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Saturday’s practice with the band in Astoria went good. Just three of us—myself, Joe the bass player, and Larry the drummer—but we went through a lot of material. Joe made CDs with the songs (good) and we played along with those as we tried to figure out the keys; I can play a lot of the stuff—the trick is going to be making the songs sound different, because so much old rock ‘n’ roll uses the same handful of progressions. I played the Strat, which is really better for this material than an acoustic guitar. (The Strat really needs new strings, though.) Next time we practice isn’t until Feb. 12, so I’ve plenty of time to work with this stuff. It looks like the trip to southern Oregon for the Jan. 24 SOSA annual meeting is doable. The windstorms are supposed to be over, and the weather will continue to be unseasonably warm (for January). It is supposed to get below freezing in Medford Saturday night, which might behoove my traveling Saturday night rather than Sunday morning. Either way, a good half the trip is in the dark, but if I leave Saturday right after our recording session in Garibaldi, the roads in Medford may not have frozen by the time I get there. (This is important because the truck does not have snow tires or studs.) While down there, I’ll get to play at the Wild Goose Sunday night, but I’m not sure what else. Still not sure what to do for the 12th song on the “Deathgrass” album. It needs to be a fast number, not a two-step; it doesn’t have to be bluegrass—it could be in a different style, and/or in a different key. And it ideally should be one of mine—there’s already four co-writes on the album. Best contenders I’ve got right now are “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” (my preference), “The Termite Song” and “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” all bluegrass tunes. That’d make the setlist look like: Dead Things in the Shower (with Bobbie Gallup)—fast two-step Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues Take-Out Food (Stan Good)—sleazy & manic (or is that manic & sleazy?) No Good Songs About the War—mod. slow two-step Naked Space Hamsters in Love—fast bluegrass Hey, Little Chicken—slow & sleazy quasi-blues For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock Rotten Candy—fast bluegrass with a Gospel beat Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—mod. two-step You’ll Make a Real Good Angel (Tarra Young)—mod. slow Gospel Three two-steps of varying speeds, three fast bluegrass (one with a Gospel bass), one Gospel, one blues, one rock, and a couple that are unclassifiable but definitely country. Subject matter from sleazy to Heavenly. And three songs with dead animals (four if you count the chicken, whose fate is clear). If we can get Mike Simpson on lead guitar and “Doc” Wagner on blues harp, this will be something to listen to (and hopefully worth buying). I’ll include on a separate CD the Southern Pigfish songs. There’s just 6 of them, thus far—but John really wants to do “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails,” and the recording of “For Their Own Ends” can do double duty; we can use Doc’s harmonica on the Southern Pigfish cut, and Dick’s on the Deathgrass one. And even though nobody took me up on my “write a traditional ballad” suggestion, I nonetheless have a traditional ballad of my own taking shape. Three verses thus far (out of maybe five or six), plus a tentative chorus (with a refrain in it, so everyone can recognize its Traditional Balladness). Being awake in the dark, with the power out and the wind and rain pounding the house, is almost as good a writing opportunity as a long drive in the car. It’s not like one can do anything else. Joe

A winnable contest, maybe—the Chris Austin Songwriting contest, put on by Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, N.C. as part of the annual MerleFest. (No, the “Merle” is not Merle Haggard. This Merle is kin to Doc Watson.) Three finalists get to perform their entries on stage at MerleFest, and that’s what is attractive as far as I’m concerned. I have always done best at competitions that entailed performing on stage—I don’t know why. If you get to be a finalist, they put you up for free in Wilkesboro, but you have to get there on your own nickel (I’ve run into that in other contests). Deadline for entries is in mid-February, and the MerleFest itself is the end of April. I could handle entering one, maybe two songs. Which? Well, the song’s got to be good, but production has to be first-rate, too; yes, the rules say (they always say) you can send them anything, but I had a fellow who judges at one of these contests tell me that no matter what the rules said, he’d never vote for anything that wasn’t professionally produced, and I assume his attitude is shared. There are two Stan Good songs (his lyrics, my music) I’d consider superior contenders. The most recent, “Take-Out Food,” was recorded just in the home studio, but the recording is pretty good; I wouldn’t hesitate to put it up against commercially-done material. The other is “Un-Easy Street,” which is a great crowd-pleaser and has become a permanent fixture of the band’s repertoire—and was going to go on the next album. The home-studio recording I have of it isn’t very good, however. So I’ll enter either “Take-Out Food” or “Un-Easy Street.” If it makes finals, I have to go to Wilkesboro and perform it on stage. “Take-Out Food” has to have a lead break—song’s too short without it—which means I have to have accompaniment on stage. The MerleFest folks will pay to put up one “accompanist,” too, but not pay for getting him or her there. I need somebody in the immediate Wilkesboro area to be my lead player—but I may have found one in the person of Steve “Little Stevie” Biederman, who lives sorta nearby. “Un-Easy Street” works without a lead break (we performed it that way at “Rocktoberfest”), so I can do it solo on stage if I have to (it’s better with a lead player, though). But I need a better, and ideally professional, recording to enter in the contest. “Un-Easy Street” was one of the songs we were recording for the album, so it WILL be professionally recorded. Can I get the recording done in time? (It’s a possibility. The band were real excited when we won the “Doing Dylan” contest in England. They could be excited about having the chance to do it again.) And I’m glad people are so excited about it. Makes me feel more confident about entering the thing. ON OTHER FRONTS: The new computer is assembled, but I haven’t made it work—it’s troubleshooting time, and there’s a lot of trouble to shoot. I should have tested the machine every step of the assemblage process, but I didn’t, and now have to pay for my hubris. New strings to put on the Strat. And music tonight. Joe

A WEBCAM! Went through the owner’s manual for my daughter’s old digital camera (same make as mine, but a newer model), and it said the thing can function as a webcam. Apparently mine can, too—it’s got the same ports (no owner’s manual, though). It’s supposed to be hooked up to AC power when you’re webcamming, but that’s apparently not essential; the owner’s manual says that’s just to prevent the batteries wearing down. (It does go through batteries rather fast.) I do have an AC adapter with the proper voltage (though not made for the camera), and it turns out the digital camera will fit my video camera tripod (yay!). I have an adapter, too, that’ll let me use my singing mike for sound instead of one of those cheapo computer mikes. It appears I’ll need a USB extension cord—the one from the camera to the ‘puter is short. I may be skype-able yet. The owner’s manual told me a couple things I already knew, too: the camera can shoot 80 seconds of “film” before having to shut down and save what it did (I’d noticed it was a little over a minute between “saves” when I shot the Rufus video), and the optical zoom doesn’t work when you’re filming (so that’s why my zooms on the Rufus video looked so bad). One online review of the camera said, “These things are pretty old, but they’re pretty good.” I’ve had mine for seven years. THE ALBUM: What if, along with dedicating the album to the late Dick Ackerman, we included songs from the Failed Economy Shows? In addition, I’d include “You’ll Make a Real Good Angel,” the kaddish for Carol written by Tarra Young and myself, and the Stan Good masterpiece about buzzards and roadkill, “Take-Out Food.” It could look like this: Dead Things in the Shower (with Bobbie Gallup)—fast two-step Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy Hey, Little Chicken—slow & sleazy quasi-blues Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues No Good Songs About the War—mod. slow two-step For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock Take-Out Food (Stan Good)—sleazy & manic (or is that manic & sleazy?) Rotten Candy—fast bluegrass with a Gospel beat Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—mod. two-step You’ll Make a Real Good Angel (Tarra Young)—mod. slow Gospel That’s 11. I need one more. It should be uptempo, or in a different key, or a different style, or a combination of two or all of those. Probably one of mine—there are already four co-writes on this album. And it’d be nice to keep to the Failed Economy/homelessness/hunger theme. What? The kaddish, of course, would be the finale. We’d have two recordings on the album where Dick does play blues harp, “No Good Songs About the War” (which won the “Doing Dylan” contest in England) and the Southern Pigfish song, “For Their Own Ends” (which was going to be our alternate entry in the contest). Those were the only two where we got Dick’s blues harp recorded before he died. I’d want to rope Mike Simpson into playing lead guitar on all the songs if he’s willing, and Doc Wagner into doing blues harp on the ten songs Dick isn’t playing on. There are some copyright fees to be paid here—to Bobbie Gallup, Stan Good, and Tarra Young; I’d basically be hoping that by the time the album’s done in September, I’ll have the money to pay them. Music Friday (with the Friday Night Group) and Saturday (with the band in Astoria). And I’ve been asked to build somebody a computer. That will be different—and fun. Joe

