Setlist for the Failed Economy Show is complete, I think. I needed one fast song and one slow song to finish things off, and that’ll be a bluegrass tune of mine, “I May Write You from Jupiter,” and a waltz by the late Jeff Tanzer, who was lead guitarist for the Dodson Drifters. Jeff’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” hasn’t been performed since he died, almost ten years ago.

That gives us 22 songs (two sets of 11 each), which ought to be two hours’ worth of material. A couple of the Woody Guthrie tunes have a lot of verses and can be carried out for a long time, with lead breaks, and one of mine, “Oil in the Cornfield,” is over 6 minutes long. Six by me, five by Woody, two by Stan Good, and one each by nine others. Some blues, some bluegrass, some country, two rockabilly, one calypso, and one ragtime. I still need to work on my vocals and guitar playing on some of these. I haven’t memorized all the lyrics yet, either. Having to typset them all helped, though.

I may have time. I’m going to be vehicle-less for a while—the van died of electrical problems en route back from practice in Portland Saturday night, and it’s down at the local mechanic’s, hopefully awaiting repair and not burial. So I lugged guitar and all the infrastructure up to John’s house on foot for practice here, and got to discover that while John’s house is only 8 blocks away, it’s also 60 feet higher in elevation (there is virtually nowhere in Garibaldi that’s flat). Knowing the exercise is good for me did not make it any more fun. (And it hailed today. A lot.)

I did leave everything but the guitar at John’s house—the mike, mike stand, video camera and its tripod, cables, and the 6-channel mixer (which is very heavy if you’re not using a car to carry it). We will be practicing some more there, and this’ll give John a chance to play with the mixer, which we will need to record with—John’s new 12-channel machine is on backorder, and won’t arrive until late May. Having the mike at John’s means I won’t be able to record anything here—but I hadn’t been recording anything anyway.

Having two bands to play with does let me compare them to each other constantly. This week, the Portland band is ahead; we had everybody there for practice on Saturday, probably half the songs sounded excitingly good (we’ll have one more practice, in two weeks), the sound finally got put together okay, and we got a good recording of some of the songs. If I can get a copy, I can put together a gig-soliciting EP. We are comfortable enough with some of the stuff so we can do some experimenting; David has some very other-worldly sounding guitar leads on “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” (which he taught me, so I can try it on the Strat at home), and does a satisfyingly raunchy bottleneck slide on “She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself.” It will be nice. Still don’t have anybody doing vocals except me.

Music Wednesday night at the tavern, Friday at City Hall (both just a couple of blocks away), Saturday at the Tillamook Library (a bus ride), and Sunday I think we’ll practice again in Garibaldi.

I was berating myself for not having accomplished anything, but that’s not true—I have done a few things, just not things I wanted to do. I have written one new song—“50 Ways to Cure the depression”—and it’s okay; I have musicated five songs by other people (seven if you add the two Woody Guthrie tunes I couldn’t find music for); have adapted two complicated pieces of music into forms I can not only play, but sing; and have memorized maybe half of an hour and a half of brand-new material. I guess that’s not too bad. I still don’t have a job—got another rejection letter in the mail—and right now, don’t have a car, either, and despite the accomplishments, don’t feel I’m doing enough. If I were, things would be better, right?

Joe