February 2011 Coffee House
Great Coffee House at Faking Sanity Cafe! As the final stop on the Spirit Arts Festival tour the ranks of our audience were swelled by some wonderful, arts lovin’ people and we were also pleased to have a new face front and centre with Lana Sloane and her very entertaining cowboy poetry. We hope she will come back and read again soon!
Karen McGowan, featured performer at Feb coffeehouse
Our featured performer was Karen McGowan, who performed both cover songs and her own original music. Karen’s sense of humour is a treat; she really knows how to entertain an audience! An interesting note for those of you who may not know: Faking Sanity Cafe used to be called Under the Willow and was started by Karen. It passed from Karen on to Jennifer Singer, Karen’s daughter , and then to Angele and Cindy, the present owners, who changed the name to “Faking Sanity”.
At last month’s coffee house, we created a pantoum poem from suggestions from the audience. This month we had our audience participate in creating a Da Da Poem (or as I like to call them, ‘ransom note poems’!) We cut out words and phrases from discarded books/magazines, threw them into a bag, then the audience drew out the ones we’d use for the poem. It’s always quite amazing, and often a little odd, what you can make out of these snippets. I’m getting the original poem scanned and I’ll include it in my next post.
- Bill Studley
Bill Studley held the audience spellbound with his incredibly fast rendition of ‘I’ve been everywhere’.
Wayne Ezeard not only played and sang but also regaled us with some poetry from his book ‘Where Eagles Soar’. Rebekah Rempel-Chorney and Marilyn Belak read several selections from their exceptionally fine original poetry.
Dave McGowan
Dave McGowan, the man whose voice I’ve often referred to as “sounding like melted chocolate”, delighted us with some old favourites.
As MC I spent a lot of time trying not to place my foot squarely in my mouth but I also had time to play a few songs. I’ve included a video of my redition of Siúil a Rúin, an old Irish traditional.
Linda Studley 
Now I have to know how melted chocolate sounds….. please! I have a guitar! I just need to learn how to play it. That has been a goal of mine for years. 🙂
Well, now, if you can make it down to the next coffee house, I’ll ask Dave pretty please if he’ll come in and sing again! As for learning to play guitar, it just so happens I know an excellent guitar teacher who travels to Fort St John to give lessons. His name is Ian Smith and if you’d like to hear him play, he did all the guitar work on both of my CDs which you can hear at http://www.lindaconnellstudley.com
There is no time like the present to learn guitar and I’ve been told by experts that learning to play a musical instrument is a fabulous way to keep our brains engaged and healthy. Thanks for commenting on the blog, Lori