For a year, Paul and Taunya just played music together once a week at lunchtime for fun. Then Taunya was introduced to filk, and they played a few concerts together over the next year, debuting at the Bar Area's own Consonance and including travelling to the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (in 1997)...their first ever non-local con together! Meanwhile, they had both met Alisa Garcia, also at Accolade, and all three of them had been in a weekly role-playing group for about a year.

Alisa was aware that Paul and Taunya got together to practice music, but had no idea about the filk aspect. Paul heard her humming one night at the role-playing game, and suggested she come sing with them on one of their weekly lunch practices. About five months later, she took them up on their offer. (August of 1997.) Sometime during that five month period, they also learned that Alisa played keyboards, and had a buried musical past that she had never expected to use again!! [Paul says: "Thank God we prevented that! Would've been such a waste."]

In October of 1997, the group received word that a 30-minute concert at Consonance '98 in March was available to them, if they were interested. They were! So, practice began in earnest to polish up eight songs that the three of them could perform together. After two years together, Paul and Taunya had a huge repertoire. But Alisa had a lot of catching up to do! Plus, many of the songs needed to be rearranged to fit in keyboards or rhythym instruments and a third harmony. It was a lot of hard work, compounded with Alisa's travel schedule for work, and Taunya's acting and artist-contracting schedule. But the end result was a great success. In early February, the band's name was decided upon, after much laughter and discussion. To read more about the Consonance '98 concert, go to our Concerts page.

The further exploits of Puzzlebox have included concerts at filk conventions FilKONtario (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), ConChord (Los Angeles), the Ohio Valley Filk Festival (Columbus, Ohio), and GaFilk (Atlanta, Georgia) as well as at general SF/fantasy conventions NorWesCon (Seattle, Washington) and BayCon (here in our own San Jose). We have also entered and won a number of song-writing contest, including 2nd place for the group-written "Ramblin' Time" at 1999's FilKONtario. And we've been nominated for Pegasus awards (haven't won one yet), including a Pegasus nomination for Best Performer this year (2000). We've also released our so-long-worked-upon album "Assembly Required" (see our Album page). And, in a greatly appreciated vote of confidence, we attended GaFilk, in January 2000, as Interfilk guests. Wow! It's been an amazing ride for our not-quite-3-year-old band! For more description of the various conventions described, check out our Concerts page.