W. Randy Hoffman

W. Randy Hoffman, a lifelong resident of Southwestern Pennsylvania, attended his first con and his first open filk at Marcon in Columbus in 1989. While there he wrote his first filk song (which, fortunately for humanity, has been lost to history) for which he was accompanied on guitar by a red-haired gentleman he never saw again.

After that he remained active in fandom, but didn't return to filk until he listened to a basement tape produced by his college buddies Rand Bellavia and Adam English and said, "Boy, these guys need an appreciative audience, and I know where they can find one!"

He accompanied said buddies to several open filks and filk concerts over the following two years and finally decided he liked the scene himself.

Since 1989 he's written dozens of poems and well over a hundred filk songs; some of them serious, more of them funny. A lot of these are available on his four (and counting) albums. Some are also available for free download from the Sideshow of The Funny Music Project (The FuMP); just search the site for his name to get the full list.

He's won songwriting contests at numerous Eastern and Midwestern conventions, and has placed in the top three in such contests more often than almost any other filk songwriter over the past fifteen years.

His contribution to the filk community of which he is most proud, however, is probably his organization and presentation of the filk programming at Confluence in Pittsburgh since 1997, including full-weekend tracks since 2001.