It’s been four decades!

Our Special Guests of Honor, Bill and Brenda Sutton, met at Bayfilk III in March, 1986, fell in love at the Atlanta Worldcon in September, 1986, got together at OVFF 2 in October, 1986 where Bill was the Guest of Honor, and celebrated their first wedding at OVFF 3 a year later.  (Yes, there was a second wedding, but that’s another story.) They didn’t know that they were singer/songwriters when they first met online at CompuServe’s F&SF forum lo those many years ago, but once they found out, they’ve been working at it ever since.

And they’ve succeeded. They’ve each won a Sam’s Award from the UK Filkcon. Brenda has been nominated six times and won three Pegasus Awards. Bill has been nominated nineteen times (six times for ‘Stray Dog Man’ and four times for ‘Vor’) and won three Pegasus Awards. They’ve run filk programming at numerous conventions and Worldcons, and they were honored as NASFIC Music GoH. They are proud to have helped birth and raise Interfilk and GAFilk, and were inducted along with Gordy Dickson into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2001.

Brenda plays and teaches the Irish frame drum, the bodhrán, and can be found “banging on everything in sight” as Bill says in his song ‘Women With Drums’. As an example, at this year’s Pennsic War, she organized the Carnyx and Drum Corps where she got to play a 55-gallon rain barrel. Brenda’s also a competent guitarist, and is determined to learn the fiddle, recorder, penny whistle and lyre. Bill plays guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, flute, tin whistle, recorder, concertina, and is learning the hurdy gurdy.
They perform separately and as the duo Bed ‘n’ Breakfast, and as parts of many bands including The Black Book Band, Dead Sexy, Three Weird Sisters, and a Year and a Day. Ten years ago, they joined the Society for Creative Anachronism where they’ve taught and promoted music from the baronial to kingdom levels, and where they are now having a blast playing in the quartet Surreptitious Whiskey.
Twice a year for ten years, they’ve hosted a renowned music workshop called Slumberbardy for the musicians in the Middle Kingdom. Folks regularly travel from far away states to spend the weekend learning to polish and edit song lyrics, improve performance skills, compose melodies, and tighten harmonies.  They throw a big Saturday night music party, get up Sunday morning to cook a huge Irish breakfast, and then lead a second day of workshopping.

Music has been the center post around which Bill and Brenda Sutton built their lives.  The most important friendships, communities, and chosen families have all spun cheerfully on that musical merry-go-round. Forty years, folks. We’ve grown old together humming and singing filksong after filksong. Ghu willing, we’ll enjoy another decade or so of music-making.