A nice compliment, that sort of indicates how the world is put together these days. I saw somebody complimenting a guy’s song, saying “that sounds like a Joe Wrabek tune”—as if everybody ought to know what that is. The guy who said it was in England, and the guy he was saying it about was in Canada. The world has become a very strange place… There’s tentative sentiment on the part of the band for including Tarra Young’s “You’ll Make a Real Good Angel” (lyrics by her, music by me) on the “Deathgrass” album and dedicating the album to the late Dick Ackerman. Of course, they haven’t heard the song yet, but I think they’ll feel the same way once they do. Including that song changes the mix on the album, and I’ll have to re-examine what I was going to include and why. Probably means a revised list. We are still scheduled to record the base tracks on Jan. 23. I’ll want to give everybody revised CDs and songlists well before then. Also done is the music and recording for Stan Good’s “Take-Out Food,” the song about buzzards and roadkill Stan said he wrote with me in mind. (So how could I not do the music?) It did come out good; I was trying for a blend of sleazy and manic (which are kind of opposites), and managed to achieve it. I performed both songs at the Tillamook Library, and both went over well—“Take-Out Food” especially so. I wonder if this ought to get added to the band’s repertoire? Still to do: Glynda Duncan’s “He’s a Man—This Is a Bar.” It’s an opportunity to work on something serious (after the buzzards and roadkill, I probably need to). Friday night was the first get-together of that band in Astoria (60 miles away) I talked myself into. They’re all about my age (nice to see some aging musicians), three of the four are unemployed (so there is a drive to make money at this), and they are very good. I’m definitely not their equal as a musician, though I can play some of the stuff they do; I do have a couple of advantages they can use—I can transpose in my head (since I’ve been doing it so long), and I have some tips on marketing. So maybe they’ll keep me. They like rock ‘n’ roll; I like rock ‘n’ roll, too—I just don’t get to play it much. I think I’ll put new strings on the Strat, and try playing it next time we practice (next Saturday). I had a few people at Saturday’s square dance (can’t say “several” because there were only several people there) tell me how much they missed the community dances most towns had years ago (there are some small towns in remote places that still do); I think that was a suggestion we try to do some. It would be fun. I’ll ask the band if they’d be interested. I asked the questioners what kind of music they wanted—since the band can play all sorts of different styles—and was told, “country and rock ‘n’ roll from the ‘60s.” From my standpoint, that means music that SOUNDS like that, because I mostly can’t sing anybody else’s stuff, but I have some—rather a lot, in fact. It’d be nice to find somebody else who could sing—we could do more stuff. Venues may not be a problem; besides the Dance Floor at City Hall in Garibaldi (which is rented out nearly every weekend), there’s one in Bay City, 5 miles away, at the Arts Center (which isn’t). One couldn’t expect money out of the dances, at least for starters; one would have to just start doing it, and if crowds started showing up, start putting out something like the Friday Night Group’s “donation llama” (ugly thing, made out of an orange crate—but people leave money in it). Two more jobs to apply for; that’ll bring up to five the applications I have in the pipeline (and four of them are city-manager jobs, again). Wish I could say I expected anything out of the exercise. I’m afraid I no longer do. Joe

Sunday, Jan. 24, is the annual meeting of the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn., in Talent (appropriately), just south of Phoenix. I’d really like to go. It is going to have to depend on the weather, which is chancy this time of year—and I’m driving an old truck, with no snow tires (don’t need ‘em on the semi-tropical Oregon Coast), and driving at night—and I can’t get an online weather forecast longer than two weeks out. SOSA has some problems: a relatively static membership (not many new people, in other words), and declining attendance at their “showcase” events (a lot of that because SOSA members have gigs in other places now). That last is a success-related problem, actually—the organization has “cycled through” some successful people, but almost no one has come in to replace them. I’d hate to see the organization go under; it has accomplished a lot for the people who are in it. The challenge seems to be roping more people in. So what can SOSA do? Well, the organization’s got to offer some benefits one can’t get without being a member; they’ve got to offer some services that potential members would consider desirable; and they’ve got to be well-known enough so people not only want to bang on their door, they know where the door is. Do I know enough to help with any of that? I’m a novice at this promotional stuff, after all. Last one first. I’ve done a little of the household-word stuff. I think one of the best things one can do is become associated with a Cause. The “Deathgrass” benefit concerts for the Food Pantry have become awfully well-known; we can generate a good crowd, and good money—and that translates into our being able to generate a crowd and revenue for other things. What cause? Pick one (not too flaky, of course)—one advantage of These Troubled Times is there are a lot of people needing help. So the organization arranges the benefit concerts, and showcases, publicizes, &c., the individual players at the same time. The member benefits? The access to public TV is cool; I was told SOSA’s shows could appear on a regular schedule if they just did more of them. Okay, do more. You don’t necessarily have to repeat people—mix ‘em up, in duos, trios and small bands. I’ve been harping on the need for performance DVDs, too. Maybe the organization should invest in a video camera. The “showcase” CD (which wasn’t done last year) is a good promotional tool, too—but need to focus on distribution, so more people know about it. Your music and/or links on a SOSA Website (SOSA also doesn’t have a Website any more, and the MySpace page is a poor substitute). When I moved to southern Oregon, I’d never have known there was a songwriters’ association if they hadn’t had a Website. Access to a good commercial recording studio at discount rates would be good, too. Attracting people? Being better known, and offering member-only services, helps. I’d like to see some coaching and critiquing. Something the Eugene Songwriters Assn. does is a monthly critiquing session—everybody brings their latest material, and everybody critiques it. SOSA’s never done that that I know of. What SOSA has done that I haven’t seen anyone else doing is the “showcases,” that give people experience performing their stuff. Both, I think, are necessary. I probably fixate a lot on the writing part, because I think it is teachable—and I don’t see it being taught. The people I know who’ve become decent writers have mostly puzzled it out on their own—and there are plenty of good performers who either don’t have anything to say, or don’t know how to say it very well. If one of the prerequisites to making it in the music business is having material that’s better than anybody else’s, then somebody should be helping those folks. Could SOSA do both—training performing and writing? I’d like to see songwriting classes taught through the local community college (and teaching a class is one of the items on my 2010 Worklist). Has the organization ever gotten its 501©(3) tax exemption? They should. Follow-up question, of course, is to what extent I can help with this stuff. I am 300-plus miles away, after all. However, I’ve got the time to travel a little bit, and the Internet allows me to do some things long-distance. I’ll pass it all on. I’ve already volunteered myself to do their newsletter next year. I can do more than that. Joe

