a little bit of shopping with Katy and Steve, Franklin drove me to town, again, to retrieve my wallet. Everything was in it. And the person who had turned it in hadn't even left their name on the form for a reward. My sincere thanks to you, stranger! You made a visitor's stay much easier. Then, with a brief stop at a Wal-mart (those sneaky Americans…), we returned to the castle.

We moved our luggage to the room where we'd be staying through Sunday night. Taunya and I were sharing the Dompfaff room on the Vögel ("bird") floor. We were also introduced to the two main function rooms: Rittersaal (Knight's Hall), where all of our meals were held; and Musicksaal (Music Hall), where almost all of the music programming happened. Musicksaal had many musical instruments in displays up on the walls. A very appropriate venue.

Taunya and I spent some time in the afternoon running through our material. And as we were doing that, we got a knock at our door. A new face was standing there in the hall, a face we defintely hadn't expected to see: Dr. Kathleen Sloan! Yep, seems our good buddy Kathleen had decided that this would not be the first time she'd miss a Puzzlebox gig at a filk con; her record remains perfect. I couldn't actually see Taunya's face, and was a bit too flabbergasted myself to notice), but we probably did things very similar to Katy the night before. Thank you, Kathleen! It was so wonderful of you to come. {Taunya: I can tell you Taunya's face was a study in blank surprise. I had ABSOLUTELY no idea that she was going to be there. It was thrilling to see one of my favorite filkers all the way over in Germany.}

Dinner was at 6:00, then opening ceremonies at 7:30. The concom got up there and danced to open the con. :{)} I kid you not (Hi, Anke!). Kirstin, Volker, Katy, Franklin, and Anke, in matching white shirts, black pants, bow ties, straw hats, and canes, danced and sang about the convention. I think the "opening ceremonies gauntlet" has been thrown down to all other filk cons. :{)}

There were a number of concerts then, including Kirstin, Katy & Ju, and Kathy Mar. Katy and Ju did a wonderful new song of Ju's about Helen of Troy. Beautiful. I videotaped their performance of it later in the con; Taunya and I agreed that we wanted to steal the song. And Kathy's set got me all teary-eyed. No fair: she lives right near by; I should be jaded about her material by now.

The evening ended with the Puzzle Circle. One of the songs the Taunya and I performed in the circle was Lou & Peter Berryman's "Why am I Painting the Livingroom?" People were pantomiming livingroom-painting by the end of it. {Taunya: I noted that the German filkers are very big on audience participation. I loved it!} Another notable performer (who didn't have a concert, so I'll mention her here) was Alexa. Besides being one of the few German filkers, it seemed, who did funny material, she had a smile and charisma that just would not be ignored: you were coming along for the ride on her songs and you were going to have fun. Also, Dreamer did a hilarious story (with actions) about an octopus, with Rika translating. And Taunya completely lost it as Steve regaled us with Moonwulf's porno version of "When I Was a Boy". Even after Taunya and I went to bed, we still stayed up until some ridiculous time, talking about how much fun we were having.

Breakfast was (as always) at 8:00. A very un-filk time, says I. I skipped it in favor of extra sleep followed by a quick Pop Tart from my luggage (yeah, yeah, native cuisine is all well and good, but not if you're too asleep to taste it).

So the first programming I actually attended was Katy's guitar workshop, which I was promptly thrown out of. :{)} No, I'm teasing. She just got a surprised and embarrassed look on her face when I showed up, and said the workshop was intended for beginners, and she had been planning on giving instruction in German. Oh. OK, then: back to the room and a little extra rehearsal time for Taunya and I.

Then we attended Valerie Housden's Harmony Workshop. We worked on a song by Eva Wiest named "Promise", which Valerie had arranged in four-part harmony. The intention was to include it on Steve's WorlDream album, as one of FilkContinental's contributions. {Taunya: For those of you who haven't heard it, it's a wonderful song and you really should look it up.}

Next was lunch. We hurried through lunch, then collected together the various people who were going to help out in our concert to do a quick rehearsal of various songs. I love hearing arrangements come together, even when it's rushed like that. Unfortunately, we missed the medieval dances workshop, run by Franklin and his wife Molly. <seufz!>

Next the concerts began. This included Rika, some fun material by a guy with the name of "MeToo", pretty harp music by Anja, and the "Main Concert". The Main Concert is a concept borrowed from British filkers, I believe. At US conventions, this would be known as the One-Shots (or Two-fers). It's everybody's chance at some stage-time: people sign up to sing a song or two.

There was also an auction. Normally, this would have been for the German Filk Fund, which serves a similar purpose to Interfilk in North America. In fact, money from the fund helped pay for Puzzlebox's visit to FilkContinental. This year, however, the con decided to donate the money to the Checkpoint Charlie Foundation, which had set up a fund for the widows, widowers, and orphans of the September 11th terrorist attacks. A worthy cause, that. Taunya made a significant contribution: she drew a sketch of a mermaid (the FilkContinental t-shirts and program book featured a mermaid this year). She then donated the sketch to the auction, as a promise to do a painting for whoever won the bidding. She had a sliding scale of how large/complex a piece she'd paint, based on how high the bid went, but it quickly went to her highest level (100 Deutschmarks) and beyond, so she said "And if it goes over 200, I'll throw in a frame." The lady understands motivation. :{)} The piece went to Anke for 250 DM, and afterwards they discussed Anke's home decor, so Taunya could paint something that would coordinate with her home.

