Yes, we made it back from DragonCon. We had an awesome time a the convention despite being flooded with a bunch of problems from getting booked to getting a hotel room, lost sales crew to a lost voice.

We left in the middle of the night on Thursday. After losing one sales helper, we were fortunate to have Jessica and Shandy drop everything, pack their packs and carpool with us to the con. We drove to Houston to pick up one faery sales helper, Bridget, and then off we went to Atlanta.

The drive there went pretty smoothly and even checking in to the hotel and getting our badges was surprisingly easy. Andrew kept looking over his shoulder wonder when disaster would strike. Fortunately, for at least a day, no such disaster appeared. On Friday morning after a decent night's sleep we filed downstairs and setup our table on the Concourse of the Hyatt.


Friday at DragonCon

Ah, it was great to see all our old friends. Emerald Rose was there with Arthur being the first up as usual. I got a sneak peek to their recording of "Vulcan Rubdown" which is still one of my favorite new songs of theirs, although Jessica was ravving about a new gamer song of theirs. I missed it though.

Tania Opland & Mike Freeman arrived pretty soon too with Mike's happy barrage of insults. Ah it's great to feel the love! It was a joy to see them again. They are a wonderfully uplifting couple.

The last in our general area to arrive was Voltaire, the goth music master of evil and all things sarcastic. Actually, he missed his flight so it was only Kitten, his sales helper who arrived first. She's another sweet heart.

Well around 11ish, we began our first traveling minstrel gig. Bridget decked out in her blue faery garb followed us as we warmed up and headed over to the Mariott to play for folks waiting to enter the Vendors and Dealers Rooms.

We stopped off first at the West of the Moon table. I had talked to Amy about doing an interview for their website. The site is a Tolkien Fanfiction site for hobbit fans. If you love hobbits, this is the place to go.

We started off by playing "If I Had A Million Ducats" with a LOTR theme. But our song attracted more than just hobbits and elves. It also attracted some Jedi. So we followed a Jedi over to the Stormtrooper table where we proceeded to use the force of the "Jedi Drinking Song" to make folks laugh and lightsabers dance.

And one big relief out of playing that song was at lonnnng last, we didn't have to tell people "No, we Don't have that song recorded," because before we left for the Mariott, the DragonCon Limited Edition, Brobdingnagian Fairy Tales CDs had arrived. (incidentally, we still have a few copies left that you can order from the link above for a very limited time)

After playing about a dozen songs for folks, we decided to head back and get some food before our 2:30 show on the Concourse.

Live on the Concourse

Costumed folks of all shapes and sizes showed up for our Concourse show. One hour racing through comedic hit after hit. Left everyone buzzing, but the most-exciting part for me was when Dr Demento approached the stage and introduced himself. I was in such a daze after the show that I didn't have enough time to drop to my knees and say, "I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy." Worse still, it was the only chance I got to see him. Ah well, I guess I'll have to email him instead.

After eating a quick dinner, we found out that they moved the Filk Room. It was moved to the Roswell Room in the bowels of the Hyatt. The room was way too small, but we made do. We belted out a fun show to packed house before I headed up to The Night at Bree to catch a little bit o'Emerald Rose's show. I saw a few hobbits dancing the Macarena. There I ran into Amy from West of the Moon again and decided to join her hobbit-y bunch along with some TORn at Champions for some drinks.

A word of warning, hobbits know how to drink! I let myself drink a bit much, and I'm guessing that that dropped my immune system such that by the next morning my throat was hurting. Bad start of a Con.

Ah well, before I headed up to bed, I did stop off to see The Great Luke Ski perform his rap parodies. Fun show, but I was tired and obviously needed some sleep. So I stumbled on up stairs to prepare for the next day of DragonCon 2004.