THE GIGS: Posters are done for the three gigs—Johnny B.’s 4/25, Triple Tree 4/26, and the Wild Goose 4/29. Two mass-mailings to the joelist, plus bulletins on MySpace. (There’s a bit of overlap between the two, but no one’s complained yet.) Still working on the 3-hour setlist for the Wild Goose—the best 3 dozen of over 50 songs. I have the first hour’s tunes organized, but not further at this point.

AND A NEW GIG: Friday 4/18, at Johnny B.’s, 7 p.m. Real short notice, but I didn’t want to pass up the chance. One of the performers at the Southern Oregon Songwriters “Trio” event scheduled for that night couldn’t come, so they tapped me (yay!), and I tapped the incomparable James Maille to play lead (more yay!). Poster and setlist are done (it’s easy to script out a short gig).

THE STUDIOS: One of the studios is out—it’s really a home recording setup (though the guy’s done some good work with it), and probably wouldn’t be available until June (too late, I think). Another is out because his room is too small, I think; we couldn’t record the entire band live—we’d have to “layer” everybody, which roughly quadruples the cost. On the other hand, I know two people who have acquired very professional recording equipment just in the past week, and they’re potentially in. I am after the best quality possible, but price is definitely an object, too, because I’m unemployed.

PROJECTS: Another song to co-write, this one with Derek Hines of JPF. The studio (using the term loosely) is set up to record Scott Garriott’s folk songs. More CDs to burn, and labels to print.

THROWAWAY POEM/SONG: I was sitting next to T-Poe (easily this area’s best poet) at the open mike Tuesday night, and lines started coming to me (T-Poe is probably infectious like that), and I wrote ‘em down. Just a quick 6-verse thing about why one-celled animals can’t have any fun—ending with an appeal for a one-night stand (by a multi-celled human being of the female persuasion, thank you). I wanted to see if I could finish it before the open mike was over, and I did—plus listened to and complimented other performers, and performed three songs myself. All in two hours. Writing for deadlines is good practice. Hight (tentatively, of course) “The Virus and the One-Night Stand.”

And then it acquired music on the 10-mile drive home. Not my music, actually—the tune is from a ragtimey 1920s French two-step I ran across years ago about the dangers of premarital sex, which on reflection did seem appropriate to the situation. (Then again, maybe it is my music. I was guessing at what the French author was doing without really being able to read sheet music—there were no chords, of course--and I was trying to memorize the whole thing before I left the thrift store, because I had no intention of buying the sheet music.)

It probably could use a chorus (the French song didn’t have one, though, and it was fine). I doubt it’s a “keeper”—and considering the subject matter, it couldn’t be played in too many places—but I’ll play it privately for a few people and see what they think. It is mostly just nice to know that I can do it. Words have been hard to come by of late.

Joe