I wanted a kaddish in memory of Dick Ackerman, our blues harp player, who died December 29 (his 80th birthday). The kaddish is an old Jewish tradition that, while I’m not Jewish, I’ve always liked. It’s called the “song for the dead,” but it’s not FOR the dead, precisely—the dead are either in a better place or otherwise don’t care—but rather for the living, for those left behind. The idea, as I understand it, is that a person lives on in the ways they have touched other people’s lives, and the kaddish sort of expresses that; it says why that person was important. I have previously written two kaddishes (kaddishi? I’m not sure what the technical plural is). The passing of Corky “Dawg” Bernard, my first mentor as I explored songwriting online, prompted “Requiem for a Grey Dog,” written for his wife Bobbie. “Crosses by the Roadside” was originally going to be for Carol Ackerman—at the time, Dick was undergoing surgery and chemotherapy for cancer (I guess they didn’t get it all)—but after Dick’s health improved, I dedicated the song instead to fellow songwriter Sharma Kay, who was killed in a car accident this year (and “Crosses” is describing an auto accident, after all). I don’t know if anyone but Bobbie ever heard “Requiem for a Grey Dog”; I know a lot of people have heard “Crosses by the Roadside,” because it’s been performed a lot. And the kaddish for Carol? I just might have one already. A few years ago—back before “Alice” the ‘puter got the Windows XP upgrade that erased all her document files—I’d worked with a “Christian country” lyricist, Tarra Young, on something she’d written for a friend who was dying of cancer. I musicated it (tweaking the lyrics a bit, as usual), recorded it, and sent it to Tarra—and never heard anything. I found out a little while ago she had a Soundclick page, and the song was on it. (I guess she liked it.) The link, by the way, is http:www.soundclick.com/share?songid=5361727. I think—tentatively—this is the kaddish for Carol. It’s a bit upbeat (Carol being a good religious person, and knowing Dick has gone to a Better Place); expresses the sadness of missing him while at the same time being happy to have known him; and has that lovely line in the chorus, “You’ll make a real good angel.” And of course, the sentiments are a lot closer to home now than they were then. It’s not Jewish music, of course—none of my kaddishes (kaddishi?) are. I haven’t written any Jewish music. (I should. One of the items on the 2010 Worklist is to write in different genres.) “Requiem” was bluegrass, and the other two are two-steps. (Yes, you can dance to this.) My guitar playing on the recording on Tarra’s Soundclick page is a bit hesitant; I would not be hesitant now. (I guess that means I have gotten better since whenever-that-was.) I’ve been practicing singing it; I still can’t get through the song without my voice breaking, but it’s getting better—the trick is to stuff all the emotion into the singing, while remaining unemotional yourself. That’s just hard to do when something hits very close to home. I want to play this the next time I get together with the Friday Night Group (which won’t be for almost two weeks), because all of them knew Dick; it’d be neat if we could all play it for Carol when she gets back. In the same vein, I wonder if the band would be interested in recording it. I’m not sure it should go on the album; if it did, I’d want to dedicate the album to Dick, but that wouldn’t be a bad thing to do. At very least, I’d like to give Carol a copy of the song done by the band he helped make famous. Music this week Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and maybe Sunday. It’s been a long hiatus. Joe

Got to watch another band perform on New Year’s Eve. True, I’d rather have been playing on stage, but this was a good opportunity to observe the competition at work (over a decent shrimp dinner)—and these guys are getting paying gigs, and we’re not. I really should do more of this competition-assessing (though my fingers get itchy watching someone else play). 6-piece (I guess) band—lead and rhythm guitars, bass, drums, sound guy (I want one of those) and lighting guy. I don’t know if the lighting guy was being paid as an equal member of the band, but the sound guy should have been—he did a lot of work. One of the guitarists did a set as an Elvis impersonator, and was really good. They started off really poor, but did get better after Elvis arrived. I think starting off with something slow and jazzy, and following it with more slow and jazzy, was a bad move; long pauses between songs isn’t good, either. A sure signal they’d misjudged the crowd: the first song that got almost everybody out on the dance floor was a Buck Owens tune. (And these guys don’t play country music.) Could our band have done better? Mostly, yes. “Deathgrass” shows always start out with a good, upbeat dance tune (and it should be recognizable by now), and the Rap between songs ensures the audience never has a chance to get bored (and the band still get to catch its collective breath). We have the crowd’s attention constantly. Songs do not sound alike. A lot of what we play is country music—which apparently appeals to audiences around here. Since we’ve been playing to mostly the same kind of audience, I haven’t worried much about tailoring setlists, though I have done that for solo gigs, and with other bands; one reason for visiting the venue ahead of time is to talk to people there about what the crowd is like and what kind of music they like to hear, so you don’t have to guess (and risk guessing wrong). And I’m always doing post-mortems, reviewing what worked best, what didn’t, and what could be done differently (and better). So we’re doing a lot of this stuff right, I think. We don’t do covers (at least, not covers of anything famous). That New Year’s Eve band did all covers, of course; I think most bands do. I still don’t consider it necessary (and hope I’m right). At this point, people around here would be surprised if I performed anything that wasn’t original—but that’s because they’ve gotten used to me. (And maybe it’s improved people’s perceptions a little. I think most folks shy away from original music because they assume somebody who isn’t already famous, and on records and on the radio, can’t be any good. I hope in this little, local area, I’m proving that wrong. I am (or hope to be) proof that you can play your own stuff, and people will come to listen to it even knowing it’s your stuff, and they’ll dance to it, and even leave money behind. But it has taken a few years to get to that point.) Friday, I go north to Astoria, for the first get-together of the “infant” band Joe Sims has been trying to assemble up there (I talked them into considering me as their rhythm guitarist). All covers, of course—but I don’t mind: I don’t have to sing ‘em. I’ll pass on my Performance Points as best I can: Start off with a bang. Don’t give the audience a chance to get bored. Vary your tempo. And make sure you’re playing what the audience wants. As I’m looking through the list of 50 songs Joe sent—all rock ‘n’ roll and Modern Country (which is much the same), and no “traditional” country at all among them—I have to ask the question, “How well have you gauged our market? Are we playing these songs just because you want to sing them, or have you figured out these are what people want to hear? And if so, how did you decide that?” Oh, and it is January First, isn’t it? Happy New Year, everybody. May your Twenty-Ten be better than your Twenty-Nine. On my end, I sure will be working at it. Joe

