Armed with a guitar and an ironic, wry sense of humor, Frank Hayes has been filking at science fiction conventions since 1979. Some of his best known pieces are Never Set the Cat on Fire, Little Fuzzy Animals, and Like a Lamb to the Slaughter, a talking blues version of the traditional folk song Mattie Groves.
He has been nominated sixteen times for the Pegasus Award for Excellence in Filking and has won five: Best Parody, Best Risqué Song, Best Filk Song, Best Classic Filk Song, and Best Alien Song.
His song Cosmos was used to wake up the astronauts on the Space Shuttle. Mercedes Lackey said of him, “funny enough to make people fall down on the ground and gasp for breath at first hearing.”