sdelmonte | Mr. Smith Goes to the Hospital

As you probably know by now, filker Tom Smith blew out his left quad and will be facing months of rehab and medical bills. Fellow filker Rob Balder organized a fund raiser to help Tom, and put out the call for covers of Tom's songs to include on a CD - entitled Mr. Smith Goes to the Hosptial - to be distributed at Contata last week. Within six days, receiving both existing recordings from various cons and housefilks and new recordings, Rob had 38 songs!

If you go here, you can find details on how to donate and how to get access to the 38 tracks online. I want to applaud Rob for getting this done, and for his plans to travel from con to con and keep helping Tom. (We raised over $1,400 at Contata.)

The thing about this CD? Three of the songs are covers sung by me. For the first time ever, you can hear me sing outside the confines of the filk room. Alas...alas, I am not very good at all. It's something of a rush to know that people will hear me sing. And a bit of a strange feeling to know that my meager efforts (recorded at housefilks over the last two years) are included alongside covers by Steve Macdonald and the Great Luke Ski and Bill Sutton and so on. And part of me wants to apologize to everyone for not being very good. There are many things I do well. And I love the chance to sing in the filk room and won't stop any time soon. But I am quite sure that I will never be a great singer.

Not that it matters. The album is about helping a man we all love and who was sorely missed at Contata. And if my three songs help that cause, then who cares if I'm not exactly Caruso? Still, it's a new thing for me.