As indicated previously, I spent the weekend doing the music thing with the Humdingers at ConCarolinas this weekend. We had some good, well-attended shows, though we tend to get shunted to the “filk” track at this one, so we never really got the main stage with the awesome sound guys (hey, Keith, John and Gene!) except for a Saturday morning round-robin performance with a couple of other acts. Oh well, we rocked that small room (there were more people here than might appear in the photo, trust me):

As is always the case with these things, we never get enough of a chance to hit everything we want to do and see everyone we want to see (I would’ve liked to spend more time with our friends Mikey Mason and Valentine Wolfe, though we all got a little time to check in and goof off, and I caught a bit of each of their performances over the course of the weekend (the whole pack of them did a great performance together of VW’s “Annabelle Lee” that was amazing to behold), and Mikey (as well as Metricula) joined us for an impromptu performance in front of the “Buskerville” sign in the hallway on Sunday – there are bits of it out there on Instagram, at least – go check it out!

Oh, and Mikey inducted me into the new Hogwarts house, SlitherClawPuffledor, and I got kicked out of the band about a dozen times due to infractions ranging from playing in a different key (notice I didn’t say wrong key!) to having been into Bon Jovi in high school. No worries, Scott will always keep crawling back, as long as I keep learning Jethro Tull tunes.

Additionally, we got see and play with a bunch of other great performers, including Moss Bliss (check out the song “Scale” at the link…amazing), Larry Kirby, White Plectrum, Frank Parker (who wrote one of our favorite songs to play, “Night of the Hunt”, which we finally got to play for him), Gray Reinhart, and at least a little bit of one set from a really great band you should look into, This Way to the Egress (two words – headbanging tuba).

Now that namedropping and promotion is out of the way…

So, it was a successful con, I guess – again, I was kind of struggling the week heading into the con (I’m juggling lots of stuff, between work, dance dad stuff, this musical project, and another one I’m contributing to/mentoring/producing/whatever it is I do), I was *tired*. In spite of this, I was very, very happy with the way we performed, and the new acoustic bass I picked up cheap last weekend (walked into guitar center for picks, came out with a used Rogue acoustic/electric for 50 bucks…and picks) worked out well. I did end up taking a full-on nap on Saturday afternoon to try and keep pace.

If I look back, I think I was kind of worn out after this con last year as well, though things don’t feel as bleak as they did a year ago. Maybe it’s just something about this time of year (I think it is, actually…), but I’m just a bit glum; though I’d probably be worse if I didn’t find myself in the companionable company of such welcoming and talented people; this sort of music thing is my therapy, and it works.

When you can close out a busy weekend by sitting around in a circle with a bunch of talented people singing songs and telling stories, life could be a hell of a lot worse.

…because it seems appropriate, here’s my friend Gray’s ode to the post-con state of mind, “Dead Dog Party”: