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roxhythe

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Blog Entries posted by roxhythe

  1. Two people, now, have contacted me saying Deathgrass needs a Website. (I do agree.) They’ve both advised when you google “Deathgrass,” you come up with nothing (which I have advised is Google’s fault, not ours—it simply proves Google does not and cannot know everything). But I’d agree a Deathgrass Website is not only desirable, but necessary. I’m just not sure how to do it. (Technological dinosaur, y’know.)

    Here’s my idea of what a Deathgrass Website should do. It should be simple—accommodating the folks who still have old, slow computers and slow connection speeds (I was one of those for a long time). And it can be one “page,” consisting primarily of links, because a lot of the pieces of an Internet marketing system already exist, and just need to be connected. So we need:

    --A link to a music “page” on Soundclick, SoundCloud, ReverbNation, or one of the other online music databases (OMDs).

    --A link to “The Writer’s Blog” on blogspot.

    --A link to the specific spot on CDBaby (still to be developed) where people can buy the album online.

    --And links to everybody who’ll provide links to us. Years ago, a pharmacist I knew in Germany maintained that was the way business would be done on the Internet—“Links. People will pay for links.” I’m not going to pay for links, but as usual, I’d do trades. Might end up with a whole ‘nother page of links.

    In addition, I want a button people can click to play a song. That could be a link, too—we don’t need a separate player. The song needs to change regularly—at least weekly, I’ve been told. A button that’d play (link to) a video of the band in concert would be good, too—and we will have some video, from the Feb. 5 Failed Economy Show.

    Photos, of course—and there aren’t many photos of the band in existence. I have a camera, but I’m playing in the band and don’t get to use it. I need to make a regular practice of turning over my camera to someone in the audience at concerts, and telling them to take lots of pictures. The camera’s little chip-brain will hold over 100 photos.

    And the e-mail list. The Website must provide a place people can sign up to be notified of future gigs, and future albums. We “collect people” at every show, and the list is growing, slowly. The folks collected from the Website (name, e-mail, and location, too, I think) need to get incorporated into the existing list automatically. I’m not sure how. The ability for folks to leave notes is important, too: the ability to communicate personally is one of our strengths, and I want to make sure we can do it easily.

    We’ll need a domain name; *.org, *.net, *.us and *.info are easy—it’s only getting a *.com that’s a hassle. And hosting? The phone company (my ISP) used to host customers’ Websites, but they’ve changed names three times (and been bought out once) since the last time I checked. I don’t know if they still do that. I know one outfit that just hosts their Website themselves—it’s on a computer that’s simply on all the time. And I do have a spare computer—“StuartLittle,” out in the garage, waiting to become the “brains” of the studio (as soon as the weather warms up). Could maybe do that.

    So where do I go from here?

    Joe
  2. Heard from a friend on the other side of the globe about the musician in Bend, Oregon, who committed suicide at an open mike; reportedly, the guy introduced a song entitled “Sorry for the Mess,” and at the end, stabbed himself to death. He was 19… I was asked whether one should say anything. I’m not sure one can. Without knowing more—specifically, why it happened—any comment I could offer would be pure speculation. I think I’d like to hear the song. It might offer some clues. I am perennially curious what makes people tick (or in this case, stop ticking).

    Thought about it myself? Hey, I even wrote about it—“Angel in Chains,” the country death metal anthem, is about a suicide. And because I wrote about it, I don’t have to do it. Music for me has always been an outlet: if as a consequence I am a quieter, less assuming person, I am also a less bloody one.

    My “Irish period” is not over yet, I guess. The Irish songs I’ve been exposed to, whether they be jigs, reels or hornpipes, all seem to have ridiculous titles, like “Dance of the Honeybee” and “The Dusty Windowsill”—prompting the idea of writing an Irish-style instrumental with a thoroughly outrageous title. “What Seamus McMenamin Did to the Sheep the Night He Died,” say. And en route home from playing music at the Rainbow Lotus, a “sheepish” melody did occur to me—compelling enough so I will have to do something about it to get it out of my head. Unfortunately, it’s also growing words…

    It will still be performable in public, because I will deliberately avoid saying what it was Seamus actually did to the sheep; instead, as it’s turning out, the song describes the revenge the other barnyard animals wreak upon Seamus. So yes, it could even be a kid’s song. With a moral, of course.

    Deathgrass is in for the Rocktoberfest (like last year, it’ll be in mid-September, when the weather’s presumably better); first commitment of Concert Season—and it’s a paying one (though it doesn’t pay much). I was asked to be on the committee reviewing the bands this year; they currently have seven bands booked, and want 12. They want to keep it local to the extent possible (one band from Portland has already asked to be in)—there’s plenty of talent in this area that’s just being ignored. Deathgrass isn’t rock ‘n’ roll exactly—I’m not sure what we are, really—but we will deliberately be doing our “rockier” numbers for this concert.

    And exciting news: “Rock Candy,” the all-girl rock band in Cincinnati Polly Hager sings (and plays bass) with, is interested in performing a couple of my songs—“Pole Dancing with Jesus” and “I Want a Man for Christmas.” I’d love to hear that recorded, if they ever have the chance. Performance, of course, is the key to exposure, not recording, but I’m unlikely to make it back to Cincinnati to hear them play any time soon. There is just not the money.

    The play’s over now, and now I can start making up all the stuff I haven’t done while I was being the local equivalent of a Broadway star. I think I get to play music four times this coming week—Thursday with The Impromptus, Friday in Garibaldi, Saturday at the library, and Sunday at the Rainbow Lotus. Stuff to record, stuff to film, stuff to write for the paper, and jobs to apply for—and I want to hear Noam Chomsky speak in Portland Wednesday (and pick up Alice’s computer part while I’m in the Big City). There is also sunshine predicted, and I have a bunch of things to do outside—humming the “Seamus” tune the while, I expect.

    Joe

  3. Ash Wednesday...

    By roxhythe ,

    HAPPY ASH WEDNESDAY… The new song, tentatively hight “Up in Heaven the Angels Play Music,” is in final form, I think, and recorded. Not really a religious song (except in the sense that “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” is a religious song). I will plan on performing it at the library next Saturday, and see what folks there call it—that’ll be its real title. (That’s if folks bother to request it again, of course; if they don’t, it won’t matter). Link is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=8772093.

    The musicians at the library on Saturday and at City Hall on Friday were all trying to do love songs, in honor of Valentine’s Day, so I gave the library folks “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” “Rotten Candy” (which was actually written on Valentine’s Day) and the Southern Pigfish anthem, “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails”; the folks at City Hall got to hear “Armadillo on the Interstate” and “Always Pet the Dogs.” Sold a CD Friday night, too.

    And on Saturday, I gave two CDs away. One went to Jane Scott, the video lady, who was filming Saturday morning’s visit by the local Congressman; Jane and I did the “Jeff Benson thing”—she apologized for never returning my phone calls, and I told her it was all right, and we both agreed we were both still interested in videotaping a “Deathgrass” concert to air on local cable TV (which covers two counties). She was excited about getting the CD, and with luck it will make her more interested in filming a concert. The other CD went to our local state representative, who had come to hear the Congressman (and apologized for not donating to the Food Pantry like she’d promised to); in her case, the CD may make her interested in coming to the next concert. Tentatively, we’ve got one concert around St. Leif’s Day (March 29), and one in June—another benefit for the Food Pantry.

    Music this week Wednesday and Saturday; I have City Council meetings to cover for the paper Tuesday and Thursday nights, a high school debate tournament to help judge Friday, and rehearsals for “The Tempest” Sunday (and next Tuesday, too), but it still feels like I’m not doing enough. The following week, I have Thursday nght free, and I think I’ll essay a trip into Portland for one of those open mikes. (There’s an open mike in Portland Friday night, too, that I might be able to get to after the speech tournament.)

    Open mikes may be the way to go to develop a bigger fan base, or a fan base in a new market (like Portland); I don’t have to generate an audience, because they’re already there. All I have to do is impress them. If I do it right, I may have people inviting me to do shows after a while, and people willing to attend them. I probably can devote one night a week long-term to this effort. I probably cannot afford to do more.

    I got word of somebody starting an open mike in Manzanita (20 miles or so north of here), and I offered myself; I think they really want bands, though—essentially auditioning talent they can hire to play weekends come summer—and I don’t think I can commit the band to an audition. I did tell the Manzanita folks the band was probably available come summer, but absent something they can listen to (CD) or watch (DVD), that may not matter much. I did see someone advertising on Portland Craigslist to record (for a fee, of course) live concerts—and it occurs to me I know somebody in this area who says he can do that, too: a local minister with some good recording equipment. I wonder if he’d be interested in recording the St. Leif’s concert?

    Joe
  4. 2008 GOALS (New Year’s Resolutions): I suppose I should add one more. A veejay in Canada asked if I could turn “Born Again Barbie” into a music video. I should. I had it scripted out at one time (before I upgraded “Alice” the ‘puter and lost a lot of files), but didn’t have the technology to pull it off. (My daughter has crates of naked Barbies in the garage, though. I think I have a cast.)

    I gave away the $12 Webcam, too—never did use it—but acquired a real-live video camera. Trick is to make it interface with the computer; there’s no owner’s manual, and no computer-interface cables. (There are reasons why things are cheap.)

    SONGSTUFF: Hooked up with SongStuff again (www.songstuff.com); they, too, have blogs, so I posted mine there. 17 readings in two days. I guess that’s good. Thank you, whoever you are (or were). SongStuff is where I’d started my stream-of-consciousness post about starting my own publishing company, back last year, and starting my own publishing company is something else I need to get busy and do. Publishing companies are not exactly lining up and banging on the door. The alternative—the ONLY alternative, near as I can see—is to build my own door and bang on it myself. (On the one hand, I will know who’s banging on the door—but on the other hand, I know the door is going to get answered.)

