Penny Lang comes through.

We hit bottom around 9:30 Saturday morning, when someone who claimed to be Penny Lang called. But this person sounded, to put not too fine a point on it, like Mercedes McCambridge practicing for her role in The Exorcist.

"I've got this throat thing, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to perform."

Indeed she did have a throat thing. And we had a bunch of people coming for our first anniversary house concert. We'd ordered a cake. Argh.

But we had a couple of things in our favor. Thanks to our pal Ana Miura, we had a singer-songwriter named Amy Campbell coming to open. They had been doing dates together and had finished up their mini-tour, and Amy was coming to do a couple of tunes to get things started.

We also had our pal Sarah Johnston coming to help set up the house, and she plays, as those who saw her at our Chris Whiteley and Diana Braithwaite show know VERY well.

And heavy doses of slippery elm andVicks Vapo-rub infused steam later, we had a fine time of it. Penny didn't do full sets, and her voice was far from Penny's best. But Amy helped out (and impressed the hell out of us), and Sarah went from house-setter-upper to opening act. As you can also see, the show was held on the occasion of Earth Hour, and we did the first hour by candlelight. It was quite lovely -- more lovely than the pictures reflect.

Sarah rocked, Amy impressed, and Penny moved. And the cake was delicious. Then we collapsed in relief.