Tom Smith is an American singer-songwriter from

Ann Arbor, Michigan Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Washtenaw County. The 2020 United States census, 2020 census recorded its population to be 123,851. It is the principal city of the Ann Arbor ...

, who got his start in the

filk music Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has existed since the early 1950s and been played primarily since the mid-1970s. Etymology and defin ...

community. He is a fourteen-time winner of the

Pegasus Award The Pegasus Award is the premier award for filk music and is annually hosted at the Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF). Awards The Pegasus Awards were founded to recognize and honor excellence in filking. As science fiction (sci-fi) became better kn ...

for excellence in filking, including awards for his "A Boy and His Frog", "307 Ale", and "The Return of the King (Uh-huh)", and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2005.

Career

His nickname, "The World's Fastest Filker", comes from numerous instances of "instafilk", i.e., quickly-written or improvised songs. He has improvised entire concert sets, and his album ''Badgers and Gophers and Squirrels Oh My: The 24-Hour Project'', inspired by

Scott McCloud Scott McCloud (born Scott McLeod; June 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. He is best known for his non-fiction books about comics: ''Understanding Comics'' (1993), '' Reinventing Comics'' (2000), and ''Making Comics'' (200 ...

's 24-Hour Comics Day, features seventeen songs written in twenty-four hours. In May 2006, he released the album ''The Last Hero on Earth'', a comic opera which has twenty songs, all written in one day, to the same plot. In August 2006, emulating Jonathan Coulton's ''Thing a Week'', he began ''iTom'', a project where he released a new song every week for a year, and continued sporadically after that. So far, he has collected four albums of those songs. He has parodied

Christine Lavin Christine Lavin (born January 2, 1952) is a New York City-based singer-songwriter and promoter of contemporary folk music. She has recorded numerous solo albums, and has also recorded with other female folk artists under the name Four Bitchin ...

songs with her blessing. He authored the official song for

Talk Like a Pirate Day International Talk Like a Pirate Day is a parodic holiday created in 1995 by John Baur and Mark Summers of Albany, Oregon, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.Babylon Park ''Babylon Park'' is a spoof of ''Babylon 5'' and ''South Park'' that debuted on the internet in 1998, created by Christopher Russo. It presents the ''Babylon 5'' cast with ''South Park'' character designs. It spawned several short films, includin ...

: Grudgematch'', as well as the official Transylvania Polygnostic University theme song for the comic ''

Girl Genius ''Girl Genius'' is an ongoing comic book series turned webcomic, written and drawn by Phil and Kaja Foglio and published by their company Studio Foglio LLC under the imprint Airship Entertainment. The comic won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic ...

'' by

Studio Foglio Philip Foglio (born May 1, 1956) is an American cartoonist and comic book artist known for his humorous science fiction and fantasy art. Early life and career Foglio was born on May 1, 1956, in Mount Vernon, New York, and moved with his family to ...

. Smith performs frequently at conventions across the United States, and has also performed in Canada and England. He has been featured frequently on

Dr. Demento Barret Eugene Hansen (born April 2, 1941), known professionally as Dr. Demento, is an American radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograp ...

Public Radio International Public Radio International (PRI) was an American public radio organization. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PRI provided programming to over 850 public radio stations in the United States. PRI was one of the main providers of programm ...

's ''Sound & Spirit'', and other radio programs. In 2007, he joined with comedy musicians such as

Rob Balder Robert T. Balder is a professional cartoonist and singer-songwriter. He graduated from Roanoke College with a major in English in 1993 and, after a variety of jobs, entered a seven-year career in IT, starting as a manager of database development ...

The Great Luke Ski Luke Collis Sienkowski (born January 14, 1974), better known as the great Luke Ski or simply as Luke Ski, is an American parody, filk, and rap artist, who writes, records and performs comedy music. The decapitalization of "the great" in Sienko ...

, Sudden Death,

Worm Quartet Worm Quartet is a comedy music project created by Timothy F. Crist who uses the stage moniker ShoEboX and performs fast, synth-driven, pseudo-metal punk/pop. The band was formed in 1991 and its name is a reference to cartoons Crist used to draw. ...

, and others in ''The FuMP'' (The Funny Music Project). Smith has appeared in concert with Dr. Demento and on the same bill as

Chick Corea Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz composer, pianist, keyboardist, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", " 500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and ...

. In 2005, "A Boy and His Frog" was the subject of a mini-arc in the ''

Something Positive Randal Keith Milholland (born November 25, 1975), better known as R. K. Milholland, is an American webcomic author. His works include '' Something Positive'', '' New Gold Dreams'', ''Midnight Macabre'', ''Classically Positive'' and ''Super Stupor ...

'' webcomic. On June 7, 2008, Smith tore his quadriceps while attempting to take the stage at a Christine Lavin concert, landing him in the hospital and preventing him from performing for the next few months.

Discography

* ''Mr. Smith Goes to the Hospital'' (tribute album), 2008 (download) * ''Songs of The FuMP, Vol. 1'', 2008 (download) * ''iTom 4.0: Smith and Legend'', 2007 (download) * ''iTom 3.0: True Love Waits'', 2007 (download) * ''iTom 2.0: Transitions'', 2007 (download) * ''iTom 1.0: And So It Begins'', 2006 (download) * ''The Last Hero on Earth'', 2006 (CD) * ''Sins of Commission'', 2006 (download) * ''Homecoming: MarCon 2005'', 2005 (download) * ''And They Say I've Got Talent'', 2004 (CD) * ''Badgers and Gophers and Squirrels Oh My: The 24-Hour Project'', 2004 (download) * ''Live at GAFilk'', 2004 (download) * ''Debasement Tapes'', 1999 (CD) * ''Plugged'', 1997 (CD/cassette) * ''Tom Smith and His Digital Acoustic Compilation'', 1998 (CD from the two cassettes below) * ''Domino Death'', 1994 (cassette) * ''Who Let Him In Here?'', 1991 (cassette)

Pegasus Awards

* Best Filk Song 1991: "A Boy and His Fro

References

External links

Tom Smith Online

Tom Smith on the FuMP

Tom Smith albums
on

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

Cool Sci-Fi Stuff
Review of Tom Smith Plugged & Stupid Filk Tricks on the SciFi Channel's website
Live performance
of "A Boy and His Frog" at

DragonCon Dragon Con (previously Dragon*Con and sometimes DragonCon) is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. , the convention draws attendance of over 80,000, fe ...

2007 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Tom American male singer-songwriters Filkers Living people Musicians from Ann Arbor, Michigan American parodists Parody musicians Singer-songwriters from Michigan Year of birth missing (living people)