    Other casualties of the computer upgrade: The “Joe is Great!” brochure is gone; I’ll have to re-create it. (However, I have better photos now.) The promotional photo my daughter designed, with the “Wanted in 6 States for Playing Bad Country Music” tag, is also disappeared—but there may be a decent copy floating around somewhere on the Web (I circulated it a lot). It was on my music-business stationery (gone), my business cards (gone), and the “Yes!” signup sheets for people wanting to be notified of the next CD (also gone). I have a lot of re-creating to do.

    (Those, by the way, are all important items in the independent musician’s toolbox, as far as I’m concerned. Like the stack of CDs for sale, you don’t want to leave home without them.)

    What goes on the “Joe is Great!” brochure, anyway? According to Getting Heard, a 1970s bible on self-promotion for working bands, it should include a brief (and not too gushing) description of what the music is like, some of the venues I’ve performed at, good photos of me playing for audiences large and small, and the all-important contact information—mail, phone, cell phone, e-mail, and Websites. Some juicy extracts from press clippings (I do have a few) and from people who sound like press clippings (I have some of those, too) on the back.

    And that promotional photo goes on EVERYTHING. It serves as my logo; it’s what (intentionally) people will remember, because it’s eye-catching, and it IS on everything. (I even made a T-shirt with it.) A band (Getting Heard, again) needs a good logo for marketing purposes; it’s the “cultural shorthand” people will remember you by. (Hey, it works for cars. And the only difference between me and a car is the number of cylinders. And the speed.)

    UPDATES: Screamin’ Gulch practices again Wed. (1/2), first time in 2 weeks; we’ll get to hear how Wayne’s recording of the last practice came out. Heard about a new jam session, at the Eagles Lodge on Sunday afternoons; country music, too. (Would be fun to wear a Southern Oregon Songwriters T-shirt to one of those, and get a little cross-pollination going. This area needs more country music. Or the country music needs to be more visible.)

    Joe

  5. 10 Minutes...

    By roxhythe ,

    Potato plants are finally coming up in the garden. It would be a severe blow to my self-confidence if I killed potato plants; potatoes are supposed to be indestructible. (And I’m half-Irish. I should be genetically able to grow potatoes.) Elsewhere in the garden, the corn appears unhappy it got transplanted, the peas are slowly committing suicide, and the carrots and green beans have yet to show their faces (or whatever they call them) above ground. And that’s the good news.

    Got the call telling me Deathgrass will only be allowed to play ten minutes at Garibaldi Days, instead of the half-hour we’d originally planned on. (The “Rockshop” kid bands will reportedly only have ten minutes each, too.) That, I am told, is because of the volume of people that have come out of the woodwork wanting to perform at a Talent Show. I don’t (and won’t) complain about that—I think it’s good. I just wish there were more time for what I guess I’d call more professional entertainment, too. Maybe next time.

    I will have to ask the band what they want to do. It doesn’t bother me too much (though I don’t like late-breaking changes in rules); I’ll be down at the park anyway, helping to set up the stage and the PA system, and I’ll be at Garibaldi Days all day, and I’ll join Roland on stage when (if?) he plays if he still wants accompaniment. But I do worry about how this impacts the rest of the band. Two of ‘em are coming from out of town (though not far out of town, thankfully), and the drummer’s hauling down his kit, which is a truckload of stuff, and we’ll have spent time practicing, and at least the other four of ‘em are taking time out of rather busy lives to do this, and do it for free, for the Lions Club. But is it worth it to do it for just ten minutes? I have to ask. And I should probably ask before we get together to practice.

    And it always could be less than ten minutes. The way we’d set up the schedule, Deathgrass was going to close out the show—but the PA system has to leave at 4:00, so if things run really over (and I guess they could, if Talent Show acts keep calling) it’s possible we might not get to play at all. (Alternatively, if the Talent Show acts are real short—and the ones with little kids will be—we could end up having more than ten minutes to play. I hate uncertainty.)

    I am, as usual, prepared to accept whatever happens; it’s not my show, and I wasn’t asking for it to be my show. I only wanted to help. I am glad I didn’t get too much advertising out before the rules changed.

    Now, the last time I vented in the blog about Garibaldi Days, people complained, and I ended up with people upset with me, and some of them are still upset with me. Accordingly, I’d advise those inclined to complain not to bother. What’s in place is not going to change. There isn’t enough time, even if somebody did want to change it—and the Talent Show will be good. Really. If Deathgrass doesn’t get to play (or play much), not to worry—we will be playing other places this summer, and they will be advertised. (And thank you for being interested.) I bet we could arrange a longer concert by the “Rockshop” bands at a later date, too, if they’re interested. (Remember, I work at an Arts Center that has a stage and a dance floor.)

    Doc won’t be able to do an August 21 concert; he and his hunting dogs will be out of town at field trials. (I met the dogs today. Impressively smart critters. Both girls.) Would we want to do the Food Pantry benefit Labor Day weekend instead? Again, I’ll have to ask. I don’t want to schedule it earlier than August 21, because I want a solid month to advertise in. One needs to hit the public from a lot of different directions, in a lot of different media, to get their attention.

    Music at City Hall Friday night, and the Library Saturday afternoon; Sunday night, three of us who’ve never played together before are getting together to see if we could be a contra dance band. We’ll have fiddle, piano, and me on guitar. I’ve done a little digging online (the Internet is a wonderful place sometimes) to see what exactly “contra dance music” is; two tunes I know that seem to fit the standards are the 1900-vintage Indian love song, “Red Wing,” and—surprise!—Stan Good’s “Real Good Coffee and a Real Good Wife.” I wonder what else I can find?

    Joe
  6. A question from Lorelei Loveridge, founder and chief rabble-rouser of Performing Songwriters United Worldwide, about working conditions for performing artists in the music business, and what we’re doing (or can do) about it. Can one coax order out of chaos?

    The chaos itself has order, I think. One framework that seems to come close to defining the music industry today is the old Soviet Union Communist Party. There was—the Soviets often pointed it out—intense competition within the Party, but only, be it noted, within the Party; there was no chance of advancement outside the Party, and who got what inside the Party was rather firmly in the hands of a handful of people. It does sound a lot like Nashville today, doesn’t it?

    Officially classless, it’s a very stratified system, with folks at the top who control the Party and most of its functions, Party members benefiting from it, those in the Party but not benefiting from it, and those who are outside the Party altogether. I’m in the last group, and I don’t like it. On the other hand, I consider trying to become a Party member a waste of my time, because benefits—indeed, Party membership itself—are distributed if not arbitrarily, at least without reference to what one can do. I want to be invited to participate in a system that rewards talent, and I don’t think the music industry does either any more. So I deliberately work outside the system, at the same time that I complain about not being part of it.

    To be sure, there are cracks in the music industry’s Iron Curtain. The Internet, which nobody controls (and therefore the music industry does not control) offers an alternative distribution system and publicity system—if anyone can figure out how to take advantage of it effectively. At this point, a lot of people are trying to do so, and I watch them, trying to puzzle out what works.

    I think working conditions for performing artists—the ones not at the top of the food chain—are best described as “appalling.” Working bands are paid today the same as the Dodson Drifters made 30 years ago—only gas doesn’t cost a quarter a gallon any more, and cars aren’t under five grand, and medical insurance for a family isn’t $200 a month. The few people I know who are making a living as full-time musicians are working very hard, and living pretty close to the edge. These days, most performing artists need to have day jobs—and though it’s not much mentioned, their craft suffers because they don’t get to devote as much time to it.

    What does one do? I tend to default to old solutions: I perform a lot, not so much to make money at it (though that would be nice) as to showcase the material (from a craft standpoint, I need to know if my stuff is any good, too, and only playing it to a live audience and seeing how they react will tell me that). I play a lot for free, and on the Internet my songs are playable and downloadable for free, because I’m not a household word yet. I try at every opportunity to get other people playing my stuff, and I return the favor by playing other independent writers’ stuff—cloning myself (and them) on a small scale.

    The above is the business plan of the drug dealer—I will hook you with free samples, in the expectation of making money off you later. Yes, that entails a confidence in the product, but I expect I have that. The drug dealers were one of the few successful non-Party business groups in the old Soviet Union, so there’s an historical precedent, too. And when the Soviet Union finally collapsed (as I hope the music industry does also), the drug dealers had the first functioning business organization able to fill the breach. There is hope for the future, in other words. (I will need a day job first, however. I cannot make money off just being a musician.)

    In general, as a traditionalist in music style (if not content), I see no point in gimmicks. I will do music videos (cheaply, of course), because that takes advantage of the visual orientation of modern society, but some of those videos will simply be performance videos—not everything is subject to “enhancement.” In the same vein, I’ll sell the next album on CDBaby, too, because it’s an alternative distribution network not part of the “Party apparatus.”

    And of course, there’s a song in it. Besides the growing number of Failed Economy songs, I do have one about the music business—“Meet Me at the Stairs,” written back in 2001 as I was watching performers trying to peddle themselves and their wares at a bluegrass festival. Link is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=4841699 . Music reflects life. I just sometimes wish it didn’t reflect it so darkly.

    Joe
  7. The Songs for Kids CD arrived in the mail today. It’s got ten songs:

    I’m a Squirrel—Gene Burnett
    Great Day—Marion Rose
    Love is Wonderful—Delonde Bell
    I See a Cloud—Scott Perry
    Dream Pony—Larry West
    When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies—me
    Tangle of the Jungle—Diana Roarty
    Stand Up/Sit Down—Gary Elkinton
    Cinnamon Bear—Sheila Kaufman & Lee James McAboy
    Abby’s Waltz—Bridget Wolf

    And a photo of a cookie on the cover (yay!). Bunch of great writers there—and it turns out I know seven of them personally and an eighth by reputation. Proceeds from sale of the CD benefit the Maslow Project, which helps homeless kids. I understand the CD’s for sale for $10 (plus shipping) but am not sure—yet—where people can order it; I understand the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. board will be deciding this weekend whether they’ll sell it, and if so, it’ll be possible to get it through them.

