After many, many weeks of disrupted schedule, both good and bad, I’m back to my regular routine (for some definitions of regular, anyway). I’m still a little worse for wear from the travel, but I’ll manage; I’ve dealt with worse.

All that said, Consonance out in San Jose was pretty great. Played some great shows, made a bunch of music with cool people, and generally made a pretty good showing. This was my first true filk convention (as opposed to cons with a strong filk/music track), so it was a little different than I was used to, but I can dig it. I’ll certainly do more of these things going foward; people dug what we (and I) were selling, and I heard some really, really great tunes. Twas nice to be welcomed into the community, both as a Humdinger and as a solo performer (I did a short solo set on stage, and played several tunes in circles over the course of the weekend).

One of the highlights was certainly Summer Russell the consonance “Toastmaster”, who put on amazing show (that took us all a bit by surprise, having never heard of her before) on Friday night, and played lots of other cool stuff throughout the weekend. It was a pleasure hearing her stuff and getting to know her a bit. I hope to see her again. Seriously, click that bandcamp link above and buy all her stuff – you won’t regret it.

Other cool stuff was seeing and hanging out with Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps again – it’s been years (going back to Balticon in ’12, before I really got into being a guest rather than an attendee), and the two of these folks are some of the most impressive musicians and performers I’ve ever seen, and are really great folks to boot. Again, seek them out if you don’t already know who they are.

I also met some other neat folks, like filk legend Blind Lemming Chiffon (who’s a hell of a player, and an all-around interesting human being), Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff, who in addition to being terribly talented (seriously, go listen to “Manhattan Sleeps” – chills), ran the sound (Jeff, primarily) for the con, making *us* sound awesome, and also lent me a bass guitar (with six strings!) for the weekend so I didn’t have to deal with transporting one.

I know there are a ton of other names to drop, but in the interest of time and space, I’m just going to say thanks to all the folks who made things interesting and pleasant for us as east-coast interlopers and Guests of Honor.

I may have also offered up my body in the name of fundraising for Interfilk, but if my promise of twerking raises the sale price of an item by almost $50, it’s worth it.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note my long-overdue reunion with Jonah Knight and family, a dear music friend who moved out west a few years back, and came out to meet us for dinner and hang out for our show. It’s been too long.

Travel was uneventful on the trip out, though weather caused some serious delays on the way back (diverting out plane from Denver to Colorado Springs, and leaving us stuck on the tarmac for several hours – my ass still kinda hurts). Oh well, I think the airline is going to renumerate us in the form of vouchers for flights at some other point in the future – I have a couple of places I could stand to go.

Thanks, as always, to S&K for allowing me to tag along on these sorts of journeys – words can’t express how greatful I am.