This year (2009) marks Urban Tapestry’s 16th year together as a group, so I figured it was about time we added a history page to our website. Allison will be adding Part 2 eventually.

Allison and I met at a Toronto science fiction (Ad Astra, I think) in the 80′s. Both Allison and I had been part of Toronto fandom for years already. My friend Tom West had introduced me to filk, and I started noticing Allison at filk circles at conventions during the evenings.

From Allison: “I went to my first filk at my first science fiction con. It was Ad Astra 5
in 1985. I arrived at the con not planning to stay overnight. Needless to
say when I discovered my first filk circle I ended up staying late enough to
have to stay the night. Pat Williams and Steve Horvath, who first met me in
that circle, were kind enough to give me a place to crash ’til morning .”

I loved Allison’s singing voice and songs, and always looked forward to circles when she was present. Meanwhile, I was just starting to take my flute to filk conventions, though I was still way too shy to actually do much playing yet.

Urban Tapestry at The Gathering, Dec/2003

Around this time, Allison and I also met Kevin Davies, a talented artist and musician in the Toronto area. Kevin’s filk circles were always enormously fun, and I also admired his songwriting. Allison and Kevin were friends, so I got to know them both a bit at these late night filk circles at filk conventions.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to discover that the filk community had started up its own conventions. I attended the very first Ohio Valley Filk Fest and also the first FilKONtario; Allison attended the first FKO, too. Allison: “I went to two OVFFs in the late 80′s,
but was too shy to sing there and stopped going for several years focussing
on singing at local filks, instead.” At FKO in 1992, Allison performed onstage in front of a filk audience for the first time ever (“it
was solo and the song ended up on the compilation CD, which made me proud)”.

Urban Tapestry beaded keychains designed and made by Michelle Bottorff. Click image for detail.

In the fall of 1992, some of us decided to start a group together. Northern Retreat originally consisted of Allison, Kevin, me and a woman named Terri. In 1993, Terri left and Jodi joined. Kevin brought Jodi to UT; they met through mutual gaming buddies. At the time, Jodi was working with Steven West of Group of 77.

Urban Tapestry’s very first concert was at FilKONtario in 1993, where we performed the infamous Birthday Suit Polka.

In 1992, Allison’s friend, Kathy Johnson of Sound Techniques studio in Toronto, invited Allison to do a filk album. Allison asked Kevin, Jodi and me to join her in the studio; she would rather do a Northern Retreat album than an Allison Durno album.

During the recording process in 1993, Kevin left the group because of artistic differences. Instead of disbanding, Allison, Jodi and I decided to rename ourselves as Urban Tapestry. We also scrambled to write a bunch of new songs so we’d have material for our first album. Kevin had written much of our humour repertoire, and we knew it would be a challenge to try replacing his songs — he was a hugely talented songwriter.

To be continued…

Debbie