    This is the third time I’ve had a song on someone else’s compilation CD (that I know of, anyway). In 2009, my song “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up†was on the album A Global Christmas, published and released in The Philippines. Mine was one of only three songs on the album that were in English. And last year, when the Coventry Songwriters group over in England put out a “Best of…†CD, one of mine was on that, too—“In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You.â€

    First encouragement—finally—at caller class. A couple of people (including instructor Daryl) think I’m improving. I need that. Got some insights, too, into how the whole “traffic pattern†in a square of dancers works, that I think are going to make it easier. Like Gene Burnett says in the “Ninja†song (my favorite song of his, I think), “I can do this thing, I know that I can.â€

    I am ready, I think, to have a square of live dancers to practice on. Bob (square dance club president) and I were going over whom I might enlist locally, and there just might be enough if everybody’s willing. I’d warn all of ‘em it might be frustrating for a while—I am a novice at this, and don’t have my timing down at all. On the other hand, the only way I’m going to get it down is practice. I don’t have the luxury of popping down the street to a friendly square dance club any night of the week like the Portland folks do; if I do that, it’s a 5-hour drive and $50-60 in gas in the old truck.

    I’ve figured out how to make matching speaker stands for the PA system. I need some electrical parts; outdoor light boxes would work best, because they have threaded holes on all four sides and in the lid, but I don’t want to buy them new. I’d like the $10 speakers to remain the most expensive component. (Which they won’t be. I’ve already arranged to buy one of those fancy square dance caller’s mike holders that’s got the on/off switch and volume control in the handle. They sell for over $100 new. I’m getting mine for $25.) When I’m done, I‘m going to be spray-painting the whole arrangement black, to hide what it was made out of, anyway.

    Music Thursday, Friday and Sunday this week; the new band will practice either Saturday or Wednesday next—they haven’t decided yet. Need to work up a St. Leif’s Day set for the Thirsty Lion March 27—I believe I’m being invited back. Can I get Denise and her accordion to come with?

    Joe


  8. Bailed on tonight’s caller class and Thirsty Lion gig; hated to, but the roads to Portland are bad and near as I can tell will be getting worse—and county emergency management says a “real†storm is on the way. Eric has re-scheduled me for Tuesday, Feb. 14—Valentine’s Day. Told him I’d play all love songs. I have plenty.

    Some video thoughts. Some of my songs are easier to script out than others. Some potentially easy ones are:

    SPEND THE END OF THE WORLD WITH ME: I’d like to try filming just a clock, with a prominent second hand, ticking toward midnight; overlay the lyrics. I actually have several clocks like that. Could I use them all? Audio: I would re-record the music, mostly because I’d like a higher-quality recording. Just guitar and fiddle (again) might be enough. This one needs to go to market because everybody who’s heard it likes it.

    THE STRANGE SAGA OF QUOTH, THE PARROT: I’d film this partly on the beach at Rockaway (where I found some big piles of driftwood), partly in front of the Ghost Hole tavern in Garibaldi. Audio: I’d give this one the Full Band Treatment—bass, drums, lead guitar, and blues harp. I think this election year, this one’s marketable.

    THE DEAD SWEETHEARTS POLKA: I’d film this entirely on or near the banks of the Nehalem River (which is wide and deep, and therefore perfect for the song). Another one where I could overlay lyrics. Audio: When I re-record the music, I want an accordion for the “whiny†lead, to emphasize the “polka†aspect.

    THE DOG’S SONG: I need about five minutes’ worth of footage of a hyperactive kitten doing hyperactive kitten things. (All the kittens I knew grew up too fast, including Aslan and Hansolo here at home.) For the dog, still shots of Amy, our late giant Doberman, unless I can find a large old dog willing to be filmed. Audio: Music for this one is done—it’s the Deathgrass cut, off the album.

    POLE DANCING FOR JESUS: I need a pole (or poles), and dancers. A little outside footage in front of a tavern (I’ll hide the name); for the chorus, I would like a churchlike congregation—and in the final chorus, the dancers would ideally join the congregation. Audio: A full band would make this sound really sleazy (which would be ideal); one needs that heavy bass to give it a Gospel feel. This is the other real popular one, and should go to market for the same reason.

    I can do all these myself (or with minimal help, of the “actor†or “hold the camera†variety). Accordingly, when I talk to videographers (I know a couple who are quite good, and there may be more), I should focus their attention on other songs, asking “What can you do with these?†The Arts Center videotapes performances, too—we’ll be videoing the next Open Mike, first Saturday in February—and that’s a good time to get footage of any songs where just a solo performance would be sufficient.

    I’ve noticed that’s all that some of those grand-prize-is-a-music-video companies do—they simply film you playing. That’s okay—one simply needs to be aware that’s what one is going to get. It might be professional-quality, but it’s nothing particularly special. I’d like to get more.

    Despite not being able (or willing) to travel very far in the Winter Storm, I have two verses (the second and third, I think) and the chorus to the Gospel song (tentative title “Is There Room Up in Heaven for a Sinner Like Me?â€). I still need a first verse, to set things up, and a fourth one, to wrap things up. The redemption sentiments notwithstanding, it’s still got some tongue-in-cheekiness. I bet it can’t be performed in church.

    Joe
  9. The Rocktoberfest setlist looks like this:

    Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
    Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
    For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
    Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow Gospel
    Test Tube Baby—Elvis-style rock ‘n’ roll
    Steamboat Bill (Shields & Leighton)—1910 rock ‘n’ roll
    So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
    Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
    She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
    No Good Songs About the War—slow march
    Simple Questions (O.N. Vindstad)—rockabilly
    Angel in Chains—country death metal
    Writer’s Block Blues—slow & sleazy
    The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
    Aginst the Law (Woody Guthrie)—slow blues
    Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly
    Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—deliberate two-step
    Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad (Woody Guthrie)—fast bluegrass

    Of 18 songs, only six are classifiable as some variety of country music. We’ve got six that are rock, folk-rock, or rockabilly, plus some blues (3), ragtime (1), and country death metal (1). The one bluegrass song doesn’t sound bluegrass at all when Larry plays it on saxophone (it didn’t sound bluegrass when the Grateful Dead did it, either). There’s a mix of tempos and keys, too.

    Next step: CDs for the band—and lyric sheets for Larry and Charlie for the songs they haven’t played before. (I think “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is the only one that nobody’s played before. Deathgrass never played it because 45 Degrees North was playing it—but 45 Degrees North has broken up.) I can distribute the stuff tomorrow when I go to play music at the Tillamook Library.

    Music with the Friday Night Group wasn’t bad; I concentrated on old, familiar tunes I was pretty sure everybody knew, and that Elsie could or would play accordion lead on. She (accordion) and I (guitar) were the only musicians there who could play lead, and I can’t do a lead while I’m singing. At least, with new strings on the guitar, I can pull off a mostly acceptable quasi-bass (no bass player there, either). Did have a good audience, though.

    One new person (another poet) at the Writers’ Guild Thursday night In Jim’s absence, and with Vaughn moved, I seem to have ended up as Team Leader of this outfit, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I’ve been trying to steer everybody toward “oral tradition” poetry—the sort of stuff that’s recited, rather than read—because that kind of poetry is susceptible to musication, and as Leonard Cohen once said, that’s how a poet gets to make a living in the modern world. It would be neat if these poets could turn into polished lyricists, whose stuff could be set to music by people like me (and hopefully many more people than just me)—we’d have a miniature Tin Pan Alley song factory here on the Coast. I’m hoping my musication of Ahna’s “airship mechanic” song (which I do think will come out good) will show them the sort of thing that’s possible, and get them excited.

    I have loaded all the “new” hardware into the “Hulk” computer, and it still can’t find either hard drive, or the CD drive. Makes one wonder if the motherboard’s bad. I have no way to test it, except by switching everything to another hulk (I have two more in reserve I can use). And “Alice” the ‘puter’s hard drive is still 99.9% full, making it difficult to do anything major. (Her motherboard’s going, too. She is over 7 years old, which is longer than most computers live—though “Ben,” the PC that I resurrected for the Arts Center, is 12 years old.) Got the old laptop to do a brain-wipe on, also.

    Joe
  10. When I played “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot” at the Rapture Room Sunday night (I’d been asked if I knew any political songs), it was remarked that this would make a good music video. Yes, it would. It is one of the easiest of my songs to convert to video, I think. Most, if not all, of it could be shot on a beach (got several of those nearby), with driftwood, maybe (got some of that, too). Very minimalist—recalling Porter Wagoner’s “Committed to Parkview,” which is about an asylum but was simply shot in and around an abandoned institutional-type building that might have once been an asylum. (It was even done in black and white.) That minimalism leaves nearly everything up to the listener’s imagination—which, in my opinion, is as it should be.

    It would be nice to have a professionally-done recording of the “Quoth” song to work with; the recording I have is only a draft, done on the Tascam (and not one of my best products, either). Since “Quoth” is one of the Southern Pigfish songs, it’d also be nice to film it without me in it—with someone else lip-synching the lyrics (or for fun, with several different people, maybe some of them girls, lip-synching the lyrics).

