It’s St. Leif’s Day! One should be playing music on St. Leif’s Day—he being the patron saint of bagpipes, and all—and there will be music tonight at the Tsunami in Wheeler. And at home, I’ll make popcorn (the traditional St. Leif’s Day snack).

No music at City Hall Friday; The New Band will practice instead—and figure out setlists, too. It’ll be a chance to run through “Quoth†again, too, before the comedy show Saturday. NCRD has announced a “dress rehearsal†for the comedy show on Friday, too (it’d be before our practice); I understand I do not have to bring a dress.

(I do have a Gig Shirt, though, that I bought at the square dancers’ rummage sale last week—a very garish, crudely painted Hawaiian shirt. A blues guitarist I know in California had a habit of buying an ugly Hawaiian shirt at a thrift store before every paying gig; he’d wear the “Gig Shirt†just once, at the performance, and then put it away. I think he ended up with quite a collection. So now I have a Gig Shirt, too. Of course, Saturday’s not a paying gig, so I might not wear it. It is very ugly, though, and might be a nice touch for a comedy show.)

For the Song-a-Month Experiment: I need a service (CDBaby?) that’ll let me upload a single and charge for it, without charging me a bundle for doing it; I might want several such services if I can find them. First upload will be “Hey, Little Chicken,†I believe—I have a decent Tascam recording of that song in the Catalog, with my friend Dan Doshier playing lead harmonica and mandolin. I don’t want to release any of the co-writes yet, because I’m not sure how to do the split of copyright revenues on online sales yet. Down the road, sure.

I figure this gives me a couple of weeks to get something else recorded. Focusing on new stuff, I’d really like to get a professional recording of “Spend the End of the World with Me.†It’s timely, and audiences like it—but the home recording I’ve got is simply not very good. Would be fun to try to do it with the band.

28 people at the “Introduction to Western Style Pattern Dancing†class Wednesday night at the Elks Lodge; there was quite a bit of interest in line dancing (and some folks there who were really good at it), so Gwen (who teaches line dancing among other things) is going to teach a line dance class there next Wednesday. That may take away a lot of my “guinea pigs†I’ve been using for caller practice on Wednesday nights at the Arts Center, and I might have to find a different night to do it. One of the guys there was a drummer, and plays with a band; talked to him about the summer concerts. His and two other bands will be playing a benefit concert April 21, and I’ll go to see what they sound like. I told him I’m less interested in what they have on records than in how they handle a crowd, and what the crowd thinks of them.

And a complete aside. Got contacted by a company that does vacation rentals, asking if we’d be interested in having them manage our house in Cascade Locks. It is an attractive idea. I’m not sure how viable the place is as a long-term rental; there are no jobs in town any more, and with $5-a-gallon gas, commuting to a job somewhere else is no longer attractive. If I got the city manager job in Cascade Locks, I could live there—but that job is far from a sure thing, and I won’t find out for a long time. Capitalizing on the house’s location in a supposedly prime recreation area may be the way to go. (That “prime recreation area†does get 125 inches of rain, however.) I’ll be meeting with the company’s head dude next week to look over things, and he’ll tell me what they need. I have references to check out, too.

I figure one of the things we’ll have to do is furnish the place, and that’ll be fun. Basically, we’d be setting it up with all the comforts of home, as if we were going to pop out and use it on a weekend (which we might well do). I’ve got some stuff already, the result of having to keep up two households in three out-of-town city manager jobs since 2004—but I’d like the Vacation House to be classy, not funky.

Joe