Friday at 5 p.m. I officially joined the ranks of the unemployed. I’m still in southern Oregon; got a house to clean, and furniture and books to dispose of, and some business to tie up—and I’d still like to find a job in this area, even though they are hard to come by. This is a very exciting place to live. Still haven’t decided whether to sue my former employers, though two different attorneys have advised I do have a case. (That last is for the benefit of the City Councilperson who said he’s been reading my blogs—presumably with the intent of digging up dirt on me. I expect the search was unproductive, and also exhausting—I’ve written rather a lot.)

I expect I’ll be writing even more now that I have more time. (This is the first instance of that. Two blogs in one week?)

MUSICALLY, there’s a lot to do. I get to play Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights this week, and 75% of those appearances have an agenda. Sunday’s the open mike at the Wild Goose, and I’ll try to find out when in April I have my paying gig (I asked it be early, in the expectation I’ll be moving). Monday is the Southern Oregon Songwriters’ “showcase” at the Siskiyou Pub in Ashland, and one of the people I’ll be struttin’ my stuff for is the new owner, from whom I’ve also solicited a gig. Wednesday night is practice with Screamin’ Gulch, and Wayne will bring his recording equipment, and the band will record “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You” and the Joe-got-fired song, “Free-Range Person.”

“Cliff” is going to American Idol’s 2008 song contest (deadline 31 March), and “Free-Range Person” will go to the Woody Guthrie Song Contest in June. (The Guthrie folks want “social justice” songs—in Woody’s memory, of course—and a happy, uptempo song about the advantages of being homeless probably fits the bill.) Both outfits need “radio-ready” recordings, and I’ll give ‘em the most professional job I can for no money. (Thanks, Wayne.)

THE JOE GIG (or gigs) is the other major thing I need to do before I move. I have said repeatedly if I go, I’m going with a bang—and this will be the bang. I think I’ve got the musicians for a band (maybe a couple of bands); need to practice as soon as I know the gig date(s). Posters, of course—and I maybe have a sizable mailing list I can notify.

One gig-related task is burning more CDs. I probably could use 100, and that’ll take a while, with my old-and-good-but-slow equipment; on the other hand, I’m unemployed, and have little else but time. Another task is assembling that e-mail list. Embarq’s (Sprint, the phone company) Webmail program does not do this well, and the last attempt got screwed up royally. I could get a local e-mail account (one comes with the cable-modem service), but I don’t want to do that if I’m moving.

I presently have 3 Webmail accounts, one for music (that’s the “spacehamster” one), one for other business, and one from a prior ISP that I use as a repository for spam (it’s worth the $30 a year to keep the spam off the other two accounts). I could use Yahoo, I suppose—I was forced to sign up for Yahoo e-mail (by Yahoo) as a condition of staying on the mailing list of one music publisher, but I’ve never used it.

The other thing I can do with that spare time I’m going to have so much of is learn to use Audacity. I have it (and it was free), but I’ve never used it for anything but generating “click tracks” for recording and converting things to *.wav files (something my other software doesn’t seem able to do easily). But it’s supposed to be a good recording program.

And I’ve got one more song to put music to—a country lyric penned by “Tampa Stan” Good, one of the more prolific (and better) writers I’ve met online. It’s Gospel music (and I’ve always loved gospel music), and it should be a short, simple job, ‘cause this one sings. And with a chorus line like “I love my truck, my dog, and I love Jesus,” how could one resist?

Joe