    Equally minimalist—and equally easy to film—is “The Dead Sweethearts Polka.” That one simply needs to be footage of a river. I had considered the Yamhill River just outside Lafayette my ideal river, because it’s wide, fast and spooky (lots of shade), but the Nehalem River at Mohler has similar character and would work just as well (and is much closer to home). Again, there is not a professional recording of the audio, and I could use one if I’m going to do a good job with this. (And since it is a polka, it’d be nice to have an accordion player on the recording. I do know a few of those.)

    One video I could do right now with the tools I’ve got is “The Dog’s Song.” I have sound for that one; it’s on the Deathgrass album. Though the song is from the point of view of the dog, the star is really the kitten—all I need is about five minutes of footage of a hyperactive kitten doing hyperactive kitten things. I can’t use our kittens, Aslan and Hansolo, because they have gotten too large; they don’t look like kittens any more. (They are now larger than the miniature poodle—and the poodle is concerned.) I need either somebody with a hyperactive kitten to send me some footage, or live close enough so I can come over and film said kitten. (I believe I know a dog or two that would be willing to play the part of the dog—which consists mostly of laying around and looking disgusted.)

    Others? Ideally, everything should be video-enabled; like DJ Len Amsterdam said, “Video is the new audio.” More and more music—classic and modern—is showing up on YouTube and its clones, with “listener-generated” video if nothing else. This may be the new way people share music. They watch it. And they’ll expropriate stuff they like and post it again under their own names. You can’t download most of this stuff, so I guess people consider it okay to do that. When daughter wanted the band to play some specific cover songs at her wedding (we ended up only playing one of them), she sent me YouTube links—but to actually download the music, so I could make setlist CDs for the band, I had to go to Rhapsody or iTunes and buy it.

    Slow week ahead, and I suppose I should be grateful. 45 Degrees North has indeed broken up, and that’s sad; I hope everybody continues to play and perform—and I’ll have some work for the individuals down the road, I think. The Friday Night Group has started playing again in Garibaldi, and I’ll sit in with them, and see if anything’s improved; music Saturday at the Tillamook Library, too, for the first time in a long time. Writers’ Guild Thursday night. I’ve got Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song to musicate, too, and setlists to organize (and record) for the Rocktoberfest and railroad centennial. Maybe it’s not that slow.

    Joe
  11. I’m slowly slipping back into my new/old role as newspaper reporter. It’s not a real job—I’m just a fill-in, while the real reporter is having a baby. I have covered three news stories in the past 24 hours (still have two of the stories to write, though), and have a fourth to do tomorrow afternoon. It was a distinct pleasure to be able to go to a meeting and do the write-up in an hour after I got back home, and know it was right. If I could keep that up, it’d be worthwhile. And people are starting to not ask, “Do you still write for the paper?” when they call. They just call.

    I have, I believe, all the songs for the “12 Reasons Why Joe is Going to Hell” album. (I am limited to 12 unless I change the title.) They are, not in order:

    Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy
    Song for Charity (and Faith, and Hope)—fast bluegrass
    Born-Again Barbie (co-wrote with Scott Rose)—Everly Brothers-style rockabilly
    Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?—slow & sleazy
    Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus—trad. Gospel
    The Abomination Two-Step—fast bluegrass
    In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You—slow & sleazy
    Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep—Johnny Cash-style rock ‘n’ roll
    Dead Sweethearts Polka—polka
    Angel in Chains—country death metal
    Electronic Love—slow & sleazy
    I Want a Man for Christmas—rock & roll

    First six on the list are religious songs (using the term loosely, of course). The rest are about a stalker (“Shadows”), bestiality (“Sheep”), a serial killer (“Sweethearts”), suicide (“Angel”), Internet porn (“Electronic Love”), and, well, Christmas. A good mix—some rock ‘n’ roll, some bluegrass, a polka, one Gospel, one country death metal (possibly the only country death metal song ever written), and a bunch that can’t be described as anything but “sleazy.”

    Polly Hager wants her band to do a couple of these, and if I could get and use recordings of them, we could call the album “12 Reasons Why Polly and Joe Are Going to Hell.” It’d be nice to have Polly’s voice on other songs, too.

    It’s going to be a while before I can afford to record anything commercially again; I will simply have to assemble things on a catch-as-catch-can basis over time, as opportunities present themselves, and then master the entire product when I have all the pieces together. That is an opportunity to experiment with instrumentation; some of the songs (the rockers, say) need a full band, but there are some that could be done well with minimal instrumentation. (Or odd instrumentation—I could really use an accordion on “The Dead Sweethearts Polka,” for instance.)

    And there may well be more songs before I’m done—I do expect to keep writing, and every now and then, one will pop out that’s going to be a candidate for the “Going to Hell” album.

    Album cover for this needs to be simple—just a plain brown wrapper. (There are even companies that make CD cases out of recycled cardboard—cheap and appropriately gross.) Simple lettering—the photos and other fancy stuff will all be inside.

    So that’s the next step. Bunch of work to do before that happens, though.

    Joe
  12. I now know what I’m doing almost every day and night next week (I am developing the kind of rigid schedule I had as an employed person). Sunday is “beta” rehearsal for the play (I think that’s one step below dress rehearsal), practice in the evening with “the impromptus” (we don’t have a name yet), and I need to do the press release for the music publisher; Monday, I have a Garibaldi Days meeting (one more pitch to have Deathgrass play) and I’ll do my first shooting for the video class’s documentary; Tuesday is dress rehearsal for the play (and taking promotional photos of the actors—second time I’ve done that); Wednesday and Thursday I have my “office hours” for the Arts Center, and Thursday night is a tsunami post-mortem meeting in South County I should cover for the paper. Friday is the job interview. And Friday night, the “Southern Hospitality” play starts its 3-weekend run.

    In between all that, I have stuff to write for the paper, and the album to send off for replication. The latter has been more problematic than I expected, because DiscMakers can’t seem to get my artwork positioned right. (In defense of DiscMakers, it could always be my fault, of course.) But I’m not approving my order until (and unless) it’s perfect. I have approached a different company, that does it a little differently, and I’ll see if they can get it right. Failing that, I may have to order unlabeled CDs in bulk, like I have in the past, and package them myself, like I have in the past. I’ll need to find a company that can shrink-wrap them if I do that. With uber-professionalism in mind, I want the product shrink-wrapped and bar-coded, just like the Big Boys.

    Satisfying to have a new song done, and done quickly. “Pole Dancin’ for Jesus” may not be anything particularly special, but it is topical—prompted by a bona fide news story, in fact, that apparently a lot of people have seen—and from inspiration to writing to production was a matter of only a couple of days. One advantage independents have over the Big Boys is we can do this. It is a matter of having the tools, knowing how to use them—and knowing people. (The song, by the way, is at http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=10441842. And I might have even a better recording up soon, because Polly Hager wants to sing it.)

    The recording setup I’ve got is by no means perfect—but with a few add-ons, one might be able to produce a very acceptable product. One thing I can’t do with the Tascam is record drums—that requires multiple mikes. I do have two mikes, but the Tascam has only one mike input. A little mixer could take care of that, and I’ve seen John record drums with just two mikes. I’d need a second mixer—or a splitter—so the drummer and I could both have headphones at the same time. At that point, I’d have all the pieces, I think. I know rather a lot of musicians now, and could assemble an ensemble to record almost anything—I even know a cello player—and can do a recording in pieces, because the Tascam is portable (one of its biggest advantages). That allows things to happen faster. People don’t have to come to one place—I can go to them.

    With some practice, I think I could add video; that may entail simply having one of the cameras on hand while I’m recording somebody. (I need experience putting this stuff together, too. That’s where the video class comes in.) Combine footage of the individual musicians as they’re recording with appropriate background film (“B-roll,” instructor Wil Duncan calls it), and one has a quick music video.

    There isn’t much one can do with video except post it on YouTube, and put on a flash-drive album (and we haven’t tried a flash drive album yet to see if that works)—but it could be a good “teaser” to promote a live concert. (Same for the audio recording—and I do know a few radio-station DJs, one of them local, who have control of their playlists.) Maybe this is something to try for the Manzanita Farmer’s Market performance by “the impromptus.” I’ll ask. We practice Sunday night.

    Joe
  13. A draft Sept. 25 setlist:

    SET #1:
    Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
    Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
    Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
    Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
    Take Me Back to the ‘Sixties [NEW]—mod. fast two-step
    For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
    Duct Tape—mod. speed country
    Steamboat Bill (Shields & Leighton)—rock ‘n’ roll
    Things Are Getting Better Now that Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—fast two-step
    Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus—mod. speed Gospel
    The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot—talking blues (actually, a talking two-step)
    Test Tube Baby—fast rock ‘n’ roll

    SET #2:
    When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You—fast bluegrass
    50 Ways to Cure the Depression—mod. fast two-step
    Hey, Little Chicken—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
    Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass
    Crosses by the Roadside—slow two-step
    I May Write You from Jupiter—fast bluegrass
    She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
    Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More (Woody Guthrie)—mod. fast two-step
    So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
    Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—mod. two-step
    Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad (Woody Guthrie)—fast bluegrass

    Two one-hour sets, with a short potty-and-refreshments break in between. To make CDs for the band, I’ll need to record the “’Sixties” song, and re-record “Crosses” and “50 Ways” (I want to eliminate a verse from each one of those—I think it’ll make them better). Mike and Doc haven’t heard “50 Ways” or “Jupiter”—we did those in the first Failed Economy Show, and haven’t done them since—and nobody’s heard “Quoth.” (Actually, only John’s done “Crosses” before. Haven’t played that since our first concert in February 2009. I didn’t play it for a long time after it was rejected by a Nashville publisher, but I think I’m over that now. I don’t care what Nashville thinks. If I like the song, I’ll play it.)

