DuckCon. Chicago, 2010.

The lovely organisers of Chicago’s annual ‘DuckCon’ have invited me to be their Filk (music) Guest of Honour next June. I have accepted – it’s been a number of years since I was across the Atlantic – and so I’m going to Chicago for next Midsummer.

I had to say yes. Among other good reasons is the fact that I’ve two songs set in Chicago, although to date my only visits have been necessarily brief – one very nice pastrami bagel at the airport for a stopover many years ago (and a very compelling phone conversation, but that’s another story) and then a few years ago I breezed in late one October, performed a house concert, howled with a husky, ate at the International House of Pancakes, and was gone the next day.

 What I would love to get to see is the Chicago underpass where the salt stain made a picture that folk saw as Mary and subsequently turned into a shrine... because ‘My Lady of the Underpass’ is set there, and so is the companion piece which currently has a really fine chorus melody and a full lyric, but whose verse melody will simply not sit down and behave. There’s time yet; and I do wonder whether one is allowed to sing in the underpass?

So I’m going back to America next year. I shall have to give the US government my fingerprints, which I shall hate, and which I have never given my own government, and I shall seriously consider how to offset the carbon of my flight. Oh, and return. I do intend coming home!

I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, and making new ones besides. It’s been a while! And while I can make no promises, it’s always useful to hear from folk who might be attending the convention of any requests they’d like me to sing. I can’t promise to sing exactly the same version, either – but that’s another story too...

(Edited to try to reduce the in-your-face size of the font, but it's not my day to be doing anything with software, quite clearly. Step away from the laptop, Ms Kimberley....)