I got offered an audition for a movie, but I’ve pretty much decided to shine it on. Instead, I’ll be judging speech tournaments for my daughter’s college, several weekends this winter, because that pays ($50 a day, plus hotel room and maybe meals), and the movie part doesn’t. The glory—if there was any—might have been nice, but sometimes y’gotta go where the money is.

It’d have been just a bit part—an aging rock star reduced to performing in karaoke bars. I did have a problem with the part as written, because the character—“Bubba,” they called him—comes across almost as a caricature, and I thought of him more as a tragic figure. I know people like that. Heck, I could even be somebody like that.

What if you really did peak early? What if you had to wake up every morning realizing the best you were ever going to be was behind you—a long way behind you? What if the band that made you a hit, or a sort of hit, are gone—half of them dead, maybe, from too much sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll—and nobody takes you seriously any more because you’re too old? But you have to keep performing—dressing up every weekend to go sing in some hole of a bar—and you can’t explain why. Yes, I understand. The role hits awfully close to home.

That’s probably where some of the motivation behind the latest blues came from. Tentatively titled “Crosses by the Roadside.” (Yes, we’re back to lost-love songs now that the election’s over.) I haven’t decided whether the girlfriend in the song died, or just ran away—and I haven’t decided if it matters. The lyrics are coming out pretty strange, so maybe it’ll be something for Southern Pigfish to record.

With the idea of having Southern Pigfish be the guinea pigs for the flash-drive album—I need a band anyway, after all—there are several of my songs they could probably do pretty well, that’d fit in with their folk-rock style:

Born Again Barbie (co-written with Scott Rose)

Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep

Test Tube Baby (an old Dodson Drifters hit)

Vampire Roumanian Babies

Bedpans for Brains

For Their Own Ends

The last three, of course, were written specifically for them. “Bedpans for Brains” and “Born Again Barbie” are fully scripted music videos, and the rest could be adapted pretty easily, with a lot of live footage of the band. I’d probably have to do the vocals—but it’d be neat to do duets with the Dylanesque girl singer.

Resources? Well, I’ve got that video camera I don’t know how to use (that needs a $60 battery pack), but I do know it’ll hook up to a PA system. One would want a second camera, I think, to do close-ups of the performers, and then meld them in at strategic points. If we brought in an outside musician—Dan Doshier playing mandolin from 300 miles away, for instance—one could film them separate and splice in the footage one needed. I wonder if the local community college offers any film classes?

UPDATES: No from the Old Mill—they say they have all their performers booked for the season (which means I didn’t contact them soon enough). The librarian did like my poster, and they’ve got my photo, too (just a couple of instruments), and are putting it all over the library’s Website. Nice to know I finally did something somebody liked. Another rejection for a city manager job; I think I’ll concentrate on the private sector from now on. If the government’s got no use for me, I certainly got no use for the government. (I said the same thing about Nashville several years ago. And it’s been a relationship that’s worked out pretty well for both of us.)

Joe