    I had written another version of this blog that talked at length about the Bay City Centennial concert, and I’ll do a brief post-mortem here. It was good. Some musicians who presumably know what they’re talking about said it sounded real good, and they were impressed. Best song? This time, “Test Tube Baby”; a bunch of teenagers had asked for a fast song, just as that one was coming up on the setlist, and we did have ‘em dancing in the sawdust. Second? Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street. It makes people listen. “Steamboat Bill,” the Big Hit from 1910, came off good, too. It probably ought to be a permanent addition to the setlist.

    One weekend’s break from concerts—next weekend, and we really should practice. Two concerts coming up fast after that—the Rocktoberfest on Sunday, Sept. 19, and the Bay City Arts Center concert the next Saturday, Sept. 25. I still need to arrange a date for a Garibaldi Museum concert, too.

    Joe
  14. Like the song says (one of mine), “The future can change in the blink of an eye.” Got offered a job Monday night, as interim city administrator in Lafayette, Oregon, and I accepted. I start Wednesday (they needed someone right away, and I can do right away). It’ll restrict my movements a bit, and I expect to enjoy every moment of it.

    I’ve received tons of well-wishes, from all sorts of folks, for which I am grateful. Thanks, everybody. Like another song says (not one of mine—it’s by John Denver), “My bags are packed, and I’m ready to go.”

    I will get to find out whether all the maneuvering I did to enable music, et al., to accommodate a job if one happened is going to work. It should. All the Concert Season gigs except one are on Saturdays, so I can do both work and music—it will just be necessary for the band to practice on weekends, too (but three of them have jobs, too, so we’ve kinda had to do that anyway). The first performance of our Contra Band is on a Saturday night, too (July 31), and so is either the Arts Center Open Mike or “Rockshop” band concert (I still don’t know which one is happening, but it’ll be Aug. 7). And the new job is relatively close: if there were good roads between here and there (which there are not), I could commute. I expect to do that some of the time, anyway.

    In the same vein, I should be able to compress typesetting the SOSA Newsletter into weekend work, if the folks will be efficient about getting me stuff; it’s mostly a set piece now, that doesn’t take much time. Designing posters, flyers, &c., is quick and easy stuff, too (I’ve finished off one I was doing for the 2nd Street Public Market tonight). Once I’m settled in during-the-week digs in Lafayette, I’ll have a computer there that will let me do graphic design in the off evenings (I’m expecting there will be a few)—but initially, I’ll be taking an old laptop that won’t be able to do much besides word processing and e-mail. I can still do the column for the paper; I won’t be able to do news articles, but those didn’t pay much of anything, anyway.

    The only performance piece I need to worry about isn’t a music one—it’s the Great Intergalactic Puppet Show I’d arranged for the Arts Center staff to do at the Garibaldi Library Aug. 18 (which is a Wednesday). I have written the script—this time, it’s the legend of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, performed by the sock-puppet cast of “Pig Wars” (Luke, Leah, and Hansolo as the Gruffs, Yoda as their mother, again, and Darth Vader as the troll under the bridge)—and that’s getting peer review as this is written. I expect the crew can pull it off without me (and hope they’ll want to). It is a paying gig, after all.

    (I do enjoy writing these plays. I’d like to do a musical. I could see the sock puppets doing “The Wizard of Oz,” with Leah as Dorothy, Luke as the Scarecrow, Darth Vader as the Tin Man (of course), Yoda as the Wicked Witch (since he/she is green), and Hansolo (who always acts like he knows everything) as the Wiz. We could have a Cowardly Wookie…)

    Over There, I won’t have much free time for a while—there’s a lot of work to do—but there is an open mike I’ve been wanting to get to in Newberg, and Newberg is close to the new job. I don’t need to pursue the Music Work Plan I sketched out over a year ago in anticipation of relocating to other jobs: I will be relatively close to home, and it’s a relatively busy Concert Season on the Coast, and the new job is a temporary one, lasting maybe four months. (While I’m there, a couple of really attractive jobs will be opening up, and I will be applying for those, too.)

    So the adventure starts. There’s probably a song in it…

    Joe
  15. I got invited by a comedian I know to a reading of a book called “The Fake War.” The reading will be fake, too—it’s not actually going to take place. (I’m not sure whether the book really exists, either. Like the war it supposedly describes, it, too, may be fake.) So of course I agreed to “attend.” I don’t have to travel anywhere.

    Wherewith, an idea. Sometime this fall—fingers crossed and hands folded—the Southern Pigfish album will be released. And the band, as an increasing number of people know, does not exist (even though “Deathgrass” plays their best-known song every concert, and always gives them credit). And it is traditional to have a CD release party. Why not have a CD release party that doesn’t exist? (We could even advertise it that way.)

    The album will exist, of course, and even though Southern Pigfish probably could care less whether it sells (why should they? they don’t exist), I do care, being the author of the songs and probably the architect of the music videos, and all. Still, it would be fun to add to the unreality of the situation by advertising the album for sale through some fictional retail outlets. The album by the band that doesn’t exist, for sale at stores that don’t exist… I like that. Or… perhaps some of those little pockets of fans in various locations around the globe would be willing to nominate local retail outlets that would not be interested in carrying the album—and I could send them nice, eye-catching posters announcing “The Southern Pigfish Album Is Not For Sale Here. This Store Has Standards.” Something like that.

    Both “Angel in Chains” and “The Dead Sweethearts Polka” are probably inclusions for the Southern Pigfish album—because of their outrageousness (one about a suicide, the other about a serial killer), not their political content. (However, there’s plenty of political content on the rest of the album.) I did get to play “The Dead Sweethearts Polka” at the Library Saturday—I announced that I had to, since we had an accordion player present. And the accordion player did say afterwards that she liked it—though she also asked, “Don’t you ever write about things that are alive?”

    I musicated “Dust on the Moon,” an anti-Darwinist anthem by Rev. Skip Johnson. The song recalls that rather surreal number by Gem Watson, “Global Warming Sandwich,” that I musicated and recorded a couple of years ago; “Dust on the Moon” is pretty obviously ragtime, very fast and danceable. The original, with five long verses and four long choruses, came in at almost six minutes, but Skip subsequently cut it down, taking a verse and a chorus out, and I think the result (4-1/2 minutes, with a lead break) is about perfect. I do need to do more of this, so I stay familiar with the Tascam and its limitations.

    I think I’ve done my contests for the year, unless an opportunity I can’t refuse surfaces, and it doesn’t look like I have any winners. The two songs (one of mine, and one of Stan Good’s) entered in the MerleFest were rejected; I was pretty sure that was going to happen when I found out Nashville professionals were doing the filtering. I sent “Duct Tape” off to an outfit putting on a song contest to raise money for Nashville flood relief; I don’t really care whether I win that one—it was basically an excuse to donate twenty bucks to the cause.

    And I entered “Me and Rufus, and Burnin’ Down the House” in a music video contest put on by a fledgling outfit called “SmashTune”; $1,000 prize possible there (and there was no entry fee), but winning is dependent on votes from fans, and as noted earlier, I just don’t have that many fans. At this writing, “Rufus” is ranked #34, so somebody likes it—and at least it’s not at the bottom.

    Joe
  16. I may have got myself—finally—a volunteer gig, and it will be fun and exciting. And it’s doing stuff I think I’m good at.

    The difference a month makes… When I went to the Bay City Arts Center’s board meeting in February, everybody was energetically and enthusiastically getting everything done—and then some—after the departure of their executive director. By last Monday night, they had all managed to get seriously burned out. But four people were there—three besides me—to tell them, “You guys really need a full-time staff” and “Look, we can do this for free for a while and maybe bring you in some money.” One of the outgrowths of the Failed Economy is there are rather a lot of people with high-end professional skills who can’t get jobs because there aren’t any.

    So we asked the board to appoint the girl with the most grant-writing experience as executive director, and the rest of us as her deputies, all with fancy titles (I’ll be “Public Relations Manager”); we’ll divvy up the job of keeping the doors open, bills paid, and phones and e-mail answered—split four ways, it’s not a lot of work for any one person—and work on the organization’s visibility, programs, and bringing more money in. (All this may be premature speculation; as this is written, we’re still waiting on a formal decision by the Arts Center Board. I just have a feeling they’ll do it, because they do need the help and we can provide it.)

    I got the public-relations job because of my advertising and lobbying and graphic design background—all of the “Gang of Four” (my term) have experience like that. I’ve designed us business cards, and survey postcards we plan to hand out at Friday night’s open mike (offering a chance at a prize—free tickets to a concert a week from now—in exchange for getting on our mailing list).

    We’re doing the same thing I and several others did 25 years ago with Columbia Gorge United, the little non-profit that took on some of the biggest environmental lobbying groups in the country (and some of the highest-placed members of Congress) in the 9-year fight over turning the Gorge into a Federal park. We almost won (some would argue that we did win). We had a big staff (none of them paid), an office building (rent free), the best promotional materials (all donated), and could deliver a dozen trained lobbyists (all volunteer) to Washington, D.C. at the drop of a hat. If you’re playing with the Big Boys, and you’re acting like the Big Boys, nobody ever asks what you’re being paid.

    We will play the same game here. As “Brother Bill” Howell, lead singer for the Dodson Drifters (and an attorney) put it, “It’s all performance.”

    On other fronts: Blues harp player “Doc” Wagner is in, I think, for the April 24 benefit concert for Val Folkema; he’ll be available for practice after the beginning of April. I don’t have an answer yet from lead guitarist Mike Simpson. Our impromptu quartet—piano, guitar, blues harp and vocals—practiced March 2 for our Monday Night Musical performance March 8; we’ll do the best two of four songs, “Please Release Me” and “Today I Started Loving You Again,” both of which “Doc” and I have played a lot of times before. Practice took only about an hour, and was mostly a matter of getting everybody used to everybody else.

