[Bordermarch] Heather Dale House Concert

[Lathrop, Dave]

Heather Dale House Concert

Ok folks, if you weren't at the baronial manse for the Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps house concert you really missed a great show!

Heather and Ben are travelling musicians/performers/storytellers/singers/song writers and really nice folks to boot who hail from Texas's northern most county known as Canada.
They arrived at the baronial manse on May 2nd from their previous engagement in the great city of Houston. When their adoring fans started arriving at the manse for the house concert, Heather and Ben were there at the door to greet them like long lost friends. Heather and Ben brought with them plenty of really cool silk screened tee shirts and a bucket load of their fantastic CDs. The tee shirts and CD thing worked out very well in my favor because while people were scooping them up I was in the kitchen scarfing down all the eats that the good people of Bordermarch always bring when they visit.
I swear I could taste the excitement crackling in the air when Heather and Ben started their first set, on second thought, that taste might have been the caramelized habanera/butterscotch bunt cake Lady Jillian contributed to the food fest that evening.

Heather and Ben are fantastic entertainers! Their songs transported the audience back to a time when the Dream was a reality that had honor and chivalry ruling the day.
There was one particular song they performed that really pulled at everyone's heartstrings as well as wetting more than a few eyes in the crowd. The song I speak of floated us not into the Dream, but trucked us right up the Chattooga river and dumped us slap-dab in the middle of the front porch where that banjo-plucking-slack-eyed-Gemini-twin who portrayed a young man in the movie 'Deliverance' was playing a solo rendition of 'Dueling Banjos'.
The afore mentioned eye-wetting song of which I speak described the shattered love between a man and his wife whose cohabitation of the same planet was just not working out.
The man finally made a deal to have old Be-L-sa-Bob take his crabby wife on an extended vacation down to the centrally heated Hood. When the wife found out what her husband had done she had a full blown conniption fit and went totally ape on the devil. With the deal sealed the man had finally found the peace and tranquility he had almost forgotten existed, but the peace did not last! It wasn't long before old Be-L-sa-Bob realized he had been schnozzled by the man, and therefore decided to return the wife to her husband! It seems that the man's wife was upsetting the residents in the devils crib due to her being so ornery and cantankerous. When the devil approached the man and said he was going to void the deal, the man ran off into the hills screaming. Unfortunately, due to the sharp snapping sound of hankies whipping out of pockets to take care of the weeping and sniffling from the audience, I did not hear what happened to the wife.
It was one of the best love songs any of us had ever heard.

When Lord Jacob Rot Ross Templin showed up with an arm load of pizzas he was immediately crowned 'King of the Eats'! The best pizza he brought was a 12-cheeze pizza with raw spinach roots imbedded between the 5th and 6th layers of cheese. Lord Jacob had crafted the 12-cheeze pizza himself and said he made it to honor Popeye and Mighty Mouse. He would like to think that Heather and Ben appreciated the extra effort he put into making the pizza.

When Lord Simon Mac Crimmon entered the manse everyone was flabbergasted at his growth since he was last seen in public. When he realized that the group gathering around him was staring at him, he proudly lifted his head to one of the light fixtures in the ceiling and bellowed, "I am no longer to be called Little Simon! From this day forth I shall be known as Half Man Half Dan, or maybe just Half Simon".

HE Don Armand was not present at the Heather Dale House Concert.

HL Mea Passavanti came in from Houston to visit with Heather, Ben, and her Bordermarch friends. She was, as always, gracious and a pleasure to be with. I did try to shame her, but unfortunately she had earlier been conversing with HE Elisabeth, [who has known me for a long time because she is my wife], and was warned of the techniques that I employ to compel one into a condition of ignominy. HL Mea has also been in the SCA far too long to ever reach an appreciable state of mortification inflicted by one who has barely reach level 3.5 on the road to Shame-Wow perfection.

All of the Bordermarch Lady bards in attendance somehow knew all the words to Heather and Ben's songs. When they harmonized with Heather's beautiful voice the room seemed to fill with angels. Not to be out-done by the ladies, Ben tried to get the guys in the audience to sing along with him, but when he heard the cacophony of baritone warbling and witnessed the small pieces Tostitos chips spewing from the mouths of the Bordermarch males he rescinded his request for harmonization assistance. There was one fairly decent high pitched male voice, but I think it was present due to Lord Malcolm's trousers being pulled up a bit too high and tight.

Lady Padraigin shown up without her articulating monkey charm necklace, but she did have a rag doll with a photo of Herbert Hoover glued over the face of the doll. I noticed that whenever Heather and Ben were singing their songs Lady Padraigin would hold her Herbert Hoover doll by its two little hands and make it appear to be jumping and dancing all over her knees!

Lady Lyllianne, our Bordermarch Poetess, was seen secretly coveting Heather Dale's wooden flute! For the life of me I don't understand why her father, Lord Phocas the Flute Maker,
does not make her one. Does anyone know if there is a homeopathic cure for someone with flutosis?

Although Heather and Ben are from Canada, they are very fluent with the English language. Their musical odyssey has led them to places where most of us can only dream of visiting.
They can now truly lay claim to having more friends than anyone else in the world!

HE Elisabeth and me, as well as our fellow Bordermarchers, are truly blessed to have been able to share some time with Heather Dale and Ben Deschamps right here in Barony Bordermarch. Our time with Heather and Ben has brought us an understanding that their music is a reflection of their hopes and dreams, their friends and adventures, and ultimately, their love of sharing it all with any who would but take a moment and listen.


HE Santiago