Got to watch another band perform on New Year’s Eve. True, I’d rather have been playing on stage, but this was a good opportunity to observe the competition at work (over a decent shrimp dinner)—and these guys are getting paying gigs, and we’re not. I really should do more of this competition-assessing (though my fingers get itchy watching someone else play). 6-piece (I guess) band—lead and rhythm guitars, bass, drums, sound guy (I want one of those) and lighting guy. I don’t know if the lighting guy was being paid as an equal member of the band, but the sound guy should have been—he did a lot of work. One of the guitarists did a set as an Elvis impersonator, and was really good. They started off really poor, but did get better after Elvis arrived. I think starting off with something slow and jazzy, and following it with more slow and jazzy, was a bad move; long pauses between songs isn’t good, either. A sure signal they’d misjudged the crowd: the first song that got almost everybody out on the dance floor was a Buck Owens tune. (And these guys don’t play country music.) Could our band have done better? Mostly, yes. “Deathgrass” shows always start out with a good, upbeat dance tune (and it should be recognizable by now), and the Rap between songs ensures the audience never has a chance to get bored (and the band still get to catch its collective breath). We have the crowd’s attention constantly. Songs do not sound alike. A lot of what we play is country music—which apparently appeals to audiences around here. Since we’ve been playing to mostly the same kind of audience, I haven’t worried much about tailoring setlists, though I have done that for solo gigs, and with other bands; one reason for visiting the venue ahead of time is to talk to people there about what the crowd is like and what kind of music they like to hear, so you don’t have to guess (and risk guessing wrong). And I’m always doing post-mortems, reviewing what worked best, what didn’t, and what could be done differently (and better). So we’re doing a lot of this stuff right, I think. We don’t do covers (at least, not covers of anything famous). That New Year’s Eve band did all covers, of course; I think most bands do. I still don’t consider it necessary (and hope I’m right). At this point, people around here would be surprised if I performed anything that wasn’t original—but that’s because they’ve gotten used to me. (And maybe it’s improved people’s perceptions a little. I think most folks shy away from original music because they assume somebody who isn’t already famous, and on records and on the radio, can’t be any good. I hope in this little, local area, I’m proving that wrong. I am (or hope to be) proof that you can play your own stuff, and people will come to listen to it even knowing it’s your stuff, and they’ll dance to it, and even leave money behind. But it has taken a few years to get to that point.) Friday, I go north to Astoria, for the first get-together of the “infant” band Joe Sims has been trying to assemble up there (I talked them into considering me as their rhythm guitarist). All covers, of course—but I don’t mind: I don’t have to sing ‘em. I’ll pass on my Performance Points as best I can: Start off with a bang. Don’t give the audience a chance to get bored. Vary your tempo. And make sure you’re playing what the audience wants. As I’m looking through the list of 50 songs Joe sent—all rock ‘n’ roll and Modern Country (which is much the same), and no “traditional” country at all among them—I have to ask the question, “How well have you gauged our market? Are we playing these songs just because you want to sing them, or have you figured out these are what people want to hear? And if so, how did you decide that?” Oh, and it is January First, isn’t it? Happy New Year, everybody. May your Twenty-Ten be better than your Twenty-Nine. On my end, I sure will be working at it. Joe

One of the folks who’d reviewed this year’s Christmas song, “Song for Polly and Glyn (A Man for Christmas),” told me he’d listened, and re-listened, thinking “There has to be a dead reindeer in here somewhere.” I think I just got given the lead-in for next year’s Christmas song. Thank you. Spec’d out a recording schedule with John; tentatively, we’ll do the scratch tracks for the album Jan. 23 & 24, with me (guitar and vocal), him (bass), and Chris (drums). John says his portable recorder can hold the whole dozen songs without trouble. He wants to do the Southern Pigfish songs at the same time (and I’m game). Goal is to have both albums done by September, which would be in time for the Christmas market. Lynn Orloff’s “Wildflowers” is musicated. Bluegrassy—though it can’t be true bluegrass, because nobody dies in the last verse—and almost a polka (but not quite fast enough). You’re not supposed to have electric guitars in bluegrass music, so I put one in anyway—the lead is done on the Strat. And Lynn liked it. It is another of those songs that really should be sung by a girl—the fourth in a row of those, in fact. The so-called “Underground Joe Club,” which maintains they like the kinkiness of an old, fat guy singing sexy girl tunes, would no doubt be pleased. (Lynn would like to arrange to have it recorded by a girl—ideally, Polly Hager—before taking it public. I understand and agree.) That brings up to 17 (I think) the number of people whose songs I’ve musicated: April Johns, Beth Williams, Betty Holt, Bill Osofsky, Derek Hines, Diane Ewing, Don Varnell, Donna Devine, Gem Watson, Jody Dickey, Jon Harrington, Lynn Orloff, Marge McKinnis, Odd Vindstad, Polly Hager, Regina Michelle, Stan Good… I’m sure there’s a couple I’ve missed. Add in Bobbie Gallup and Scott Rose, with whom I’ve co-written things that I’ve also done the music for, and it’s 19. Some of those were one-shot deals, some two; with Stan, it’s been many. In each case, they were great lyrics (I have high standards). These are good writers. The Industry Professionals say you have to co-write if you’re going to make it in Nashville; the “co-writing fever” seems driven by people wanting pieces of the writers’ copyright fees more than anything else (and the result—songs that sound like they were written by committee—isn’t pleasant)—but having multiple authors each trying to pitch the song to everybody they know obviously multiplies marketing efforts, too. I just think being able to work with others is a useful skill to have. I am providing a useful service to the lyricists (there’s the Virgo rising again—I must provide useful service). Lyrics alone just aren’t marketable any more—one has to have a finished product (despite all that “co-writing fever” in Nashville)—so I can provide an effective (I hope) delivery system for the lyrics that gives the lyricist something he or she can pitch. There are benefits to me, of course. I never have to write anything serious (and I’m paranoid about writing serious stuff—words are weapons, after all, and mine tend to be sharp), because these other folks are doing it—and I can assuage my serious tendencies by musicating their serious stuff. And I can preserve my reputation as the guy who doesn’t take anything seriously, because even if I’m performing their stuff, it’s their stuff, not mine. More stuff to do—mostly from a paperwork setup standpoint: I want the income taxes ready to be filed right away, and the “FAFSA”—the document every college uses for student financial aid—ready to go as soon as the taxes are done. I get to wrestle, too, with the State of Oregon’s brand-new job application system, that appears designed deliberately to cut down on the number of people they have to interview. (I like challenges.) Another radio spot (tomorrow), thanking everybody for their donations to the Food Pantry and for coming to the Christmas Show. No music this week, but maybe I can play Sunday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday next week. Joe

As I understand it, the way John wants to record the songs on the album is to (1) record a “scratch track” of himself (bass), Chris (drums), and me (rhythm guitar and vocal), then (2) record on separate tracks each of us playing (and in my case, also singing) to the scratch track, then (3) add lead instruments, and (4) mix the tracks, using his fancy computer program—and eliminating the scratch track in the process. I don’t know for sure if this is how it’s done in commercial studios, but it sounds like it should work. It is a little complicated, but it ought to produce just about perfect results. Then comes mastering, which I believe is both making the volumes of the individual songs consistent with each other and consistent with the volumes one gets out of commercial recordings, so you can pop the CD into any CD player and not have the listener running for the volume control. Might send that part out—I know at least three people who do that commercially (though I don’t know what they charge, and what they charge is going to be important). Recording the scratch tracks may or may not be a simple process. From the band’s end, it’s a snap; John and Chris are both very good, and the songs on the album are all ones we’ve played a lot. I would expect we could do each one in one take. Scratch tracks for the whole album—an hour’s worth of music—would be part of an afternoon’s work, if the recording equipment can handle it. It may not be able to—I know John’s portable unit is better than my Tascam (which can only hold one song at a time), but I’m not sure how much better. The alternative to spreading the scratch recording out over two, three or four days would be to migrate Chris’s drum set up to John’s living room, so tracks could be dumped to the computer quickly. Probably another afternoon or evening to overlay each of the individual instruments—rhythm guitar, bass, drums, lead guitar, blues harp and vocal. (Re-recording the dums would entail Chris’s drum set being in John and Sara’s living room one more day.) Might add (or substitute) Bruce’s piano on a couple of the songs, if he’s interested (I think he might be); we could have me playing lead on the simpler stuff, but I’d really rather have Mike doing all the guitar leads if he would—he is many times better a lead player than I am. And with all that work done, John could mix at his leisure. Next step: a SCHEDULE. Right now, everybody’s got a little free time, but it’s not going to last. I think I need a revised setlist for the album. I need to eliminate the two co-writes, substituting songs wrote entirely by me, so I can avoid the expense of paying copyright royalties up front. I hate to do it—“Dead Things in the Shower” and “Un-Easy Street” are among our best crowd-pleasers—but I can’t afford it. I’m doing this album for no money, because no money is what I have. I can substitute “Crosses By the Roadside” for “Un-Easy Street” easily. “Crosses” is a good song (despite having been panned by a Nashville publisher)—it’s more serious and sad, but almost exactly the same tempo, and a two-step, even. (That’s why I won’t play the two songs together.) What can I substitute for “Dead Things”? Just as in a live performance, one wants to lead off with the almost-best stuff. Do I know what that is, any more? Joe