    And the open mike at the Arts Center is Friday night, not Saturday (so I’ll miss music at City Hall); the date was changed, but very few people know. That informational gap between decisions and events is one of the things the “Gang of Four” will be fixing. I still need a real job—rather desperately, in fact—but the odds are any real job is going to be relatively mindless grunt work, because I don’t have the armload of college degrees to “prove” I can do what I did for a living for 15 years. This volunteer gig at least will be challenging, and fun.

    Joe
  17. Ever have one of those weeks (or months) when absolutely nothing turns out right? It gets discouraging.

    Didn’t get the city manager job in Wheeler—didn’t even get interviewed. Realistically, I may no longer be employable: I’ve been out of “the business” eight months now, don’t have the degree everybody’s requiring (and won’t have for at least a couple of years), and I don’t have a great track record, either. It may be time to just write off the last 15 years as a pretty good ride, and go do something else. Of course, I’m almost out of money—again. That’s not a good time to be talking about reinventing myself.

    That the country appears to be sinking into another 1930s-style depression, with a national leadership (and a pending national leadership) that can most charitably be described as clueless, doesn’t help.

    If this were one of those 1930s movies, me and Judy Garland would be announcing at this point (with cartoon light bulbs over our heads), “Let’s put on a show!” And we’d save the farm, generate tons of money from God knows where, and get discovered by some media mogul and limo off into the sunset.

    Alas, ‘tis fantasy—a fantasy peculiar to the ‘30s, when a lot of people were pretty desperate and trying to find something to cling to. (And Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney were making pretty good money off their po’ boy schtick.) As it was, the average moviegoer probably walked back home, hunkered down again and hoped there were enough beans to feed the family one more week.

    That does not mean, though, that there aren’t germs of an Action Plan in the Garland-Rooney fantasy. No, I couldn’t pull that off—not yet. I’m not well enough known. What I can concentrate on, while I’ve got time (and no money, remember) is becoming as well-known as I can. (Now, this doesn’t avoid the need to get a job. While the music “habit” can support itself (and has), it won’t support me or the family.)

    Time for a “S.W.O.T.” analysis—an old planning tool used by the U.S. Forest Service back in the days when they actually did forest management. (The acronym stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.) The strengths and weaknesses I’ve re-hashed unmercifully. My biggest strength is that I can write stuff, no matter where and no matter what. In addition, I’m an okay performer, can do my own graphic-design stuff, can produce my own records if I have to, and can sing and play guitar good enough to get by. And I’ve got the glimmerings of a fan base—there are people who are actually asking for the next record.

    Biggest weakness—besides being almost out of money--is I am very conservative and reluctant to take risks. That’s a big one, especially in hard times, and I’m going to have to practice overcoming it. The biggest threat, I think, is running out of money.

    There may be a lot of opportunities. The Saturday thing at the Tillamook library is one; I promised a poster, and volunteered to lead it, and I can help with the advertising. There’s the pre-Christmas bazaars at the Old Mill (and that pays). There are other bazaars, too (Tillamook PUD thoughtfully provided a list). I’ve got the Museum to talk to, and I’ve e-mailed the folks who run the open mike in nearby Bay City to remind them they haven’t had one in a long time (and that I can help with promotion, and bake cookies—something else I’m good at). I haven’t paid a call on county economic development about their “Taste of Tillamook” fair, and need to do that. All those opportunities can be effectively pursued with no investment of money.

    The lesson, I think (there are always lessons), is there are always opportunities. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney had that part right. No, one is not going to save the farm and get discovered and become fabulously wealthy with one show. But if one can see the top of the next step, and climb to it, one has made definable progress toward saving the farm, &c. Enough progress? In troubled times, one probably can’t worry about that. One does the best one can.

    Oh, and there was one piece of good news. Friday night’s audience did like “Vampire Roumanian Babies”--a whole lot. A keeper—and definitely one for Southern Pigfish’s album, too.

    Joe
  18. THE ALBUM: Skip’s in—he wants his song on the album. He wants me to handle the publishing, so I guess this is where Joe Becomes a Music Publisher. ASCAP, I think, since they’re a co-op and BMI isn’t; I’ll tell Skip he needs to join ASCAP as a writer (I do, too) so Joe Publisher doesn’t have to take out memberships in two PROs. I have a little “pocket” consulting firm, Outside Services Ltd. (the logo is an outhouse), that I’ll use as the “shell” for the publishing company—applying Occam’s Razor (“Do not multiply divinities without reason”). There will still be lots of forms and fees—just what I need while I’m unemployed.

    TRIP TO SOUTHERN OREGON this weekend; official reason is a briefing session Saturday for the “Star of Stars” fundraiser for Rogue Community College (both Darrin Wayne and I are finalists, and we’ll be backing each other up). I have a “pallet on the floor” place to stay, so I’ll do two nights. I can play at the Wild Goose Sunday night, but it’d be nice to find a place to play Saturday. It is a holiday weekend, and not much is happening.

    NEW SONG: A throwaway, really—but it was nice to be able to whip it out over a 6-hour drive in the car. One of those online contests where they assign a title and you’re supposed to write to it; in this case, the title was “Twenty Chickens for a Saddle.” And I tried, really I did—but it kept coming out “Twenty Saddles for a Chicken.” I decided in the end to screw the contest and write it anyway. “Twenty Saddles for My Chicken” is a surreal, bouncy little romp—very chicken-fetishy, I suppose--and if nothing else, may be an addition to Gene Burnett’s chicken songs album.

    (At least I wasn’t alone. Other entries after mine included “Twenty Chickens for a Sadist,” “Twenty Chickens on His Saddle,” “20 Chickens for Seattle,” “Saddled with 20 Chickens,” and “Twenty Chickens for a Salad (Ask a Hooker).”)

    WHITBY SHORES: Well, it’s a nice site—lot of musicians and writers, many of whom I know from other places on the Web. I’m slowly but surely copying my music over from Soundclick—I have a feeling Soundclick is probably not long for this world, between over-regulation by its “moderators,” its determined effort to be a MySpace clone, and its reliance on what appears to be an antique and poorly designed operating system that’s lately been prone to major shutdown failure. I told deejay/veejay Len Amsterdam, who founded and runs Whitby Shores, that I’d post the URL for Whitby Shores in the blog, in case anyone outside was reading; it’s http://whitbyshorespost.googlepages.com.

    And “The Writer’s Blog” is on Whitby Shores now, too (if you’re reading it there, you already know that). That makes the fourth “home” for the blog; it’s still on Google’s Blogspot, MySpace, and Songstuff, too. I really need to create a personal Website: just a one-page clearinghouse with links to all the other stuff—the songs, the blog, the “buy my CD on CDBaby” (when I get that set up). I will need it by the time the new CD comes out, which will be sometime between September and Christmas. (That’s why there had to be a Christmas song on the CD. Just in case…) And yes, maybe the time to do that is while I’m unemployed and have time to experiment.

    Joe
  19. A NEW LINEUP?

    I would really like to put “Tune the Strings of My Soul,” Skip Johnson’s bluegrass hymn I did music for, on the new CD. As the final song, I think: it’s got a can’t-get-out-of-your-head melody that suggests Something Got Done Right.

    I’ve asked Skip if he’d be willing. If so, it’s going to necessitate a change in the setlist for the album. If there’s a hymn on it, things will have to be cleaner (as in less risque). No animal rapes and mutilations (that rules out “Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep”); no overt sex, either (there goes “Naked Space Hamsters in Love,” and “The Frog Next Door,” too). Of course, there are plenty of substitutions. The other stuff can go on an R-rated album released later (in a plain brown wrapper, maybe).

    Here—in order, I think—is what the lineup would look like if the hymn were on the album:

    1. DEAD THINGS IN THE SHOWER (with Bobbie Gallup)—mod. fast country. Love song, Frank Sinatra style, for the cat which may or may not be dead.

    2. HEY, LITTLE CHICKEN—sleazy-sounding blues. Answers the question “Why did the chicken cross the road?” The chicken does not die in the song, but its fate is pretty clear.

    3. WHEN I JUMP OFF THE CLIFF I’LL THINK OF YOU—fast bluegrass. My attempt to go through all the stages of death (in 9 verses), from jumping off the cliff to getting buried, all with caustic commentary on the girl being left behind. ALREADY RECORDED.

    4. ARMADILLO ON THE INTERSTATE—slow, bluesy, tragic love story about two star-crossed, butt-ugly rodents. Romeo and Juliet, with scales. ALREADY RECORDED.

    5. FREE-RANGE PERSON—fast bluegrass. My Joe-got-fired song, about the advantages of being homeless. ALREADY RECORDED.

    6. NO GOOD SONGS ABOUT THE WAR—mod. slow country. My attempt at writing a protest song, in response to the question “How come there’s no good songs about the war?” ALREADY RECORDED.

    7. OIL IN THE CORNFIELD—mod. fast country. An old song (1975) the Dodson Drifters made famous, about the oil crisis. Or is it the farm crisis?

    8. [tentatively] THE TERMITE SONG—fast bluegrass. Pokes fun at global warming. Several alternatives here—any fast bluegrass tune will work—but this one is ALREADY RECORDED.

    9. MILEPOST 43—mod. fast (or maybe mod. slow) country. The song about Al David’s missing underwear, from Pineyfest 2007. ALREADY RECORDED.

    10. ROTTEN CANDY—fast country. Uptempo lost-love song, Dottie West style. This is the song that was rejected by American Idol in 2007.

    11. CHRISTMAS ROADKILL—slow and sleazy-sounding, with sleigh bells. Really the same lost-love theme as above, but Christmasy.

