The Rogue Valley Television (RVTV) taping on Saturday, 18 July will be two sets, half an hour each, before a live audience. Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. (SOSA) will be doing the taping. The shows will air separately on RVTV, the public-television station in Medford-Ashland, so each set (5 songs each) has got to hang together as a separate entity. I thought about doing one set with Darrin playing blues harp lead, and one with Dan doing mandolin, but really, everything I do sounds all right either way—and SOSA said I could have both of ‘em on stage if I wanted, so why not?

So I spec’d out the shows by subject matter instead (roughly)—one show dealing with serious social issues (not necessarily seriously, of course), and one show not:

THE SERIOUS-ISSUES SHOW:

Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (slow & sleazy)

Dead Fishes (Elizabethan bluegrass)

No Good Songs About the War (mod. slow two-step)

Free-Range Person (fast bluegrass)

Un-Easy Street (mod. slow but bouncy two-step)

AND THE NOT-SERIOUS SHOW:

Dead Things in the Shower (mod. fast two-step)

Armadillo on the Interstate (slow & sleazy)

Doing Battle with the Lawn (fast bluegrass)

Hey, Little Chicken (mod. slow almost blues)

Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up (fast bluegrass)

I’ve avoided anything socially unacceptable—no songs about bestiality, cannibalism, anorexia, murdering one’s husband, or Internet porn. (Scary to think I actually have written songs about all those things.) No religion, either. I didn’t even include “The Termite Song” because I wasn’t sure whether you could say “fart” on the air. (It’s not one of George Carlin’s famous “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television,” but this is Public Broadcasting—you never know.) I still have plenty to pick from—I have enough material to play a two-hour show for just about any kind of audience, I think.

It should be entertaining anyway. The “Serious Issues” setlist includes songs about pollution and the war, and three upbeat down-and-out songs, and the “Not Serious” list has three classics (one recorded in Nashville, and one that appeared on the Philippine Christmas album)—plus I get to mention Gene Burnett’s name on TV (since I wrote the chicken song for his album), and he’ll like that. Two co-writes among the ten. And all but two of the songs are ones either Darrin, or Dan, or both, have played before.

T-Poe, who has become southern Oregon’s poet laureate, I think (and is one of the best poets I know), will be emceeing the shows, and interviewing me in between songs. I need to find out not so much what his questions will consist of as how much time it will take; the shows are 28 minutes long, precisely (TV is a very unforgiving medium), and I want to have this thing scripted out right to the second if I can. I think I’ll send T-Poe a setlist (after I time the songs); he knows I like to do a Rap introducing songs, and we wouldn’t want his questions to duplicate what I’d normally say anyway. There are a couple of songs where the Rap is essential, and a couple where it could be left out entirely with no ill effects.

At the Wild Goose, I think I’ll play “50 Ways to Cure the Depression” (they ought to like the Paul Simon reference), and Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street,” and one or two old standards, depending on what I’ve got available in the audience for co-musicians. It’d be nice to be able to stick around for the Northwest Pasta & Pizza open mike on Tuesday (hosted by Delonde Bell since Chris Parreira went off to the big time in Austin, Texas). But that Sunday I can play with Darrin, and Monday with Dan—I succeeded in reaching both of them.

Joe