Well, it’s not exactly “marooned.” I am at home in Garibaldi for most of the next week, and I have no car, but that’s because my wife’s is in the shop, and she’s got mine. I will be driving out to the Squirrel House for just a few hours tomorrow, to pick up my dress suit, because I do have a job interview—Falls City did call (so much for predicting the future). I’ll plan on doing SOSA’s concert programs for next Saturday while I’m there; “Alice” the computer is still there, and has not only all the graphic-design and photo-manipulation software, but also the template for the programs from last week.

So do I know what I’m doing? Not any more. If Falls City offers me the job as their city manager (and I refuse to get my hopes up—I’ve been rejected too many times by too many places), I’ll be moving there. I’ll probably have a maximum of three weeks (maybe less) to finish work on the Squirrel House, find a place to live in Falls City, move belongings and furniture to Falls City, help my daughter move into her dorm room at college, AND go down to southern Oregon for the Labor Day weekend concert (which hopefully will be concerts, not just one). I will be a very busy person. (On the other hand, I have had plenty of rest over the past 4-1/2 months.)

And if I don’t get the job, I’ll be living on the Coast, as originally planned, and being a full-time college student (which would get me the bachelor’s degree in roughly 18 months). In both cases, I’ll be doing the same things musically—setting up the publishing company, finishing off the album, and trying generally to make a name for myself wherever I am. And over five months of unemployed-and-thinking-‘bout-stuff, I have set myself out a pretty ambitious list of things I want to accomplish. It is time to do them.

“21 STEAMER DRIVE”: The lyrics for “21 Steamer Drive” got a lot of peer review, and universally favorable reactions—not bad for what was intended to be a spur-of-the-moment, “throwaway” song. A real estate ad, really. People want to hear it recorded, so I’ll have to do that. What I’d envisioned for music (and as yet have not tried to play) is something fairly jazzy (reminiscent of the Sons of the Pioneers in one of their more Benny Goodman moments), with a sick-sounding clarinet doing the lead. I don’t play clarinet—but I do know a local girl, one of my daughter’s high school friends, who does. I don’t know to what extent she can do improvisation, without sheet music—people who’ve had formal musical training tend to end up dependent on sheet music, and it’s unfortunate.

JEWS HARP FESTIVAL: The North American Jews Harp Festival was fun, and it was nice to see everybody again. A lot of them did remember me despite a three-year absence, which was nice. The impromptu “band scramble” band insisted on doing a Joe song, so we played “Armadillo on the Interstate,” and I got to be part of the stage show that night, doing “Hey, Little Chicken,” “The Termite Song,” and “Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus,” all with Denise Harrington doing Jews harp lead. Sold a CD, too (always have CDs available).

NEW PROJECT: A call on one of the writers’ Websites I subscribe to for a “Norwegian Black/Death Metal” song, with Satan in the title and a lot of swear words in the lyrics, and my response was “Why not? I haven’t done that before.” I’ll have to bleep out the swear words, of course (they are Words You Can’t Use in a Country Music Song, and I won’t use them no matter what genre I’m playing), but the bleeps will make it rhyme, won’t they? And I might as well poke fun at the Devil himself—that’s one icon I haven’t torpedoed yet. Definitely his turn in the dunk tank.

Singing (actually, I think you’re supposed to shout if it’s Norwegian Black/Death Metal) in Norwegian is probably beyond me, but I could do it in German—I had five years of German in high school and college—and if the volume is as loud as I understand it’s supposed to be, maybe no one will notice. To make sure the lyrics make as little sense as possible, I think I’ll write them in English first, and then use the “Babelfish” program to translate them into German and back to English; Babelfish’s translations are generally hilarious--almost slapstick comedy for a wordsmith.

I was going to have Southern Pigfish record this—but ran into a bona fide heavy-metal band that are actually interested in doing it, provided I’ll play electric banjo. They said they’d always wanted an electric banjo in the band, because nobody else has one—and as for me, well, why not? I have a banjo, and I can electrify it, and I understand my inability to play it is not going to be an issue here…

Joe