    12. TUNE THE STRINGS OF MY SOUL (by Skip Johnson)—bluegrass hymn. I’d keep exactly the same format as on the draft.

    Two serious songs, three lost-love songs that sound serious but aren’t, lost underwear, lost job, dead armadillos, dead unspecifieds, a maybe-dead cat, an about-to-be-dead chicken, and nuclear bombs used on bugs. Yeah, good accompaniment for a hymn. We’ll see what Skip thinks.

    As far as production goes, I’d really like to record the rest of the songs (there are five: “Rotten Candy,” “Christmas Roadkill,” “Oil in the Cornfield,” “Hey, Little Chicken,” and “Dead Things”) with the Wild Goose Band—Jack Fischer (bass), James Maille (lead guitar), and Darrin Wayne (harmonica). I’d like to have Dan Doshier on mandolin on the hymn, and Sheral Graham on flute on “Oil in the Cornfield.” And Wayne do the recording. Wonder if we could pull that off?

    Joe

  20. About Time...

    By roxhythe ,

    Being a full-time musician is tiring. (Yes, I would still do it for a living.)

    The appearances Friday (at the SOSA “Trio” event), Saturday and Monday (SOSA “showcases”), and Sunday (open mike at the Wild Goose) were essentially all rehearsals, making sure that Jack (bass) and Darrin (harmonica) knew a lot of the material, or at least knew what to expect. Tuesday (open mike at NW Pasta & Pizza) was the only one where I played solo.

    Sunday morning and afternoon was practice with the impromptu Triple Tree band (we’re calling ourselves “Darrin Wayne and Friends”), and so was Wednesday night and Friday night. Wednesday and Thursday nights were also practice with Screamin’ Gulch—our big gig at Johnny B.’s was Friday night, and the band hadn’t played together in three weeks. (And Thursday night was also practice with Darrin, to make sure I could follow his songs at the Triple Tree gig.) It all makes for very sore fingers. A sore shoulder, too—I know now why so many professional musicians have wide, padded guitar straps. That old fake Gibson “jumbo” guitar is heavy—but you don’t notice until you’ve been standing up with it for hours on end, days on end.

    The gigs did go off well. Screamin’ Gulch had three lead guitarists Friday night (one besides Wayne and me, in other words), so I didn’t have to do a lot of work. The band is tight, and organized, and we put on a good show. Compared to our high-energy performance, the name act—The Mighty Lonesomes, a bluegrass band out of Ashland—were a little tame, and I think the audience felt it, too. They should have opened for us, not vice versa. (But wait—they’re the professionals, not us. Is something going on here?)

    The Triple Tree show on Saturday was good, too. Thanks to all the practice and organizing, the set came in at almost exactly three hours, and we virtually never had a moment without somebody playing on stage. We set the stage up so individuals could drift on and off stage without being obvious about it—but for about two-thirds of everybody’s material, nobody had to be off stage—it was stuff we’d practiced, and we were a Band, and a good one. Most of the audience was friends and family of the performers, but I doubt the venue cared—we brought in customers, and that’s what counts. Left the owner an autographed photo of “Darrin Wayne and Friends” (and also one of my CDs for the jukebox—she already has Darrin’s).

    Wayne (Screamin’ Gulch’s steel player and impromptu recording engineer) said he isn’t done “tweaking” the songs of mine he recorded two weeks ago—he’s still got instruments to add—but he says they’re coming out nice. He sounded excited—which I think means we’re going to get a real good product. If so, I’d like to have him do the rest of the songs for the album, too.

    And a fun job (using the term “job” loosely, of course—it’s unpaid). I’ve been tentatively tapped by the music publisher whose mailing list I’m on to write historical narratives for an album of old Gospel hymns. Sent those off Saturday. It was fun work—I learned a lot of trivia about Gospel songs I thought I knew, and some of it was fascinating. (Did you know “Jesus Loves Me” has been translated into Klingon?) She also wants to do interviews of some of the songwriters in her “catalog”—and knows (now) that I used to be a newspaper reporter, and have some experience doing just that.

    Time to list some more assets. Got another dude with a recording studio who wants to record my stuff (gave him a copy of the “Santa’s Fallen” CD as a guide to what I want), a bluegrass band that wants to cover one of my songs (told them “sure”), and a radio station DJ who wants to play my stuff on the air (he got a CD, too).

    Still to do: More CDs to burn, label and package. Still need to pick a studio and record the album. And practice for the Big Gig.

    Joe
  21. Well, I lost my day job. It’s tempting to consider just going out and being an unemployed musician—but I’m not well-known enough, and haven’t been making money at it, just having fun. Last time I had a shot at supporting myself as a musician was when I played with The Dodson Drifters—and that was 25 years ago, and even then I had a day job.

    Not having a job, of course, means having to move—southern Oregon’s too expensive a place to live without an income. The monthly bills alone are two thousand dollars—and eating and driving are extras on top of that. And nothing better happen to the old car (which has had its share of repair bills over the last six months).

    But before I go, I want to put on a show—a Farewell Joe Concert, as it were. The place to do it is probably Johnny B.’s in Medford; it’d be nice to do it in the old temporary home town of Phoenix, but I don’t know any places—Roscoe’s, the only venue with a stage (left over from its days as a wild bar), books jazz and blues, trying to attract a mature crowd. Mature crowds probably ain’t me.

    Invitations by e-mail, of course—no cost, there—plus posters, again of course. Friday or Saturday night. Band? Bass, lead, fiddle, harmonica, and mandolin, maybe? (I know a few people.) It’d be easy to do a 3-hour show. Publicize the heck out of it, and go out with a bang.

    AMERICAN IDOL announced they’re doing another song contest, for the 2008 season—and again, I just might have a candidate. They want an upbeat, hopeful, aspitational, uptempo song that can be sung equally by a boy or a girl, and of course they don’t want it to mention American Idol, or singing, or playing on stage, or making it in the music business. I might have one that fits those parameters—“When I Jump Off the Cliff I’l Think of You.”

    Of course, we know the American Idol folks don’t want country music, but this is one song that transcends genres well—the version up on my Soundclick site is rock ‘n’ roll, with me playing lead Strat, and probably the best rendition ever of the song was done by an electronica artist, zonemusicinc. Wonder if Screamin’ Gulch would be interested in recording it? They’re a punk-rock band with a hillbilly patina. It’d definitely be different.

    RECORDING WITH THE ALL-STARS may be out—when I’m poor, I don’t want to spend money on frills like studio time. I’ll have to do something simple instead. Dan Doshier’s invited me to come by and test out his 8-channel Tascam (which I’ll no longer be in a position to buy), and we could layer a whole band that way. Alternatively, there’s Screamin’ Gulch, which Wayne has the ability to record, or I could do something simple on my own 4-channel Tascam.

    ANOTHER SOSA POSTER, using photos from the archives this time; I probably could do posters through the end of the month with what I have. Finally got my computer’s “virtual PC” (hight “Old Alice”) to do PageMaker-to-Acrobat conversions, so I didn’t have to keep e-mailing them to a different computer. “Old Alice” is completely imaginary, running Windows 98—necessary to do those conversions, because my graphics software is old—but she doesn’t realize she has high-speed Internet or a CD-rewritable drive, because those things didn’t use to exist, so there was no way to get files out once converted. I knew there was a workaround for this, and I was right. It’s a little hokey, but that’s because the “Virtual PC” software isn’t supposed to work with my version of Windows XP. But it does.

    Maybe St. Leif’s Day would be the time to do the Concert. March 29 is a Saturday this year, and I’ll be around, I think, till the end of the month because I won’t get to pick up my last paycheck until then. Gives me two intervening weekends to plan the thing (and the days, too, since I won’t be working).

    Joe

  22. More Updates...

    By roxhythe ,

    A FEW UPDATES: I did attend the Song Contest at the wild Goose, but didn’t win—Gene Burnett took first place, and Frankie Hernandez second, and I can’t argue with the decision: both guys are awful good at what they do. There were additionally at least two more writers I would have rated higher’n me if I were doing the judging. Nonetheless, George Clark (on harmonica) and I did the crowd a good job with “Armadillo on the Interstate” and “Bluebird on My Windshield.” The audience were clapping along with the second one, and listening raptly to the first. I can’t complain.

    AUDITIONS today for a sort of “superstar show”; I went—and found I either knew or had heard of all of the other folks auditioning. It’s reportedly a benefit for the community college, organized by the students. Happens in June at the big Ginger Rogers Theater in downtown Medford. $1,000 prize (which I’m obviously interested in). Gave ‘em “Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues” and “The Termite Song”; they did have me fill out a form for coming to the second round of auditions (which is maybe a good thing—I don’t know if they do that for everybody).

    GOT TO PLAY LEAD on Darrin Wayne’s songs at tonight’s Southern Oregon Songwriters “showcase.”. Bunch of compliments, which I think means it turned out okay. May result in my being tapped for more lead work, which is what I was after. Tomorrow Darrin and I will get together to practice.

    ‘TIS THE SEASON: With March coming up, I can resurrent two seasonal favorites, “Invitation to St. Patrick” (another sleazy blues) and (for St. Leif’s Day) “The Six-Legged Polka.” Found an accordion player I’d like to tap for the latter, and sent him the *.mp3 file. (He hasn’t contacted me back.)

    WHAT ELSE have I got going on? The Paying Gig at the Wild Goose is supposed to happen in March; that’s a 3-hour set. (Currently playing phone tag with the booking agent.) Most folks who do these have a partner, so they can trade off, but I’m tentatively planning on doing it all myself—I have more than enough songs to fill 3 hours. I want a band, though—and have to assemble them and practice. Done right—like, if we pack the place—it should result in other gigs. It’ll also be a good kickofff for assembling the “joelist” fan base.

