About Our Guests

Guests of Honor: Bill and Gretchen Roper

Bill Roper discovered filking when he ran into Juanita Coulson and Anne Passovoy at MidAmericon in Kansas City, his first science-fiction convention. After some early, abortive attempts at writing humorous filks, he discovered that his true forte was in ose. Leaving an almost unparalleled trail of corpses in his songs, he eventually concluded that "Killing was too good for them. It's more fun to leave them alive to suffer."

It turned out that Bill could write humorous filk, but generally this required a collaborator. At first, this was his good buddy, Clif Flynt; later, he partnered with Gretchen to write a number of funny songs. He has been so unrelentingly cheerful since marrying Gretchen that she has been quoted as saying, "If the problem is that you're too happy to write ose, I can fix that for you."

Stylistically, Bill is all over the map, from folk, to rock, to jazz, to country. This is one of the things Bill enjoys about being a filker.

Bill has recorded three filk albums. Alas, "Liftoff to Landing" (with Clif Flynt) and "The Grim Roper" are long out of print, but "Seven Miles a Second", released in 2003, is available from The Secret Empire and other fine filk dealers. Bill and Gretchen have at least three more albums planned. (Bill, please record "Teenage Popsicle Girl"!)

Many of Bill's awards and honors are mentioned in his Fan Gallery bio. Here is Bill's Filk Hall of Fame citation.

Gretchen Roper discovered organized (more or less) science-fiction fandom at DisCon II in Washington DC. Filk seemed a logical place for her to land, but it took a while.

A mutual friend introduced Gretchen to Bill. Her initial impression (probably accurate) was, "Gee, he's a pompous nit. But he sure does sing pretty." (Fortunately, Bill mellowed with age.) They soon became friends, which meant that they were spending a lot of time together and that Gretchen was hearing a lot of filk.

One day, Bill suggested that they might sell filk tapes to make more money. And thus was born the Secret Empire, which later begat Dodeka Records, which has since begat more than 25 assorted filk tapes and CDs.

In the meantime, Gretchen took to writing filk, starting with the lyrics to "Library Song"; later writing whole songs of her own and numerous pieces in collaboration with Bill. At some point in this process they decided that it would make sense if they were married to each other. Details of their married life are revealed in their jointly written song "My Husband, the Filker", which won a Pegasus award.

In addition to their other talents, Bill and Gretchen have helped run many Chicago-area cons, including a Worldcon; and they perform improvisational theater with Moebius Theatre and SpaceTime Theater.

In the words of Erica Neely, "I have a very easy rule for finding a filk circle: I pretty much always look for Bill and Gretchen Roper. There are a couple of reasons I do this. One, I love their stuff, both Bill's solo stuff and the songs they write together. I like pretty much everything I've ever heard either of them sing. Two, I love seeing them perform, again both solo and together; the interplay between the two of them on things like "Apology" and "My Husband the Filker" is just fantastic. And, lastly, I always know there's at least *one* person who won't mind if I change the mood to something depressing. The Ropers are fantastic people!"

More information about Bill and Gretchen can be found on their website at www.filker.com.

bio by Debbie Ohi

Congrats to Chris Conway, who celebrated his 30th CD release and 16 years in show business on Dec 4th, 2005 which also happened to be the day before his birthday.

Chris is a fulltime musician in the UK, and is an amazingly talented songwriter, vocalist and instrumentalist. Urban Tapestry was honoured to be invited to be on his Alien Salad Abduction CD...check out the "Alien Jellyfish Song" soundclip on his CDbaby page for this CD and you'll hear me on flute, Allison and Jodi as backup for Chris. This song is WAY fun to perform; we did it in our cover concert at FilkCONtinental in Germany.

Chris enjoys promoting other musicians; visit Planet Christo Radio to hear him in DJ mode.

After you hear Chris at Consonance, come to FilKONtario March 31 - April 2nd, where he's the Guest of Honour.

You can find out more about Chris from his website at www.chrisconway.org.