The Logan Whitehurst Memorial Award for Excellence in Comedy Music

JURORS FOR 2016

Fan Jurors

Byron Lee

Byron Lee was born legal­ly blind, and with a face per­fect for radio! He is the host of The Fun Zone, a 2‑hour show on Demen­tia Radio, Radio Free Dish­nuts, and The Beyond Radio Net­work. He has been a mem­ber of the Demen­tia Com­mu­ni­ty since the ear­ly 90’s. You might remem­ber him from the #weird-al or #demen­tia chan­nel, #412 on the Al-Team, or @byron27 on Twit­ter. If you have ever been to MarsCon or FuMPFest, you will have seen him behind a mix­er, stream­ing and record­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties. Be sure to stop by and say hel­lo at the next con!

JoAnn Abbott

JoAnn Abbott has writ­ten over 50 songs in the past 5 years, some of them actu­al­ly worth singing and lis­ten­ing to accord­ing to friends and fam­i­ly. She has loved singing and music since she was a child, and has col­lect­ed a wide vari­ety of instru­ments over the years, includ­ing her most recent, a celtic lev­ered harp. In spite of buy­ing and “doo­dling” on all of these instru­ments, the abil­i­ty to read music nev­er appeared spon­ta­neous­ly with­in her mind, like Athena sprout­ing from Zeus’s ear…so she has been tak­ing harp lessons for the past year and a half, and voice train­ing the year before that. Now if she would just PRACTICE more often…
Her tastes are eclec­tic, from an ear­ly love of Broad­way show tunes to Gre­go­ri­an chants and medieval music; children’s songs, church hymns and rock clas­sics to an unfor­tu­nate attrac­tion to bawdy songs from all gen­res which has got­ten her in trou­ble a time or two.

Greg Crowther

Greg Crowther is one of the world’s most enthu­si­as­tic col­lec­tors and per­form­ers of edu­ca­tion­al sci­ence songs. This occa­sion­al­ly comes in handy when teach­ing biol­o­gy at the Both­ell cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton — the prover­bial “day job” that Greg should not quit. Through­out Greg’s for­ma­tive years, his father wrote a humor col­umn in the Rut­land [Ver­mont] Her­ald; any skew­ness in what Greg con­sid­ers fun­ny can prob­a­bly be blamed on that.

Musician Jurors

Paul Sabourin

Paul Sabourin is one-half of Paul and Storm, known inter­na­tion­al­ly and across the Inter­net for their orig­i­nal com­e­dy music (often with a “nerd-ish” bent). In addi­tion to their own live per­for­mances, they are co-founders of the geek-ori­ent­ed vari­ety show w00tstock, along with Wil Wheaton and Adam Sav­age, and co-pro­duce the annu­al JoCo Cruise. The duo’s orig­i­nal web­series musi­cal, “Learn­ing­Town“, debuted on YouTube’s Geek & Sundrychan­nel in Jan­u­ary 2013. Also in 2013, their song “Anoth­er Irish Drink­ing Song” was fea­tured in the hit movie Despi­ca­ble Me 2, and in July had their gui­tar smashed on stage by George R. R. Mar­tin (and deserved it). Their fifth full-length CD, Ball Pit, came out in 2014, and was the cen­tral item of the duo’s wild­ly suc­cess­ful Kick­starter campaign.

Jessica Delfino

Jes­si­ca Delfi­no is a crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed and award win­ning comedic musi­cian who has per­formed all over the world. Called “Low­er East Side’s Queen of Obscene” by The Vil­lage Voice and award­ed a “Voice Choice” Award for “Best Gui­tar Sling­ing Come­di­an”, the “ECNY Best Comedic Musi­cian” award, and a final­ist in the Andy Kauf­man Award, Jes­si­ca has appeared on Good Morn­ing Amer­i­ca, The Jim Gaffi­gan Show, the Rus­sell Brand radio show, The Dr. Demen­to Show, on Opie & Antho­ny, The Play­boy Chan­nel, Jack­ie The Jokeman’s Joke Hunt on Sir­ius XM, Edin­burgh Fringe Fest, Dublin Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val, on stage with Weird Al Yankovic in the Apoc­a­lypse Tour, and much more. Jes­si­ca is a pro­duc­er of the annu­al NY Fun­ny Songs Fes­ti­val. Vis­it her @JessicaDelfino or find her on Facebook.com/JessicaDelfinoNYC.

Tim “ShoEboX” Crist

Tim “ShoE­boX” Crist is the sole mem­ber of the synth-punk-com­e­dy band Worm Quar­tet who was one of the Found­ing Mem­bers of The FuMP and had the most request­ed song of 2004 on the Dr. Demen­to Show with the ex-girl­friend ode “Great Idea For A Song.” In 2011 Worm Quar­tet won the Logan Award for Out­stand­ing Orig­i­nal Com­e­dy Song for the true tale of ShoEboX’s vasec­to­my in song form, “The Bal­lad of Dr. Stopp.” ShoE­boX is also the writer for the syn­di­cat­ed com­ic strip Par­tial­ly­Clips, and appeared on VH‑1’s Total­ly Obsessed as “The Pac-Man Guy.” You can find Worm Quar­tet online at wormquartet.com.

Permanent Juror

Dr. Demento

Dr. Demen­to 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)

A doc­u­men­tary film about Dr. Demen­to, “Under the Smog­ber­ry Trees,” is cur­rent­ly in production.

Chairperson

Angela Brett

Angela Brett learns about the world (espe­cially sci­ence, pop­u­lar cul­ture, cur­rent events, and lan­guages) almost exclu­sively through com­edy songs, and rarely com­mu­ni­cates with­out using the sen­tence ‘I know a song about that.’ She long con­sid­ered mak­ing her own online data­base of sil­ly songs before dis­cov­er­ing the Sing About Sci­ence web­site and the Mad Music Archive. She films all the live shows she has per­mis­sion to, and was declared Best in Terms of Pants on the JoCo Cruise in 2014. She occa­sion­al­ly attempts to write her own ter­ri­ble com­e­dy songs and poems under the name ‘Ange­las­tic’, which can be found at angelastic.com.