OUT OF TOWN for five days this week, and four next week. There will at least be music. I’ll get to play this Thursday night with “The Risk-Takers,” the in-house band from City-County Insurance Services that performed at the annual conference last year, and both this Friday and next I get to sit in with the Friday Night Group. Sundays is still the Wild Goose in Ashland, and Tuesdays is Chris Parreira’s open mike, also in Ashland.

I have not mentioned in this blog the political maneuverings going on with respect to my day job, and I won’t—this blog is about music, and I keep music (which is about my only recreation) and the job completely separate. Nonetheless, a lot of people I play music with have had questions, and/or expressed concern or sympathy for what’s been going on, and I much appreciate it. I keep running into more and more people I know from work at these gigs, too, and that’s good as well.

THE ALBUM: I should list (again) what’s tentatively picked for the album; with all the computer changes, I could easily lose (or could already have lost) the file. Not in any kind of order, the selections are:

Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep (fairly fast rock ‘n’ roll)

Armadillo on the Interstate (slow & sleazy)

The Frog Next Door (very delierate blues)

Christmas Roadkill (more slow & sleazy)

Dead Things in the Shower (pretty fast country)

The Termite Song (bluegrass)

Naked Space Hamsters in Love (bluegrass, with aliens)

Twenty-four Seven (a fast waltz)

Rotten Candy (fast country)

When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You (bluegrass)

Milepost 43 (moderately fast country)

Oil in the Cornfield (bluegrass)

Hey, Little Chicken (sleazy blues)

Only 12 songs (I decided to leave “Test Tube Baby” off the list). Four are dead-animal songs (five, if you count the chicken), two with live animals (if you count the aliens), and one with missing underwear. 10 of the 12 are love songs (using the term “love” very loosely). And only one—“Oil in the Cornfield”—is serious. Includes, as promised, The Song That Was Rejected by American Idol—“Rotten Candy,” which isn’t serious but sounds like it. For a change, not one song is from a previous album.

Does beg the question (which I’ve begged before): What DO you call an album like that? Maybe that’s a question the fans SHOULD answer.

RECORDING: Didn’t get to get Goodnight Kiss Music a cut of “The Termite Song” by the deadline for their “funny political” song competition, and I won’t have “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” done by the deadline for the SOSA “sampler” CD, either. For the latter, though, I can probably get the deadline extended, depending on how many entrants they have. The All-Stars still need to practice, and I’ve been busy and they’ve been busy.

Did get the recording of Beth Williams’ song “Syllables for Sale” done, though; Darrin Wayne did a dynamite job on the harmonica, and I added a simple “Miller Bass” guitar part on the Strat and posted the product in the usual places. Kudos all around thus far, including from Beth (it’s always good when the author likes the treatment you gave their song).

And got to participate in an international weekend collaboration, of all things. Wim Wever, a roofer in Holland, organized it—he did lead guitar and vocal, Stu (England) played bass, Ed (Canada) did drums and mixing. Haven’t heard it with my parts in it yet: I expect they’ll use the vocal (which was a brief introduction of the band), and don’t know about the guitar tracks (one acoustic, and one electric, both pretty simple stuff). It was fun anyway, and I hope they do more of them.

Joe