Ohio Valley Filk Fest 25

Guest of Honor: Duane Elms

Duane Elm's filk career began when he unwittingly stumbled into the filk room at his first SF convention, Marcon, 1982. Muttering to himself as he stumbled out "I can do that...", he went on to write well over 100 songs and parodies, some of which he has actually allowed to escape into the real world. Since then Duane has performed at conventions coast to coast despite the best efforts of con committee members who have actually heard him. Some of his least objectionable contributions include "Dawson's Christian," "Threes Rev 1.1," and "Madam Curie's Hands."

Duane and his wife Kathryn have participated in a number of other fannish activities including costuming where they won Best in Show at the 50th Worldcon, and the SCA where they are both Laurels, Baron and Baroness, and Kathryn is a Countess by virtue of being Queen of the East for Pennsic XXX, the porn war.

In mundania, Duane has primarily been involved in the application of computers to the solution of problems from machine control to graphics to weapons development to diagnostic imaging. He ran his own company for eight years, spent eight years as a member of the corporate staff of General Electric and was Director of Advanced Technology for the first commercial telephone company in the world. Currently he is Director and CIO for Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico.

Duane and Kathryn live in Silver City, New Mexico (that space between Texas and Arizona which is neither new nor Mexico), where they are concierge and chef for two bengal cats, and where Kathryn teaches Japanese embroidery.
In 2006, Duane and Kathryn donated their 17,000 volume SF collection to the Williamson Collection of the Golden Library at Eastern New Mexico University and invite other collectors unsure of the future of their collections to do the same.

Guest of Honor in Absentia: Diana G. Gallagher

Diana G. Gallagher lives in Florida with her husband, Marty Burke, five dogs, four cats and a cranky parrot. A professional folk musician in the 1970s, she turned her talent to writing space advocacy songs in the 1980s.

While writing The Alien Dark (TSR 1990), her first published novel, Gallagher also dabbled in whimsical fantasy art. Best known for Woof: The House Dragon, she won a Hugo for Best Fan Artist 1988.

She has over seventy titles in several series, including BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, CHARMED, SMALLVILLE, and STAR TREK. She is co-author of a non-fiction account of events at the Orleans Parish Jail during Hurricane Katrina with Dr. Demaree Inglese, No Ordinary Heroes (Citadel 2007).

Guest of Honor: Margaret Middleton

Margaret fell into Filk in the fall of 1975, and has yet to recover.

To support her filking habit, she was a filk huckster until parenthood set in, and she has been working for the Arkansas Highway Department most of the time since then.

Sharon (her daughter) is married now, and retirement is at least in-view, if not exactly imminent; who knows what will happen then?

Guest of Honor: Larry Warner

Larry Warner has been a part of the filk community since he was first heard on the 1986 DAG production, Other Times, Other Places. During the intervening 20 years, he has been featured as solo and backup artist on countless anthology tape productions from various producers, including Duane Elm’s, St. Elmo’s Fire, and produced two solo projects, Through My Eyes, and On Deck 11, featuring many of his original songs. Still an avid Star Trek fan, Larry is married to Theresa and father to 6-year-old son, Grayson. Larry’s most recent filk and graphic work are featured on Nancy Freeman’s 2-CD production of Stardust County, in which he plays the character of Nigel.

Guest of Honor: Mary Ellen Wessels

(Bio shamelessly stolen from www.mewsic.com, written by Barry Childs-Helton)

Mary Ellen Wessels hails from Michigan (giving her voice a Northern lilt that makes you suspect she's a Canadian recording artist incognito); she's been an indispensible volunteer at The Ark folk club in Ann Arbor for many of the concerts most raved about by folk-style music fans. That was, in fact, her primary musical background when fannish friends brought her into the filk rooms of Midwestern cons in the late 1970's and early 80's. Though reticent at first in this new scene (as was I upon first sighting the immense filk books filled with songs I didn't know), she was still one of the people who truly "lives for the joy of singing" (in Joey Shoji's phrase, and often in stunning harmony with his voice). Her voice -- clear, powerful, versatile and lyrical - soon became a prized presence in the filk room, and a unifying thread that lent distinctive colors and strengths to an impressive array of fannish recording projects, from both the West Coast and Midwest filk scenes. Never anyone's regional chauvinist musically, she has logged numerous hours in cars and airplanes, shuttling between states to rehearsals and recording sessions in the name of good music (her main critereon).

But lest you think she's just another tall blonde with a superb voice (who also knows Lots of Things about Lots of Things, despises petty tyrannies, enjoys performing for kids, and has a more satirical way with a "blonde" joke than anyone I've met - damn, there goes another stereotype), she is also one of the most thoroughly musical people I know - record-player, percussionist, and (just between you and me) a notably more adept guitarist than she'll admit.

Best of all for habitues of the filk room, she's often as likely (and as happy) to sing with as she is just to sing. Whether at a fannish hootenanny, filksing, concert, rehearsal, drumming rave-up, or jam session, she's not too hard to find at a con. If you're passing by in the hall, and find your ears and attention arrested by what you're hearing, my advice is; go along quietly, follow the music, and when you find it, enjoy!

Interfilk: Karen Anderson

I read my first prozine before I was thirteen – the May ’45 ASF -- but it wasn’t until the spring of 1952 that I discovered fandom in the form of the Washington Science Fiction Association. I realized then that fans were my real family, and wanted to do everything they did.. I went to the 1952 Worldcon in Chicago, met not only more fans but lots of pros too, and started corresponding with Poul Anderson.

I joined the Spectator Amateur Press Society, and when fellow WSFAn Lee Jacobs made a typo in the title of a humorous essay, he wasn’t allowed to forget it. By the time I moved to Berkeley and married Poul I’d decided that the term “filk song” needed a referent, and chose one: I applied it to Poul’s parody of “Barbara Allen.”

Over the years, I’ve either done my own words or taken poems by others and set them to existing melodies. I did more-or-less invent tunes for two Kipling songs.

I put on “H.M.S. Trek-a-Star” at the 1967 Westercon, and a similar Gilbert-and-Sullivan take on a Sherlock Holmes story at the 1995 Baycon.