Heard this morning our drummer, Chris, is in ICU in a Portland hospital. I’ll go in to see him as soon as he’s out of intensive care, but I have a feeling he’s not going to be able to drum at the April 24 gig. We will have to find a substitute. (I can make said substitute an “I Am Not Chris” T-shirt for the occasion.)

About the only good news this week is Roland, the new guitarist who’s been coming to our Wednesday acoustic jam sessions at the Garibaldi Pub, seems to be interested in doing some performing—with me. That’d be nice. Roland is a good guitarist, and if we were doing shows together, we could trade singing, and play lead on each other’s stuff. I’d much rather do that than play solo. He has my phone numbers; we’ll see what happens.

I don’t think Roland has any PA equipment, and I don’t, either—my teeny amps are barely sufficient for playing guitar through at the Library. I could create a PA relatively easily, I think; Radio Shack still has the cheap little 4-channel mixers like the Dodson Drifters used 30 years ago, and all I’d need is a decent amp and speaker. I have the mikes, stands, and cords. I would have to do it for just about no money, because just about no money is what I have.

I saw a great (and simple) music video by a British duo. Their song’s lyrics were all front-page headlines from the London Daily Mail, and the video consisted simply of one fellow playing guitar and singing while the other displayed and discarded the newspapers with the headlines. Very simple, and very well done. It is time to do more of my songs as video—like Lorelei Loveridge said, “Video is the new radio.” I see more new songs on YouTube than I hear as *.mp3 files.

Not all my songs can—or should—be done simply as film of a live performance; a different treatment is in order, for variety if nothing else. However, it has to be simple and cheap—free, in fact. Absolutely nothing is what I can afford these days.

The model, I think, needs to be the Porter Wagoner video of “Committed to Parkview,” which may have been the last song he wrote before he died. It’s about an asylum—but they didn’t film an asylum: they simply shot footage of him and the band playing in various places around an abandoned building that might have been a hospital, once. Very simple. I could do the same sort of thing.

One song I could see this working well with is “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot,” the surprisingly popular Southern Pigfish talking blues. “Quoth” takes place partly on a beach, and partly in a tavern, and I happen to have both close by. (Could even do the tavern shots outside the tavern, and not have to worry about the lighting.) There’s a parrot in the song, of course, but he doesn’t have to appear in the video.

I’d need some footage of both locations with no “actors” in it, “on location” footage of me singing (actually lip-synching along with the recorded track), and footage of the band “finger-synching” along with the music. And then I can put it all together. I have two cameras—I just need someone to run them. First step is to record the song. And that begs the question whether I should try to have a whole different crew of musicians “play” Southern Pigfish. I maybe could.

Joe