Christmas is over, and it was nice. Time to get back to normal—if I had any idea what “normal” is. (I probably have to take the Bill Clinton route, and define “normal.” What do I want it to be?) In two weeks—Friday, 8 January—is my appointment to meet the band in Astoria (60 miles away) I’d applied to play rhythm guitar with. New band, no gigs yet; from my end, it’s just an opportunity to do Something Completely Different. The bandleader wants to do covers, old rock ‘n’ roll with some modern country (which is pretty much the same thing), and I know probably half the songs on his list even if I can’t sing ‘em. I have a Lynn Orloff song to musicate (if she’s willing)—a very fast bluegrassy love song (technically not bluegrass music, because no one dies in the last verse). Lynn is a very competent lyricist, and I haven’t done any songs of hers yet. One more copy of the Joe Songbook to mail out, too—along with the last of my thongs. I have a couple of playing opportunities to take advantage of—the supposedly weekly blues jam down in Newport on Sundays (I’d get to finally meet Jason Jones if I did that), and Whitney Streed’s comedy thing at the Mt. Tabor in Portland (on Thursdays—I could combine the trip with some other business in Portland). Both, again, would be something different. One problem with making music videos of my songs is the lyrics are usually chock full of imagery that is probably best left up to the imagination—it doesn’t transfer well to video. There’s a way out, though. Porter Wagoner’s “Committed to Parkview” (his last song before he died, I think) simply had footage of him and/or the band playing in what looked like an abandoned nursing home; it was even in black and white. I can “go minimalist,” too, leaving nearly everything up to the imagination. I sort of did that in the video of “Me and Rufus, and Burnin’ Down the House.” I just filmed Rufus doing Dog Things (mostly eating) out in the yard at Sara’s house (where the fire damage had been repaired), and used still shots (also of Rufus) with the usual snide text commentary during the Rap, and it didn’t come out bad. (My camera work could use work—but I learned a lot about the limitations of the camera in the process.) I can do “The Dog’s Song” the same way. I can shoot five minutes of footage of a hyperactive kitten doing destructive things (I know someone who’s living with one of those). I never need to show the dog. In the same vein—only slightly more complicated—is “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot,” the pre-election talking blues I wrote for Southern Pigfish. Nearly all the song can be beach footage, with maybe some tavern stuff (one verse sort of takes place inside a tavern). I can do it all myself if I don’t have to be in the video—and I probably do not want to be in the video: one of the “mystiques” I’d like to preserve about Southern Pigfish is no one ever sees the band (it isn’t necessary to come out and say that’s because the band doesn’t really exist). I could shoot some footage of someone else lip-synching some of the vocals if I could find someone willing. And in the spirit of Porter Wagoner, one never has to see the parrot. I could use some feedback on the videos I’ve done; I’d like to show them to an unsuspecting crowd, in other words, and see what their reaction is, much as I’ve done with songs at open mikes. There is a potential venue: Whitney Streed was running a monthly comedy showcase in Portland (I’ve played there once) that included some multi-media stuff. I’ll have to get her the videos and ask if it’s something she’d be interested in. Joe

It was 20 December last year that I published the Worklist; here, a year later, I can say I have accomplished rather little. Except making lists, of course—I am good at lists. Here’s the 2010 Worklist: FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE A LIVING OFF THIS STUFF. Not just the music, but the related things I do or can do, too—writing, publishing, graphic design, &c. I’ve been told I’m already a household word in the area where I live—but I’m not one people spend money on yet. FINISH THE JOE ALBUM. Just because most of the stuff is outside my control doesn’t mean it’s not controllable. The pieces are all in place—the band, the setlist, the sound engineer, the equipment, and the process. Now that the Christmas Show is over, I’ll talk to the band about a production schedule. FINISH SOUTHERN PIGFISH’S ALBUM. That one’s got more sub-pieces; need about four more songs, and every song is going to be a music video because the album is going to be released on flash drive rather than CD. A WEEK IN NASHVILLE. Sure, why not? The only thing that prevented my going this year was money—I had the time. And I’ve got a good reason to go—being able to film Polly Hager and Glyn Duncan together singing “A Man for Christmas.” EXPAND USE OF VIDEO. It is possible most of my songs could be turned into music videos, with very little effort or expense. There’s the gig-soliciting DVDs to do, too. I’ve been learning how to use the camera better, but I could use a better camera. THE JOE WEBSITE. So I have to take a Website design class. So what? WIN A COUPLE MORE SONG CONTESTS (sounds better than “enter song contests”)—targeting them, of course, as carefully as I did the “doing Dylan” one this year. WRITE IN SOME DIFFERENT GENRES. I haven’t done ragtime yet, and I only have one Norwegian Black/Death Metal song, “Evil Dead Fairies in My Mobile Home.” Apply that to the album’s worth of co-writes I want to do in 2010, too. Keep writing in any event. BECOME A HOUSEHOLD WORD. (Like “toilet paper”? Sure—people spend money on toilet paper.) Be involved in things where I can help people—targeting, again, situations where what I know and can do can be put to the most efficient use. Like fellow songwriter Bobbie Gallup says, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows YOU.” GET MORE PEOPLE PLAYING MY STUFF. I haven’t a clue how to do this, but it probably ties into the getting-better-known item above. In 2009, one of my songs (“Rotten Candy”) got recorded by the incomparable Polly Hager, and two others are being performed by other folks, and it is because they knew me. How much more of that I can do depends on how well known I am. TEACH A SONGWRITING CLASS. No clue how to arrange this, either, but I think I’m ready. The Worklist should always include new tasks, even if the old ones aren’t quite done. I hardly need to add PLAY WITH MORE PEOPLE, but I will. “Deathgrass” may not be able to do concerts for a while, because John will be busy with the city budget, but that shouldn’t prevent me from playing other places. I do know musicians to the east and south, and a fellow to the north trying to assemble a band. I’d like to arrange a St. Leif’s Day concert (March 29). And there—tentatively—is the Worklist for 2010. Like they said in that Disney movie, “Bring it on.” Joe