Dinner followed, and then more concerts. Kathleen had one, and I provided her assistance on "Meat" (hope you didn't mind the ad-lib, Kathleen). There was a pair of women who were listed in the program as "Lord Landless", who did some interesting, dark material. Then Christine Hintermeyer, who I had not heard before, but enjoyed her songs. She's a talented guitarist, with a very aggressive playing style; she beats and claws away at her guitar, making it fun to watch her, as well as listen. Eva Wiest also had a spot, and she has a beautiful, operatic voice. She was accompanied by a friend who played brilliant guitar. Next came some people from the US, "Puzzle-" something…?

You may notice a few things about our set lists: first off, they contain some material that Puzzlebox hasn't done as a group before, but Taunya and I have been known to perform as a duet, like "Diamonds & Rust", "Artificial Means", and "Starcrossed". As is probably obvious, we put these into the set when we found out Alisa couldn't come, to replace songs like "Callings" which just wouldn't work without her. On the other hand, we kept "Fly Freedom" and "Maple Tree", because we wanted Alisa's song-writing talent represented in the concert, and "Urban Legends" (which Alisa normally sings lead on), with conchair Katy Dröge singing the lead. Also, you may have noticed some German titles in there. Well, it seemed appropriate to sing something in the home language of the convention. So, Master of Ceremonies and song-writer Franklin was kind enough to translate into German a couple of songs that we thought were sort of Puzzlebox classics: "It Ain't Easy" (Das Ist Blöde) in the Saturday set and "Sir Brian" (Ritter Gandolf) in the Sunday set.

I also did an intro for us in German, at the beginning of our first set. For those who were there, but don't speak German, and wondered what the audience was reacting to, I'll include the English translation here:

-----
Good day (evening), Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Puzzlebox concert.
I'm Paul Kwinn, and this is Taunya Gren. Thank you for coming. Our third partner, Alisa Garcia, couldn't make it, unfortunately. But she sends her love.

I speak no German. Alisa speaks some, so I asked her to write this
introduction speech for me. For all I know, I could be calling you all
Schweinehunde... [pig-dogs]

[pause. Look to Taunya:]

"Schweinehunde?"

[Taunya gestures "I dunno"]

[back to audience:]

...and I'd never know it. We're very grateful to the concom for bringing us
here, all the way from the United States. (Paul asked me to put in a joke
here. Instead, I'll tell you that, right now, he's wearing women's
underwear. Pink, lacey, his favorite kind.)

[After laughter, give thumbs-up to Taunya.]

Anyway, on with the show. (And why did you put him in the same room with
us? He snores louder than a chainsaw.) We hope you enjoy yourselves.
-----

:{)} They laughed in the right places, so I guess I was understandable, at least.

(I've learned a lot about German pronunciation in the last couple of months, but still have almost no actual vocabulary.)

Puzzlebox and friends perform "Urban Legends"

This was an enthusiastic audience!! Any worries we had about a language barrier or possible different musical tastes dissolved very quickly. The crowd response was fabulous, and we were very grateful. They asked for two encores, and the second one we did was a reprise of "Why am I Painting the Livingroom?", which we'd done the night before. This time, of course, they had their shtick all ready, and the whole crowd was weaving back and forth, virtual paintbrushes in hand, before we even started singing. And it just got sillier from there.: Kathleen and Steve waltzed (literally; the song's in ¾ time) up on stage, mixing brush strokes in with box step. Then Franklin came up, and he and Steve pantomimed through some Laurel & Hardy paint-fight shtick while we finished the song. Taunya and I tried not to look, afraid of losing it and being unable to continue the song. I'm very glad I had a camcorder running. :{)} (Franklin ran it for us, actually [thanks once again!], and handed it off to someone else when he came up on stage.)

The filk circle after our concert featured Alexa getting comfy in her pajamas and duvet when it got late, an idea which Taunya emulated.

Sunday morning arrived (we got a couple of hours sleep, like the last couple of nights), and we attended the 2nd harmony workshop, for a final run-through of the choral piece before its recording that afternoon. We missed the first concert (Carroll Ray Johnson) because we needed to rehearse some of our material, but made it to Steve's spot. He was actually dressed in Renaissance garb, and opened with the Renaissance piece that starts one of his albums ("Lack-a-day, lack-a-day, lack-a-day-o!").

After lunch, it was Franklin's turn for a concert. He was accompanied on guitar by his lovely wife Molly for the first half. He had some very funny material. One in German, where he played a medieval bard inserting advertising breaks into his story-telling, was pretty funny as it was, and Taunya (who had Rika nearby to translate) said it was even funnier with the translation. He also had some touching pieces that he'd written, including his first foray into writing his own music: a song about chivalrous behavior in modern times.

Then Puzzlebox took the stage again. Our first concert was mostly our quiet stuff. This one was intended to rock! We had more extensive help with it, from Steve, Rika, Ju, Franklin, and even Katy on accordian! I didn't know she played, but let me tell you that that girl plays a rockin' accordian! When you invite her to be a guest of honor, have her bring her squeezebox. :{)}

Puzzlebox plays "Jean's Odyssey" with much help