You'll see musical references in many of their stories from the medieval Bard in the Bard & Sigurd stories to Garen the Gousan in Unintended Consequences to the future MEW in the Mechville novels.
 Clif wrote this song back in the 1980s and sang it at conventions
off and on.
| It popped back to the surface when our friend Tom Kidd posted drawings on Facebook of an alien that morphs from a ground-dwelling caterpillar-ish being into a light-sail butterfly.
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 Clif wrote this song in 1977. It's the first multi-part song he ever
tried to put together. Lacking singing partners, he sang one version
into a portable cassette recorder, then played it back and sang the
second line. | Unfortunately, the tape player wasn't loud enough for him to hear the recording while singing the new part. A few months later, he went to Marcon with this idea still unformed and convinced Mark Bernstein and Pat Buchanan to listen to it and see if they could sing the second parts. Pat added a third part. This version is from the Dorsai Thing in 1979. Steve Simmons, his wife Ruth, Mark & Pat and Pat's sister Kim and Clif had worked for months to polish the harmonies and arrangement. The filk was in the con suite, so there's background noise that dies out as we start to sing. Over the years, Clif has sung this song in various forms with Bill Roper, Mary Ellen Wessels, Kathleen Sloan, and anyone else who didn't run away fast enough. The left-hand picture is from the Dorsai Thing after Clif won the insult contest. The prize-pie was awarded by the judges he'd been insulting for the past hour. Steve Simmons and Bill Roper are congratulating each other for coming in second and third. The right hand photo is from Ohio Valley Filk Fest in 1986 with Mary Ellen Wessels and Debbie Ohi who got dragged into Clif's concert set at the last minute when Clif learned he had an hour to fill, not thirty minutes to share with Bill Sutton. They literally got 30 minutes notice (Clif got 35 minutes warning, but had to finish eating first) to prepare a half dozen songs.
This was Debbie Ohi's first appearance on a filk stage. The fingerpointing came right after Clif suggested his backup-group could amuse the audience while he re-tuned.
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 | Clif and Mary Ellen Wessels sang together a lot in the early 1980s, and even put out a tape: Fragile Wall. Clif wrote All Life is an Echo in 1978. For years, he sang it as just verse and chorus. He added a counterpoint in the early 80s. He and Mary Ellen reworked it to handle the counterpoint, harmonies, and "stuff". A friend found this recording in his collection. It's probably from Confusion in 1985. It's not quite the cleanest rendition we ever did, but we had fun with it.
This is the version from ConChord II. Clif was the guest of honor, Mary Ellen and Bill Roper joined him for this rendition. We actually practiced this time.
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 Clif and Carol met through their mutual interest in music, Science
Fiction and Fantasy. In the nearly thirty years of their marriage, they
attended many SF conventions, singing at most of them.
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On July 28, 2021 Carol had open heart surgery to replace a faulty valve. The operation was a complete success, but she developed a secondary infection two days after surgery. She survived at least two nasty infections and two heart failures. She also had an unknown number of mini-stroke events.
After almost two months of being unconscious in the ICU she regained consciousness and we discovered the strokes had paralyzed her from the neck down. At the same time, her internal organs went into massive failure.
On September 19, we turned off the life support, and on September 20 she passed.
Carol leaves behind many friends. She touched dozens of lives around the world.
She also leaves behind a lot of music, most of which was never recorded.
The image on the left was taken by our friend Michael Kitchen when we needed a promo-shot at the last minute. The right hand image is Carol when she was 30. A new look for a new job.
Here's a few of Carol's songs that were recorded.
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