Just updates… I can’t produce the songbook, even in black-and-white, for five bucks—not when my printer goes through a $20 ink cartridge in less than 200 pages. (Yes, I need a cheaper printer, as soon as I can afford one. And Lexmark needs a Very Nasty Letter about their equipment, which I am not going to buy any more.) I’ll have to print one master, and take it to a print shop that does work for college students, and see what that costs. There’s none of those around here, but I have a little time—I won’t see Fred, who ordered the songbook, for another two weeks.

No music this coming week except for the open mike in Bay City; they’re refinishing the Dance Floor at Garibaldi City Hall (can’t set foot on it for two whole weeks), and the Tillamook Library’s music room is booked by somebody else for next Saturday.

There are maybe more places to play. The music store in Tillamook has started having Wednesday night jam sessions, and I’ll go. And there’s a Monday Musical Club that’s been soliciting my membership for a couple of years; I thought they just booked performances by famous people, but I hear that in their spare time they arrange performances by each other. (One I heard about was “Doc” Wagner playing Puccini--on the harmonica.) I could maybe do that sort of thing (not the Puccini, of course). No money in it, but it’s a way to get better known. And I have to do it around here, because without a job and income, Around Here is what I’ve got.

In the same vein, I need to try to parlay my appearance at next Saturday’s open mike into a concert (a CD release party, maybe?) at the Bay City Arts Center. Some people are at least talking about the fact I’ll be at the open mike, and that’s good. Also in the same vein, I should visit—again—the Saturday Market at the Old Mill (it’s still going on, even after Christmas), and see if I have any fans there, and whether they’d question why the Powers that Be didn’t want to hire me to play there.

I think city management as a career has about played itself out; I get interviews, but I also get rejected every time. (Another rejection this week.) I have one more interview coming up end of the month, and four more applications in the pipeline that I expect will result in rejection letters because they’re requiring the Degree Thing that I don’t have. It is time to do something else. Yes, there is probably a song in all that—but there have been a lot of songs written about rejection, and I wouldn’t want mine to be Just One More. I think I need to be apart from it a bit longer, so I can see the humor in it. Right now, that’s hard to do.

Another song to “musicate,” this one another Beth Williams tune (she’s become quite an accomplished lyricist, and I do enjoy working with her stuff). It’s got overtones of Reba McIntire, and even if I could sing, I couldn’t “do” Reba McIntire very effectively, being a guy and all. It did occur to me that I know somebody who could. I’ll have to ask her. Putting the song on the Tascam has to wait until I have the harmonica part for “Armadillo on the Interstate,” which is presently occupying the Tascam; I’ve asked Dick Ackerman if he could do it. There are four songs I want to put on the Five Dollar Album that could use harmonica leads; I have to record them one at a time, because of the one-song limitations of the Tascam. Dick could do them all, if he’s willing.

So--no band yet; no new equipment yet; no album yet; no new paying gigs yet; no job yet. I am as tired of writing “no [insert activity] yet” as I expect others are of reading it. If anything good is going to happen, I have to make it happen. There is no point in waiting for it. Do I know what to do? I do not.

And that shouldn’t stop me. One recalls Franklin Roosevelt, who got elected President in 1932 with promises to fix the Depression—without offering any specifics. He was subsequently asked by a reporter what he was going to do. “I’ll do something.” What? “Something.” And if that doesn’t work? “I’ll do something else.” Not a bad program to imitate.

Joe