Music

In addition to being a writer, poet, and editor, Stace is a musician. Having cut his teeth in the coffeehouse band Steel River Three for eight years, Stace has recently started breaking into science fiction convention performances and small venues. His wide-ranging style of geek folk, nerdy humor, and storytelling comes through in originals, spoofs, and cover songs for Mages and Muggles alike.

Demos

Rotating audio demos of my performances and studio work are available to stream at this link. For those who prefer videos, please visit my YouTube channel. Or go wild and check out both!

Upcoming Appearances

Stay tuned! Announcement expected soon.

Past Appearances

Faerie Follies — May 22, 2021. The Festival of Faerie folks invited me to play in their online streaming concert, and invited me to perform in next year’s Festival already!

Aurora Mini-Con 3 — November 14, 2020. The Aurora Public Library invited me to play a pre-recorded concert, which they streamed over the internet due to COVID-19. The entire concert is viewable at this link.

Festival of the Living Rooms — March 21, 2020. Many thanks to Blind Lemming Chiffon for the invitation to play a few songs at the online filk event he created for the pandemic

WhimsyCon 2020 — February 28, 2020. I opened WhimsyCon 2020 with a concert on Friday evening, which has become sort of a tradition, and also played another show on Sunday afternoon.

Superstars Writing Seminar — February 7, 2020. Award-winning writer Wulf Moon and I again entertained seminar attendees with filk and folk songs. This was just prior to lockdown, so there was no 2021 seminar.

Functional Nerds Podcast — February 4, 2020. I am grateful to the Functional Nerds for inviting me to be a guest on their podcast. It was a lot of fun! A link to the podcast is here.

Myths and Legends Con 7 — August 9-11, 2019. I’ll opened the final MALCon with a Friday evening concert at 6:30 P.M.

Denver Pop Culture Con — May 31, 2019, 3pm, Coast City room. I was on the “I Sing and I Know Things” panel with Losing Lara and Will Hebert from Sunnydale High. A video of the panel is available on my YouTube channel.

Aurora Mini-Con 2 — May 18, 2019, 11am -2pm. My performance was at the end of the con, opening for Tonks and the Aurors! (Prior to that, I participated in the author events at the mini-con.)

Futurescapes Writing Workshop — April 13, 2019. Although nothing was on the schedule about music, I organized an impromptu Filk/Folk/Fun session with other musicians, and the session wound up lasting three hours.

WhimsyCon 2019 — March 1, 2019. For the second year in a row, I was chosen to open the WhimsyCon convention, just prior to the opening ceremonies on Friday evening.

Superstars Writing Seminar — February 7, 2019. Award-winning writer Wulf Moon and I volunteered to entertain seminar attendees with filk and folk songs. It was enough of a hit that it’s going to become an annual thing.

Westercon 71/ MALCon 6 — July 8, 2018. The kind folks at Shiny Garden liked my WhimsyCon performance, so they invited me to play at Westercon, as well. I was honored to be able to play at an international-level convention.

May the Fourth Be With You — May 4, 2018. This was a Star Wars anniversary event hosted by Zero Day Exploits and Großen Bart Brewery. I was honored to share the stage with ZDE, Losing Lara, and Shanna in a Dress for this special geeky event.

WhimsyCon 2018 — March 2 & 4, 2018. I opened the WhimsyCon convention on Friday evening, then had another full concert performance on Sunday afternoon.

World Horror Con 2000 — I was honored to play music during the opening ceremonies for this legendary horror literature convention. The amount of writing and editing talent in the guest list of this convention was stellar.

Filk/Folk/Geeky Song List

“Hey There, Cthulhu” — a parody of “Hey There, Delilah” by Eben Brooks
“Steampunk Girl” — John Anealio
“I Love You, I Know” — Royish Good Looks
“The Ballad of Serenity” — Sonny Rhodes
“The Hero of Canton” — Joss Whedon
“Vampire” — Lyrics and melody by Wulf Moon, arrangement by Stace Johnson
“Tacos and D&D” — Lyrics by Nathan Crowder, music by Stace Johnson
“Scoundrel” — Star Wars parody of “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Stace Johnson
“King in the North” — Game of Thrones parody of “King of the Road” by Stace Johnson

… and more coming every week. Know of a geeky song that I should cover? Tell me about it here!

Originals and Covers

“Blackbird” and “Norwegian Wood” — The Beatles
“Boat on the River” — Styx
“Closer to the Heart” — Rush
“Down by the Water” — The Decemberists
“Dust in the Wind” — Kansas
“Landslide” and “Gold Dust Woman” — Fleetwood Mac
“Leader of the Band”, “Looking for a Lady”, and “Nature of the Game” — Dan Fogelberg
“New Guy Smell” — Stace Johnson
“Puff the Magic Dragon” — Peter, Paul, and Mary
“The Queen and the Soldier” — Suzanne Vega
“Rocky Mountain High” and “Country Roads” — John Denver
“Watercolor” and “Unconditional” — Willy Porter
“I See Fire”, “Tenerife Sea”, “Wild Mountain Thyme” — Ed Sheeran
“Man of Constant Sorrow” — Dan Tyminski
“Reel in the Flickering Light” — Christy Moore (Colm Gallagher)
“I’m Yours” — Jason Mraz
“Collide” — Howie Day
“Hey There, Delilah” — Plain White T’s
“Seeing You” — Stace Johnson
“Brother Falls” — Stace Johnson
“Every Rose Has Its Thorn” — Poison
“Life by the Drop” — Stevie Ray Vaughan
“Wish You Were Here” — Pink Floyd
“Whiskey in the Jar” — The Dubliners
“Wonderful Tonight” and “Layla (Acoustic)” — Eric Clapton

… and many more! Don’t see a song you want to hear? Let me know!