The Logan Whitehurst Memorial Award for Excellence in Comedy Music

2025 Jurors

Fan Jurors

Kendra Shepherd

Kendra (she/her) is one of those music busi­ness sharks at Needle­juice Records and a visu­al artist. She has worked with artists such as Barnes & Barnes, Napoleon XIV, and King Mis­sile. Not only that, she is also a found­ing admin of Vooba­ha: The Barnes & Barnes Face­book Group along with being a mod­er­a­tor for The Dr. Demen­to Show — OFFICIAL In her free time, Kendra likes to bark at invest­ment bankers, aim­less­ly wan­der about New York City while pre­tend­ing to be a sub­way rat, and lis­ten to grown men com­plain about Sponge­bob on YouTube. Yeah.

Brynn Lowden

Brynn Low­den (she/her) is the host of The Fun Zone, a long run­ning com­e­dy music radio show. She has been a mem­ber of the fun­ny music com­mu­ni­ty since 1996. If you come to MarsCon you’ll find her in the back with all of the audio equip­ment; stream­ing the con­certs to Twitch and Demen­tia Radio. She vol­un­teers to edit and pro­duce the MarsCon Com­e­dy Music Track Fundrais­er CD each year. Brynn is legal­ly blind and she helps visu­al­ly impaired seniors learn tech­nol­o­gy for a living.

Lauren Robinson

Lau­ren Robin­son (she/her) is the host of the Beer’d Al Pod­cast, where she com­bines her love for craft beer with her life­long pas­sion for com­e­dy music, par­tic­u­lar­ly the work of “Weird Al” Yankovic. Her wit­ty com­men­tary and unique beer pair­ings have made the pod­cast a favorite among fans of both com­e­dy and brew­ing culture.

A life­long “Weird Al” fan, Lauren’s admi­ra­tion for his clever par­o­dies and orig­i­nals began in child­hood and shaped her deep appre­ci­a­tion for com­e­dy music. This shared pas­sion even led her to her hus­band, Russ, whom she met through their mutu­al love of Yankovic’s work—a con­nec­tion that adds an extra lay­er of mean­ing to her fandom.

Lauren’s pod­cast­ing jour­ney is fueled by her cre­ativ­i­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to cel­e­brat­ing the joy of com­e­dy music and craft beer. When she’s not record­ing, she enjoys spend­ing time with her two dogs, Troy and Bel­la Don­na, and explor­ing new breweries.

Through her work on the Beer’d Al Pod­cast, Lau­ren con­tin­ues to bring peo­ple togeth­er, one laugh and one pint at a time.

Musician Jurors

ShoEboX

Tim “Shoe­box” Crist (he/him) is best known in com­e­dy music cir­cles as the sole mem­ber of Worm Quar­tet, a qua­si-leg­endary ter­ri­bly-named one-man band known for spew­ing hyper­speed lyri­cal luna­cy over catchy syn­the­sized punky music-type stuff whilst pranc­ing and sweat­ing all over the damned place as if they’re not 49 years old, which they most assured­ly are. 

Shoe­box has had a long and stu­pid his­to­ry — from hav­ing the most request­ed song of the year on the leg­endary Dr. Demen­to Show in 2004 and 2005 to per­form­ing at clubs and sci-fi con­ven­tions across North Amer­i­ca to his inex­plic­a­bly-recur­rent 15 min­utes of fame as “The Pac-Man Guy” on VH-1’s Total­ly Obsessed — footage which keeps get­ting exhumed when­ev­er anoth­er YouTube cre­ator comes across it — to win­ning Logan Awards in 2011 and 2023 for Out­stand­ing Orig­i­nal Com­e­dy Song in each of those years. He’s shared the stage with bands and artists rang­ing from Dr. Demen­to and MC Lars to The Vibra­tors and the Voodoo Glow Skulls. Worm Quar­tet’s sixth full-length album “Carpe Tedi­um” came out in 2023 on Needle­juice Records and is avail­able wher­ev­er you damn kids steal your dev­il music. 

More info about Worm Quar­tet is at http://www.wormquartet.com

Seamonkey

Sea­mon­key (he/him) is Eric Tomme from Fort Worth, Texas, who has had five Fun­ny Five/Top Ten “hits” on the Dr. Demen­to show, neces­si­tat­ed the cre­ation of the “squick” label on The FuMP, and racked up eight more Dr. Demen­to Top Ten songs and two Logan Awards with his char­i­ta­ble breast-themed Bea­t­les par­o­dy group, The Boobles. He most recent­ly worked with Jeff Whit­mire on the “Stab­by Road Med­ley” from Jef­f’s 2023 album, “Stab­by Road”. Sea­mon­key “died” as a per­sona at his last live per­for­mance for 2016’s FuMPFeST, but, like Jesus, could return at any time.