The Christmas concert was good. We actually filled most of the chairs in the hall (briefly), and raised a lot of food for the Food Pantry—some cash money, too. Both Doc (blues harp) and Mike (lead guitar) said they want to do it again—and I told them both that could probably be arranged. Roughly half the people who came were folks I didn’t know, which means they either saw the ads, heard the radio interviews, or heard about the concert from other people. I hope we made some fans. And the rest I did know, and I’m glad they came. We were competing with a number of other Yuletide events, including one right in Garibaldi (at one of the churches) and two in nearby Bay City (5 miles away). Some folks dropped off food and didn’t stay. They were a generally elderly audience (it’s a generally elderly population), so no dancers; I did see toes tapping, however. Santa made an appearance (I’d talked to him earlier, and told him that would be okay, as long as he didn’t show up while we were playing “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up”), sporting a big red and white umbrella (because it was raining), and Pastor Barry, proprietor of the Food Pantry, stopped by, too, taking a break from the Christmas program at his church. Our experiment with the sound did work. Setting the band up against one of the concrete-block walls, projecting towards the kitchen (the one wall that isn’t concrete block) and pointing the speakers slightly inward, did produce a much clearer sound. All the people I asked—fans and strangers—said it sounded good. My voice lasted the whole two hours, with infrequent sips of water, and so did my fingers. Two hours is about the limit, though. (Drummer Chris faded early, and had to stop; I think he’s still recovering from the flu.) I hated to take a break in between the first and second hours of the show, but I think it’s essential for the musicians (including me); it’s really not possible to play (and in my case, also sing) more than an hour at a stretch without a rest. The problem is you stand to lose a large part of your audience when you do take a break—and we did here. What’s the solution? Refreshments, maybe—if there was coffee, juice, cookies, &c., maybe people would stick around to partake, and then feel guilty about not having left when they had the chance. I’ll have to try it. Judgments on the material: “The Dog’s Song” is hard to sing unless we play it real slow—but we can’t play it slow because it’s got so many words. I either have to figure out a different key for it or not do it. “Test Tube Baby” was a definite hit; we ended up playing it way too fast (my fault, because I start these things off and the rest of the band follows)—but it worked: it wasn’t too hard to play or sing, either. We should continue doing it that way. “Rotten Candy” was fast, too—but I know it sounds good fast; the important thing is to get the stops just before the choruses just right, and they were perfect. (Such good musicians. I am honored to be able to play with them.) I think people’s favorites among the Other Writers’ Stuff were Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” (a consistent hit) and Gem Watson’s “Final Payment,” and among my stuff, “Armadillo on the Interstate,” “Bluebird on My Windshield,” “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” (of course), “Tillamook Railroad Blues,” and the new Christmas song, “Even Roadkill Gets the Blues.” The roadkill song is so over-the-top sad I don’t think anyone takes it seriously. (I notice four of the abovementioned top five are dead-animal songs.) Next steps? I don’t have any gigs on the horizon (it is probably too much to hope that somebody would call us after this one to hire us to play somewhere, but you never know). Failing anything else, I’d like to finish the album. (That’s going to be on the 2010 Worklist.) I’ll thank everybody profusely, and see how much people talk about how good the concert was. Hopefully, a lot of people will say it was. Joe

General judgment of the folks who put on the City-Port Christmas Potluck is they liked everything exactly the way it was, and they’d like to do it again next year. Including having us (John on bass, me on guitar, Bruce on keyboard, and city councilmember Terry Kandle on fiddle—drummer Chris was sick) play music. I would make a few changes with respect to the music. First, we need more practice, of course; we really needed to play together more than once before we went on stage. Second, we should be consistently rapid-fire—it’s not necessary to do a Rap between songs like I do, but if you don’t, you should be launching into the next song before the applause dies down. Bruce and I should alternate more, too, so there’s less of a contrast between styles. Third, we should be better organized—no hunting for music, and no last-minute changes, either. We know exactly what we’re going to play, and how we’re going to play it, and we don’t deviate from it. Fourth is the sound. Some folks said the vocals were “mushy” and hard to hear; a lot of that is because of the room—City Hall’s Dance Floor is a rotten acoustic space, a big square room (built in the 1940s) with echoey cinderblock walls and a low, false ceiling of absorbent tile. And the little stage is in one corner (uck)—the only place in the room that has any electric outlets (double uck). John and I decided to try an experiment with the “Deathgrass” Christmas concert: we’ll ignore the stage, and run extension cords for the power, and put the band up against one wall, facing the kitchen (where the wall is made out of less-reflective sheetrock and has openings), and point the speakers slightly inwards to minimize sound bouncing off the side walls. We’ll see how well that works. IN THE GOOD NEWS DEPARTMENT, I got to see a video of Randy MacNeil and the Whitney Pier Cowboys’ performance in concert of “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up.” They’re from up in Canada. Their rendition of the song has fiddle and piano leads, and harmonies on the chorus—they did a fine job. (And they mentioned my name as the author. Thanks, guys.) And I hear Lorelei Loveridge, over in England, is practicing “Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire” so she can do it in concert—and reportedly other people are interested, too. As noted before, that’s success for the writer in the Modern Era—other people performing your stuff. So how does one take advantage of this? Well, the Canadian band will get a copy of the Songbook (Lorelei already got one), and as I come up with stuff that I think would fit those folks’ style, I’ll tell them about it. Low-key, of course—I don’t want to be annoying, but I do want it understood that all my stuff is available, and it’s free. I’m trying to establish a reputation as a writer, and the way you do that is by other people playing your stuff. I want to create among musicians the kind of “rep” I seem to be acquiring locally—I had one Lions Club person tell me recently, “Everybody I talk to seems to know who you are, and what you do.” This morning’s radio interview was good, too; got pledges of 100 cans of food for the Food Pantry during the broadcast, and I hope there was more after I was off the air. We are going to define the success of the Christmas concert in terms of how much food we can raise for the Food Pantry, and I hope we get a lot. As this is written, the Failed Economy Christmas Show is less than 24 hours away. Joe

Almost time to publish the 2010 Worklist; I’ll hold off one or two more issues of the blog, though, and let the Christmas concert get out of the way. Updates, first. The “I see dead things” sweatshirt came out good—I only had to re-print the design four times to get that right, but it ironed on the sweatshirt just fine. I can wear it Saturday night at the Christmas show—if I dare. Lorelei, Polly, Beth and Joanne got their Joe Songbook packages; I have some more to make, but I need more labels (I can get those Friday, when I go into town to help daughter move). Whitney and Dawn, the ringleaders of Life’s SubtleTease, the burlesque troupe, are interested in doing another show (yay!). I found normal guitar tablature for most of Bruce’s Christmas Potluck songs, and transposed them into the keys he sings ‘em in. I was sure it existed after I looked at Bruce’s sheet music for the Elvis song “Blue Christmas,” and found that full of diminished-ninths and flatted-elevenths and other “fruity” stuff, too—and I know the King didn’t use chords of more than one syllable, because I’ve seen him play on TV. (And I can play “Blue Christmas” myself using only four one-syllable chords.) Same for “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—it has only three chords, and there’s not a diminished-ninth among them. The only song I couldn’t find normal tablature for was “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (not surprising, since it’s a Perry Como song—but why is Perry Como listed on the Internet as a “country guitarist”?). And the Christmas Potluck gig did come across mostly okay. Bruce sang some, and I sang some; I think I do a better job of working a crowd, but that may be the result of my own paranoia—I don’t want to risk losing the audience’s attention, so I never give them a chance. My stuff is a little less conventional, and I noticed they were listening. Biggest hit of the evening (I was told so) was my rendition of “Santa, Baby.” I even got a scarf and bling-bling (from two ladies in the audience) to wear while I was singing it. We were missing Chris the drummer; he’s been sick, and we hope he’ll be back in order by Saturday’s Christmas Show. There is no way to tell. This flu season has been real hard on a lot of people. No word from the Tillamook Revitalization group, which I assume means I did not get the job. (Too bad; it would have been fun, I think, even though the pay would have been absolutely awful.) It’s okay; I’ve got a couple of applications in the pipeline (both city manager jobs, of all things) and a couple more to apply for. Come January, though, I think I might as well become a full-time student if I can figure out a way to afford the classes (and keep the mortgage paid); I am not doing anything productive spinning my wheels applying for jobs nobody wants me for. I have decided—we’ll see how well I can pull it off—that I’m going to stop being dependent on the vagaries of reality. No, that’s not a return to the Glorious ‘60s (I lived a very sedate, normal kid’s life in the ‘60s, anyway); rather, I mean I’ll just go ahead and plan what I want to do, rather than waiting to see what happens with a job or anything else. If I want to go to Nashville for a week next summer (one of the things that was going to end up on the Worklist again), I’ll simply plan on it, and save up for it—and if Divine Intervention wants to throw any curve balls my way, I’ll deal with them as (and if) they happen. I have developed (or re-developed) a number of things I can do—writing, graphic design, music, &c.—and have managed to get (or get back) a little bit of a reputation for it, I think. The Operative Question is whether it can generate an income—I could use one of those. Probably that should top the 2010 Worklist: “Figure out how to make a living off this stuff.” Joe