    Started work on the “joelist.” Maybe 100 entries initially, from the current e-mail archives and including the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. members I know (there are a bunch of ‘em I don’t know). Includes a bunch of out-of-town folks, too, that I’ve met at Pineyfest and suchlike places. (No, they aren’t likely to come to concerts, but they’re a market for CDs.) Next step—the old e-mail archives, which go back to the birth of “Alice” the computer in 2003.

    UPCOMING: Next week is the annual city-county insurance conference (leave Wednesday, ends Friday afternoon), and it appears the “house” band we put together last year is still in business—they’ll be playing Thursday night, and I’ll be playing with them. Their “songbook” features two of my songs, “Duct Tape” and “Naked Space Hamsters in Love.” Friday, I’ll get to play with the Friday Night Group again in Garibaldi—and solicit additions to the “joelist.”

    Joe

  23. The Sampler Cd...

    By roxhythe ,

    The Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. Is putting out another “sampler” CD, and is asking for submissions—one per member, no more than 4 minutes long. Hitch is it’s got to be “radio ready”—the fellow who’s putting it together can only master, not record. It’ll have to be recorded somewhere else.

    And of course, I want to do mine with a band. I’ve harped repeatedly on how vocalist-with-solo-guitar cuts are not saleable (at least, if it’s me). Could I put together a band of entirely SOSA members to do it? I could. My idea of an All-Star Band of jaw-dropping musicians would be Delonde Bell on bass, Russ Rodriguez on congas, Larry West on lead guitar, and George Clark on blues harp. I saw Delonde, Russ, and George at Chris Parreira’s open mike in Ashland (went there instead of Rogue River because of the weather), and they’re all interested. Offered to play lead on George’s submission for the album; it’s a country song, and I think I can do a decent Jerry Reed-style bluegrass lead on it. Might try backing him up Sunday night at the Wild Goose and see how it goes.

    My submission for the SOSA Sampler, I think, will be “Naked Space Hamsters in Love.” I actually don’t have many songs that’ll come in under 4 minutes with lead breaks (and with the All-Stars, we’ll want lead breaks—these guys are talented). I think the “Hamsters” song will have room for two breaks, and still come in under 4 minutes. It moves pretty fast.

    And just maybe, if these guys get comfortable doing this sort of thing (and it could happen), it might be possible to tap them to be the band for the next CD (or at least the slower songs on the next CD). They are probably as good session musicians as one could find outside of Nashville, each thoroughly expert on their instrument.

    None of them plays country music, and I don’t think they’ve ever all played together before. So having ‘em all play together—and playing country songs—would be a real envelope-pushing exercise, and potentially a lot of fun.

    It wouldn’t have to stop there; I know another guitarist (James Maille) who’s equally good, and another bassist (Jack Fischer), and another harmonica player (Darrin Wayne), and Dan Doshier plays fiddle, mandolin, standup bass, harmonica, and probably a bunch of other things. I think we have Resources, here.

    Setlist for the SOSA “Quartet” gig at Johnny B.’s (with James Maille on lead guitar) presently looks like:

    Dead Things in the Shower
    Armadillo on the Interstate
    Bluebird on My Windshield
    The Frog Next Door
    Duct Tape
    Naked Space Hamsters in Love

    All love songs (after a fashion). I like themes—and Valentine’s Day will be only 27 days away.

    Designed a poster for the Quartet thing—I figured one of the ways we attract attention outside the Group is to promote. Right now, there’s only 3 names (and photos) on it—myself, Chris Parreira, and Scott Garriott; three fellows have been proposed for Number Four, but none of them is a SOSA member, and this “Quartet” thing is supposed to be one of the “perks” of membership.

    UPDATES: Have names of two recording studios that have been recommended. Practice with Screamin’ Gulch was good—slightly bigger audience (the fans keep bringing friends), and very appreciative. Some of them fans are morphing into groupies. I ain’t had a groupie in years.

    “Two Years in Prison” is still the only song I can do a really good lead on; for a lot of the others, I just do something simple and slide-y (envision Alvin Lee on dobro) and let Wayne do the fancy stuff on the National Steel. At this point, the band’s repertoire includes one of Wayne’s songs (a Cab Calloway-style blues called “Jerry the Junker”) and one of mine (“Naked Space Hamsters in Love”).

    Joe

  24. Recording...

    By roxhythe ,

    Yes, Wayne’s recording of Screamin’ Gulch’s practice was good. The boy does have the gift.

    Good input for the band, too—tells them (including me) how we sounded, and we got to trade tips on how to make us sound better. Wayne said my guitar was cutting in and out, but that’s not the case—I was simply avoiding notes I wasn’t sure of, so the ones I avoided didn’t record. Practice is the only thing that will cure that. The one song where I was sure what I was doing—a simple jailhouse country song that’s one of the few slow ones the band does—I do a half-decent lead.

    The band has a ways to go before we’re doing record-quality work on my songs, but again, that just takes practice. (They can do harmony on “Naked “Space Hamsters in Love.” Scary.)

    So there’s my outlet, maybe, for recording all of the uptempo material for the next album. We do it on stage with the band at Johnny B.’s, with a live audience of whoever shows up. That takes care (maybe, again) of:

    Naked Space Hamsters in Love
    Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep
    Rotten Candy
    Test Tube Baby (which I still haven’t tried yet)
    When I Jump Off the Cliff, I’ll Think of You
    Hey, Little Chicken
    The Frog Next Door

    And leaves:

    Christmas Roadkill
    Armadillo on the Interstate
    Twenty-Four Seven
    Milepost 43
    Dead Things in the Shower
    Oil in the Cornfield (only serious song on the album)

    Of course, the last two songs are pretty uptempo (and “Dead Things” is weird enough so it might get their attention). Maybe for those, it’d be possible to assemble a band—Southern Oregon Songwriters folks, maybe?—practice a bunch, and assemble them at Johnny B.’s for an evening. Or alternatively, do the recording in layers like the Real Studios do. The latter is more expensive because it consumes more recording time (and I still don’t know what Wayne would charge for doing this), and the former is more time-consuming because of the necessity of getting the musicians together to get practiced.

    (On the other hand, it’d be good for the musicians to get together and get practiced. To the extent possible, I would like to sell ‘em all on the idea that they sound better together—and get more attention—than separately, and all of our talents can be used to help each other. An application of the old Chinese Electrician’s Rule: “Many hands make light work.”)

    And I probably have time. At this point, an album would be coming out at earliest in time for Concert Season (mid-to-late summer), and at latest around Christmas.

    UPCOMING: Southern Oregon Songwriters showcase Saturday night, the Wild Goose Sunday night, the country dance in Rogue River Tuesday night, and practice with Screamin’ Gulch Wednesday night. 4 nights out of 5 ain’t bad.

    Joe
  25. OUT OF TOWN for five days this week, and four next week. There will at least be music. I’ll get to play this Thursday night with “The Risk-Takers,” the in-house band from City-County Insurance Services that performed at the annual conference last year, and both this Friday and next I get to sit in with the Friday Night Group. Sundays is still the Wild Goose in Ashland, and Tuesdays is Chris Parreira’s open mike, also in Ashland.

    I have not mentioned in this blog the political maneuverings going on with respect to my day job, and I won’t—this blog is about music, and I keep music (which is about my only recreation) and the job completely separate. Nonetheless, a lot of people I play music with have had questions, and/or expressed concern or sympathy for what’s been going on, and I much appreciate it. I keep running into more and more people I know from work at these gigs, too, and that’s good as well.

    THE ALBUM: I should list (again) what’s tentatively picked for the album; with all the computer changes, I could easily lose (or could already have lost) the file. Not in any kind of order, the selections are:

    Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep (fairly fast rock ‘n’ roll)
    Armadillo on the Interstate (slow & sleazy)
    The Frog Next Door (very delierate blues)
    Christmas Roadkill (more slow & sleazy)
    Dead Things in the Shower (pretty fast country)
    The Termite Song (bluegrass)
    Naked Space Hamsters in Love (bluegrass, with aliens)
    Twenty-four Seven (a fast waltz)
    Rotten Candy (fast country)
    When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You (bluegrass)
    Milepost 43 (moderately fast country)
    Oil in the Cornfield (bluegrass)
    Hey, Little Chicken (sleazy blues)

    Only 12 songs (I decided to leave “Test Tube Baby” off the list). Four are dead-animal songs (five, if you count the chicken), two with live animals (if you count the aliens), and one with missing underwear. 10 of the 12 are love songs (using the term “love” very loosely). And only one—“Oil in the Cornfield”—is serious. Includes, as promised, The Song That Was Rejected by American Idol—“Rotten Candy,” which isn’t serious but sounds like it. For a change, not one song is from a previous album.

    Does beg the question (which I’ve begged before): What DO you call an album like that? Maybe that’s a question the fans SHOULD answer.

    RECORDING: Didn’t get to get Goodnight Kiss Music a cut of “The Termite Song” by the deadline for their “funny political” song competition, and I won’t have “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” done by the deadline for the SOSA “sampler” CD, either. For the latter, though, I can probably get the deadline extended, depending on how many entrants they have. The All-Stars still need to practice, and I’ve been busy and they’ve been busy.

    Did get the recording of Beth Williams’ song “Syllables for Sale” done, though; Darrin Wayne did a dynamite job on the harmonica, and I added a simple “Miller Bass” guitar part on the Strat and posted the product in the usual places. Kudos all around thus far, including from Beth (it’s always good when the author likes the treatment you gave their song).

    And got to participate in an international weekend collaboration, of all things. Wim Wever, a roofer in Holland, organized it—he did lead guitar and vocal, Stu (England) played bass, Ed (Canada) did drums and mixing. Haven’t heard it with my parts in it yet: I expect they’ll use the vocal (which was a brief introduction of the band), and don’t know about the guitar tracks (one acoustic, and one electric, both pretty simple stuff). It was fun anyway, and I hope they do more of them.

    Joe

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