Well, the November Failed Economy Show isn’t going to happen—can’t get a lead player. With the idea that we could maybe do a pre-Christmas show instead, I reserved the Dance Floor for Saturday, 19 December—six days before Christmas. John (bass) and Chris (drums) are both in. Now the question becomes whether I can nail down a lead player (or two) for that date.

A Christmas show could be fun. We’d still make it a benefit for the food bank, but we can avoid (sort of) the “message” songs (or most of them) and just play fun stuff. For the setlist, I’d envision maybe a dozen of my songs that are consistent hits, and a dozen of the most danceable numbers from last May’s Failed Economy Show. City Hall’s Dance Floor is big, and we might as well take advantage of it.

I have two Christmas songs that need to be on the list—“Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up,” which is pretty fast bluegrass, and the classic “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” which is slow and sleazy country. Both were on the last CD. There’s two more Christmas songs I’m not sure of: “(This Time of Year) Even Roadkill Gets the Blues” is a good two-step, and Don Varnell’s “Another Crappy Christmas” (which I did the music for) is calypso. Both have really dark lyrics, though.

On the Joe songs side, I’d like to include “The Dog’s Song,” which I think the band could do a real good job on, and also the old Dodson Drifters hit “Test Tube Baby,” and “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails,” which was going to be a Southern Pigfish song (because the lyrics are so strange). All can be played as rock ‘n’ roll and ought to be right down these guys’ alley. The band has never played them before, though. I haven’t tried to spring that many new songs at once on the band for a while.

On the promotion side, I want to use every minute of the five weeks of time between now and the show. That’s enough lead time to see if Jane Scott Productions can commit to videotaping the show (which would get it on cable TV throughout two counties), and see if the newspaper will promote it (I can promote it in my column, of course, and a surprising number of people appear to read that), see if the one local DJ I know (met him in connection with the Rocktoberfest) will promote it on his show, and get posters up literally everywhere in the area. If I can convey the idea that This Is The Place To Be on Saturday, 19 December, a lot of people may show up, because they’ll think they’d be missing something if they didn’t (which is true).

A prerequisite, though, is a lead player. We are not doing this as a trio. I’ve got a message into music teacher Mike Simpson (lead guitar), and hit up the music store (again) to interest one of their guitar teachers—emphasizing this is a benefit for the Garibaldi Food Pantry and we’re all doing this for free (the last guitar teacher I talked to insisted on being paid, and I had to tell him we just weren’t going to be able to do business). Haven’t talked to “Doc” Wagner (blues harp) yet.

Started work on the “Me and Rufus, and Burning Down the House” video. I have, I think, just enough movie footage of Rufus for the song. (For the Rap—it’s a short Rap—I can use still photos. I wanted to add text overlays, anyway.) I need to re-record the song, however; the only recording I have is the live one from when we performed the song for librarian Sara at the Tillamook Library, and I stumbled over some of the lyrics back then.

Music Friday night (with the Friday Night Group) and Saturday (at the library) this week. Another local job to apply for; it’s part-time, managing a downtown public market thing, but it turns out one of the people doing the hiring remembers me from when I was the local city manager. It’d be nice if that would help.

Joe