Practice with “Deathgrass” Saturday, and with what I think of as “Bruce’s band” (that’s Chris, John, and me, plus Bruce on keyboard) Sunday. As this is written, there are two days until we (Bruce’s band) perform at the City-Port Christmas potluck, four days till the second radio interview promoting the “Deathgrass” Christmas Show, and five days until the Show. Suddenly, time is flyin’ way too fast. For the Christmas show, “Deathgrass” is ready. We went through the second half of the setlist, and every single song was good. Re-did “Test Tube Baby” to incorporate a few more Elvis touches, too. It’s tempting to have nightmares about people not showing up, but drummer Chris is right: it’s too late to worry about that—what happens, happens, and the important part is our being ready (which we are) and having fun (which I have no doubt we will do). Santa has promised to make an appearance, and so has Pastor Barry, proprietor of the Food Pantry. I’ve gotten apologetic e-mails from our local state representative (who is sending a donation), and our state senator and Congressman (who are not); Oregon’s two U.S. Senators have not deigned to respond (they didn’t last time, either). With Bruce’s band, it’s mostly me that needs the work, I think. Bruce is a good musician, and a good bandleader, too, and John and Chris can both follow him easily, because they’re good, too. I will have to practice some to keep up. A lot of Bruce’s music is very jazzy, full of ninths and diminisheds, and flatted-elevenths and such ilk, and I’ll have to look a lot of those chords up (and download sheet music for the songs). Bruce does have a setlist (good) for the rough hour of music we’re going to do, and I’ve had him e-mail me what key they’re in (because I can’t tell, being mostly tone-deaf), so I can spend the next couple of days practicing. The potluck set is all Christmas music, and does include three songs I sing (two of which I wrote): “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” (of course) and “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up,” plus “Santa, Baby,” which Eartha Kitt made famous. For some reason, that one’s been getting requested a lot this Christmas season. (I’m sure it’s not because of my sexy singing voice.) Bruce wants me to sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun,” and I think I can do it. It’s in my voice range. Another video idea: I noticed some people on Facebook (at least, I think they were people—you can’t ever tell with the Internet) gushing over the antics of their kittens. If I could get about five minutes’ footage—nice and clear—of a kitten doing generally destructive kitten things, that’s all I’d need to make a music video of “The Dog’s Song.” For the Rap, I could use still photos of Amy, our now-deceased big (4-1/2 feet at the shoulder) Doberman, who was kind of my role model for the dog in the song. Same technique I used in “Me and Rufus, and Burnin’ Down the House,” only (hopefully) better quality. I had wanted “The Dog’s Song” to be on the Southern Pigfish album, and I want all the Southern Pigfish songs to be videos; that’s the album I want to release on flash drive rather than CD. I’d still like to use one of Mike Simpson’s middle-school bands to “play” Southern Pigfish on the videos, but it really doesn’t matter; since the players don’t really need to be identified, it could be anybody. Alternatively, one could take the same approach as the Grateful Dead—they were simply never photographed, for years. I never knew what they looked like until I saw them in concert. A similar “mystique” would work for Southern Pigfish. How can you photograph a band that doesn’t exist? Joe

One way to keep warm while it’s bitterly cold outside is to clean; got daughter, cousin and daughter’s boyfriend coming this weekend, and wanted to be partway presentable. So I verified the upstairs does have a floor, and it is now clean, and things are organized and put away. Job interview this afternoon, music at City Hall tonight, band practice Saturday, and practice again on Sunday with Chris (drums), John (bass), and Bruce (keyboard)—we’ve been invited to play at the City-Port Christmas potluck Dec. 16, three days before the big Christmas concert, and none of us have ever played with Bruce before. Turns out our newest Port Commissioner is a personal friend of Jane Scott (the video lady), which I found out when I covered the Port Commission meeting for the paper—so Port Commissioner Sarah got a Christmas concert flyer to pass on to Jane, who hasn’t been returning phone calls. Still a couple more newspapers I can e-mail flyers and press releases to, though time is getting short; as this is written, the concert is only eight days away. I found (while doing some housecleaning of my own) complete copies—printed both sides—of the old “Joe is Great!” brochure. The back side, which I was missing before, has a panel of cogent quotes from reviewers, which I’ll probably keep, the famous “Wanted in 6 states for playing bad country music” poster-turned-logo designed by my daughter, and a photo of me with the impromptu band that won a band scramble contest at one of the “Moograss” bluegrass festivals (we were paid in cheese). I’d probably substitute a photo of “Deathgrass”—I’ve got a good one—but the layout of the brochure is good, and doesn’t need to be changed. I hate re-inventing things, anyway. I don’t have an immediate need for the “Joe is Great!” brochure, but Getting Heard, my 1970s “operating manual” for working bands, says I should have one. It’s just one of the tools I need to have in my toolbox, along with CDs (check), 8x10 glossy promotional photo (check), letterhead (check) and business cards (check). I’d add one more tool, that hadn’t yet been invented when the manual was written, and that’s DVDs. If you’re soliciting gigs, what better way to tell somebody what a live performance by you or your band is like than to say, “Watch this”? I have DVDs of the two public-television shows of my stuff the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. arranged in Ashland, but I don’t have a way to copy them (yet—I do have a DVD-R drive for “Alice,” that I haven’t installed). What would be ideal, though, would be a couple of video clips (one song, if necessary), filmed before a live audience, one clip with me playing solo, and one with the band. A couple of solo performances by me have been videotaped in the past, at the Bay City Arts Center, but I’ve never seen the tapes (though I’ve asked). And if Jane would videotape the Christmas concert, I’d have video of the band. That’s something that needs to be on the 2010 work list—VIDEO. I want the performance videos above, and also music videos done of some of my songs. I am anxious to try out the technique I think I puzzled out—recording the song first, and then having the band lip-synch (and finger-synch) to it. A few of my songs lend themselves really well to videography; for the rest, filming a performance by the band probably works well enough. One can be tastefully restrained—Porter Wagoner’s “Committed to Parkview” was just shot in what looked like an abandoned nursing home, with no special effects at all. (It was even in black and white.) Oh, and a Joe Website—that’s another 21st-century item that wasn’t in the 1970s operating manual. I already have most of the pieces: the “joelist” of e-mail addresses, a couple of OMDs where songs are archived, and the blog. I need to create a “clearinghouse” with links to all those things, plus some photos and a “push here to play a song” button. I saw one musician’s Website that had a “love board” (I don’t think they called it that) where people could leave nice comments; I’d like one of those, too. The Website may be my biggest task of the new year. Joe

