Played the “Star of Stars” fundraiser for Rogue Community College in Medford (OR) Saturday night with Darrin Wayne. Darrin and I were both contestants (there were 16) and arranged to back each other up—him on harmonica, and me on lead guitar.

Gave ‘em “Armadillo on the Interstate,” and we were note-perfect. (It helped that I came down a day early, and we’d practiced both the night and afternoon before the show.) Nice audience (they gave Darrin’s harp solo a separate—and big—ovation); big audience, too—the bulk of the seats in South Medford High School’s auditorium appeared to be filled. I did not have CDs on hand to sell (ignoring one of my own lessons, there) and could have used them—a lot of the contestants did have CDs, and were selling them. Real nice auditorium—down in Shakespeare Festival country, they do know how to build theaters—and a good (mostly) sound system.

I didn’t win, and probably should not have expected to. It is a benefit for the college, after all, put on by the students, and two of the three finalists were students at the college (one apparently a last-minute addition to the list) even though the lion’s share of the contestants were adult members of the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. Abovementioned last-minute addition student is also the one who took first place, and the lone ($1,000) prize. (The rest of us got gift bags. Mine had new guitar strings.) And the winners (and winner) may have been good, for all I know. I didn’t get to hear them.

There were problems toward the end with the sound system. One of the instrument cables wasn’t working, which meant my lead on Darrin’s song, “Rainy Day,” wasn’t audible, and the rhythm guitarist from the previous act wasn’t audible, and neither was the solo guitar from the performer before that. And the sound crew (students) kept using the same non-working cable, as if it would magically start working the next time they plugged it in. People in the audience kept trying to tell the guy at the sound board there was something wrong, but he didn’t do anything (and may not have known how).

The last few acts were understandably bummed, and felt they’d been prevented from winning (though in retrospect, they probably weren’t going to win anyway—a student was going to win, and that, as the late Walter Cronkite used to say, is Just The Way It Is). Darrin did get to wish his son a happy 10th birthday from on stage in front of all those people, and son Dylan was mighty pleased (and also got a big round of applause from the audience.)

Would I do it again? Yes—but with a caveat: I wouldn’t make a special trip 8 hours in each direction to do it—not with gas at $4.30 a gallon—knowing that it’s not possible to win. It is a good cause, and I’m happy to have my name associated with it, and it does reach a big, new audience that hasn’t heard my stuff. (And I would make sure to bring CDs, and the signup notebook for the “joelist.”) And if something in the sound system didn’t work, I’d make sure to say so, from the stage, even if nobody else did, and make somebody fix it; I realize the “Star of Stars” organizers were trying to stick to a tight schedule, but that’s no reason to shove people out on stage with stuff that doesn’t work.

This is only the second song contest I’ve entered this year; the other was American Idol’s 2008 song contest, which I did as a matter of principle (they got “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You”). I knew I wasn’t going to win that one, and I was right. (Sometimes I hate being right.) I haven’t entered any others—yet—but I’d like to. I want, as usual, to concentrate on contests I can win, and for me, that seems to usually be contests that involve live performances.

It’s too late to audition for the Tillamook County Fair (they start their very organized process in mid-June), and reportedly the Jackson County Fair doesn’t have any talent contest (I thought every county fair in Oregon did). I haven’t sent “Free-Range Person” to this year’s Woody Guthrie Song Competition; the grand prize of $500 these days won’t cover even a fraction of the cost of getting to Woody’s old hometown in Oklahoma to perform the song on stage. There’s a Hank Williams Festival, too (held around Hank’s birthday, in September), too, and “Hank’s Song” could be a contender there—but it’s the same sort of deal: the prize money won’t cover the cost of getting there (“there” is a little town in North Carolina). And these days, that cost is important. I don’t have any money.

Joe