Poster’s done and notices are out for the Thirsty Lion performance on Valentine’s Day. We’ll practice Monday afternoon. This just might go all right.

I connected—finally—with the folks who have put together the new performance venue in the old Beaver Mercantile (a former cheese factory). Yes, they’d like me to play there. Their next show, February 18, is a Valentine’s show featuring a number of local performers, and they’ll let me on to play a couple of love songs. I was asked specifically to play “Earwigs in the Eggplant,†which I can do (guess that makes that one a “keeperâ€); the other one will be my call, and I’m not sure which it should be. About half my material is characterizable as love songs if one defines “love†loosely enough.

The operative question is to what extent I’m dealing with an audience that is already familiar with me and my stuff—I know some of them are, obviously. If I’m dealing with a crowd that is mostly new, I’ll want to give ‘em one song that (with “Earwigsâ€) will kinda sum up the “flavor†of a Joe performance; if they mostly know me, then I want to give them something they haven’t heard before.

The Mercantile also reportedly has a Sunday morning get-together of writers they’re calling the “un-Church,†and I’d like to attend that, too and see what they have going.

The new MyDVD9 software works in the Arts Center’s old (1999) PC but not on “Lazarus†the laptop. (It works on the H-P laptop, too, and it’s newer than “Lazarus.â€) Roxio (the software manufacturer) is no help—their techie said they were under orders not to provide any support for the “legacy†program because Roxio wants you to buy their new version 10 (which I have no intention of doing). I do like what I’ve seen of MyDVD9; it may be the replacement I was looking for for Windows Movie Maker, which is a bit hokey and limited—but if I can’t make the MyDVD9 program work on “Lazarus,†I may have to switch computers.

Presently, I use the little H-P just for burning CDs (it’ll burn DVDs too). None of its peripheral stuff works. The flat-screen monitor is shot, the keyboard doesn’t work, the wireless Internet card and the Ethernet cable port are both non-functional—and I can’t stand the finger-pad the Younger Generation is accustomed to use instead of a mouse. So if I rig the H-P up as the home computer, I’m basically using it for its brain (and DVD-rewritable drive, of course), and rigging up a remote monitor, keyboard, mouse and Internet thingie—all of which I do happen to have on hand. If the H-P is going to stay home, do I care?

“Lazarus†travels well; he’s a little oversized and heavy, but except for the inability to burn CDs (a design defect in that model laptop which Dell never did fix), everything works pretty much okay. I’ve been taking “Lazz†to my square dance caller classes—he mates up to a sound system just fine. So “Lazz†can become the traveling computer—the role I’d originally planned for the H-P.

The hard drive from old “Alice†appears to be history. “Bad sectors,†I’m told—the apparent result of my installing a “Service Pack 3†for the WindowsXP operating system (curse you, Microsoft)—which are preventing the extraction of any data. That means the permanent loss of seven years of photographs (including photos from two trips to Nashville), a couple of irreplaceable programs, and all the files from the 2009 Joe Songbook—lyrics to roughly 80 songs.

Thankfully, most of the music files for those 80 or so songs had been archived on Soundclick and ReverbNation, so those aren’t lost—but I’ll need to re-do the Joe Songbook from scratch. (Of course I remember the lyrics to all the songs.) I’d been wanting to put out a new edition anyway—I have written some new songs since 2009, after all. The new edition will just have to have different (and less exotic) photographs. Lots to do…

Joe