Dino-Mike

Dino-Mike (he/him) is a Logan Award win­ning com­e­dy musi­cian oper­at­ing out of Los Ange­les. For decades, Mike has been writ­ing and per­form­ing his enve­lope-push­ing orig­i­nal and par­o­dy songs and is a reg­u­lar mem­ber of The FuMP. He is also an accom­plished com­ic book writer and artist, releas­ing a full graph­ic nov­el titled “Pro­grammed” a few years ago. He is cur­rent­ly writ­ing and record­ing his 5th stu­dio album which is expect­ed to be released at some point with­in the decade (j/k… prob­a­bly). You can lis­ten to his music on The FuMP or his Band­camp page. He also won a Logan Award in 2017 for Out­stand­ing Com­e­dy Music Video for “Beam­er”.

Juror Emeritus

Dr. Demento

Dr. Demen­to (he/him) is the on-air name of Bar­ret Hansen, the long­time host of The Dr. Demen­to Show, a syn­di­cat­ed radio show in the U.S. that fea­tures nov­el­ty and com­e­dy records. Hansen stud­ied music at Reed Col­lege in Port­land, Ore­gon and at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les. He first used the Dr. Demen­to moniker in 1970, in his ear­ly days as a Los Ange­les disc jock­ey. By 1974 he was nation­al­ly syn­di­cat­ed, play­ing rare nov­el­ty songs from the past and present, from Spike Jones and Tom Lehrer to Frank Zap­pa and Weird Al Yankovic. Hansen is also an avid record col­lec­tor and expert on the his­to­ry of record­ing who has pro­duced sev­er­al com­pi­la­tions, most­ly for Rhi­no Records. He was induct­ed into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2009. (from Infoplease.com)

The Dr. Demen­to Show is radio’s week­ly two-hour fes­ti­val of “mad music and crazy com­e­dy” avail­able for stream­ing on the inter­net. It is a free-wheel­ing, unpre­dictable mix of music and com­e­dy. Along with leg­ends like Spike Jones, Tom Lehrer, Stan Fre­berg, Mon­ty Python, and Frank Zap­pa, the Doc­tor plays new fun­ny songs sent in by ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al singers and come­di­ans. (from Dr. Demento.com)

Chairperson

Ian Bonds (Insane Ian)

Insane Ian (he/him) is an active mem­ber of the com­e­dy musi­cian col­lec­tive known as The Fun­ny Music Project (aka The FuMP) as both a per­former and fan of com­e­dy music.

As a com­e­dy musi­cian, II loves video games. He plays them, he reviews them, he col­lects them, he even writes com­e­dy songs about video games (among oth­er nerdy sub­jects). Just one look at Ian’s Band­camp page makes it obvi­ous that Insane Ian is a com­e­dy music jug­ger­naut that can­not be stopped. Ian hit a mile­stone in his career a long time in com­ing, as he had the #1 most request­ed song of 2015 on “The Dr. Demen­to Show”, the name-man­gling Brit-trib­ute, “Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch”, sit­ting firm­ly atop the Doctor’s year-end Fun­ny 25, and then again in 2019 as part of Devo Spice’s ‘posse track’ “Spi­der Vers­es”, which also won a Logan Award in 2021 for Out­stand­ing Com­e­dy Music Video…for Devo Spice, that is. With a sharp wit, sar­cas­tic smirk, and a bit of self-dep­re­ca­tion, he’ll bring his unique sound to any­one who won’t tell him to shut up…and even a few that will.

As a com­e­dy music fan, Ian is the admin of the offi­cial Dr Demen­to fan group on Face­book, as well as host­ing a week­ly com­e­dy music reac­tion show on his YouTube chan­nel, appro­pri­ate­ly titled “A Com­e­dy Musi­cian Reacts”. Ian is also the one respon­si­ble for run­ning all the press things for The FuMP. Dou­ble I has been nom­i­nat­ed for sev­er­al Logan Awards over the years but has yet to win one him­self (at least, for a song of his own) which has earned him the nick­name “Rap Game Susan Luc­ci”. Ian is now the per­ma­nent chair­per­son of the awards.