Practice yesterday with the band. We got through 14 of the 24 songs in 2-1/2 hours. Every single one was good, and some were perfect. In each case, I found myself thinking, “This here is what it’s supposed to sound like.” A 5-piece band—drums, bass, rhythm guitar, “whiny” lead (harmonica) and “non-whiny” lead (guitar), is ideal, I think. Those who come to the Failed Economy Christmas Concert are going to get one heck of a show. We practice again next Saturday. It’d probably be good to have one more practice besides that before Gig Day, but I don’t know if folks’ work schedules will permit it. The primary value of the practices, besides encouraging me that we’re going to be okay, is it gives everybody a feel for everybody else’s capabilities; I just give ‘em free rein to put their own “spin” on things, and applaud what comes out good (I end up applauding a lot). They don’t need much practice with the material per se, because (1) they are very good, and (2) they have what drummer Chris calls “the homework”—the CDs, setlists, and (for the new guys) lyric sheets with chords. I have noticed they use them. Since I have to have everything organized in advance, the CDs have recordings (draft in some cases, just done on the Tascam) of the songs on the setlist, in the order we’re going to play them, recorded pretty much the way we’re going to play them, because I have thought all that out in advance. We might make some changes as we go along—we’ve done that a couple of times—but we may not. I don’t know if other bands do this. If they don’t, I wonder why. It sure does minimize the amount of time needed for practice, and that’s important when one is dealing with busy people. (I regularly remind these guys I’m the only one with a lot of free time. I’m unemployed. They’re not.) We have also developed fairly established patterns. We have started off every show with “Dead Things in the Shower”; it’s a good high-energy piece, and the band falls into it easily. We also finish (the first set, if it’s a long show, or the show, if it’s a short one) with “Un-Easy Street”; it’s a danceable two-step—with a message, no less—that leaves the audience anxious for more. (If you’re about to have a break, you want the audience sticking around for more.) We’ll finish a two-hour concert like this one with “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” the Woody Guthrie tune that the Grateful Dead made famous; they used it as their closing song, too. I try to keep a constant injection of new stuff—but not a lot: we’ll be doing four new songs at the Christmas concert: two rock ‘n’ roll (“Test Tube Baby” and “The Dog’s Song”), one bluegrass (“Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up”), and one slow and sleazy two-step (“Even Roadkill Gets the Blues,” the Christmas song that doesn’t get played much). Still to do for the concert: notices to the local Congressman and Senators (by letter), and to the local state legislators (by e-mail); none of them came last time, but it’s cheap and easy to tell them about the show. Press releases to the newspaper I write for, and to a couple of others, are mostly done—they just need to be tweaked a little to make them perfect. The Food Pantry got 50 copies of the poster to put in last week’s food boxes, and I take more posters with me to hand out to local businesses everywhere I go. I’ve left a message for Jane Scott Productions (Jane is the one who videotapes the county commissioners’ meetings, and a couple of city councils—her stuff is aired on the cable TV system that covers two counties), but no answer back; I’ve noticed she doesn’t check messages very often, and I may have to catch her in person at one of the meetings she’s videotaping. Nothing in Oregon Music News—despite the name, they may really be interested only in musical stuff in Portland. (I guess I’ll just ignore them in the future.) Music Friday this week. Jobs to apply for, too, and a house to clean. I should find a few venues to make brief appearances at, to promote the concert. Joe

BREAKING NEWS… An e-mail from England advised that “No Good Songs About the War” has WON FIRST PRIZE in their “Doing Dylan” contest we entered back this summer. (They wanted to know where to send the prize check for 100 pounds to.) “Deathgrass” (me, John, Dick and Chris) will split it four ways—that was our original arrangement. Here’s what the judge, John Tams, said: ‘1st “No-one Writes Good Songs About The War.” Ramshackle recording measured against some of the high quality produced offerings. Whilst it holds within it the rough truth-telling of the Carter/Guthrie songbooks it has an economy, topicality and directness that makes this song rise above, most especially to make Katy the heroine. I particularly liked the cyclical ending which took us back to the beginning. I believe Dylan would like this song.’ Ah, that’s nice. Considering that the song was written to prove a point—to show how protest songs are supposed to be written—I guess it proved its point. Now, the Operative Question, as Richard Nixon would say, is how can I parlay this into more business? I’m in contact with a couple of writers in England; I guess the first step is to ask them. The “Doing Dylan” contest appeared pretty small-time, with just one judge (and he not anyone whose name I recognized) and both the entry fee and prize money denominated in British pounds; that’s why I wanted to enter—I like to enter contests I think I can win. (I was surprised to see how many entries they got, and had figured we never had a chance. I guess I was wrong.) It is, however, fame of a sort—rather like having a song published in The Philippines was last year. If it can’t make any waves in England, it still may be useful for attention-getting in this country. I’ve made sure the radio station DJ who’s interviewing me this Friday about the Failed Economy Christmas Show knows about the award, and I suppose I should put it in the rest of the press releases I send out about the concert. “Deathgrass” may not be the biggest thing to ever hit these parts, but we can sure act like it. “Song for Polly and Glyn” (subtitled “A Man for Christmas”) is done. Recorded twice, once with my vocal, once without (because Polly wants to sing it, and I’d really like her to), and sent lyrics and recordings to Polly. I can tell it’s an okay song, because I keep wanting to play the recording. I can’t wait to hear it with Polly’s vocals—but I will wait, of course: it’ll be about a week, I’m told, before she’ll be able to record it. I think this will be the 2009 Christmas song—I try to have a new one every year, and I think last Christmas was the only year I missed. It’s tempting to try this one out on a live audience—I bet the womenfolk that come to the Friday Night group’s sessions would like it—but I really shouldn’t be the one doing it. It’d be better if it was performed by Polly and her J.D. Jackson Band. And who knows? She might even find a mate with it. ELSEWHERE: I am out (again) of slimline cases for my CDs, and there’s nowhere around here that sells them; I’ve augmented my supplies in the past when I’ve gone to the big city for job interviews, but I haven’t had one of those in a long time, either. There’s a new blues jam on Sunday afternoons in Newport, an hour and a half’s drive from here, and I could go shopping while I was at it—I don’t think the band will be practicing that day. The Songbook I’m just putting in thick CD cases (I have some of those, and can get more locally), and printing fancy front and back cover plates. It does look nice. Tempting to craft fancy front and back plates for the “Santa’s Fallen” CD, too, but there’s probably no point—I’ve done without for four years now, and there’s no good reason to change. Joe

There’s a songwriter over in England I’d really like to talk to, and it was suggested I check out Skype, a program for making long-distance calls for free with the computer. Yes, “Alice” the ‘puter has the brains to handle Skype (though it would help to have those extra RAM chips installed), and our local version of high-speed Internet should work, even though it’s pretty slow compared to what most people in other areas have. Skype says I need a microphone and a webcam, and I have both, but they were cheap ($1 and $15, respectively) and not very good (and that could always be related to the price). I used the ‘puter mike briefly, back when I was subscribed to Whitby Shores, the Website started by Canadian deejay Len Amsterdam, but I always had an annoying echo that neither I nor anyone else could figure out how to eliminate. My webcam is one of my worser wastes of money; it works, but the picture quality is horrible. (If I’d gone with the ‘Hello Kitty’ model—just a few dollars more—I could have at least had something decorative.) And I shouldn’t forget that the soundcard itself is an antique—it’s an old Creative Labs SoundBlaster I acquired for free from a computer repair guy after Alice’s onboard sound gave up the ghost about four years ago. “Alice” was never built for music—she was built for graphic design work. (She now has really good speakers, though.) As I begin dinking (finally) with the computers out in the studio, assembling my three-for-five-bucks units into one good music-and-video computer, I might consider making the new computer I build the “Skype unit.” Odds are the onboard sound on those ex-college computers is way better than Alice’s ancient soundcard, and I have an adapter that will let me use my vocal mike instead of that $1 computer thing. I hadn’t planned on making the new unit an Internettable computer, but I could—“Alice” has the only working network card, but I have a wireless card that may still work, left over from when I was living out of a motel room when I first moved to Phoenix. I still need a decent webcam (Santa? You listening?). What’s been tentatively titled “A Man for Christmas” now has two verses and a chorus; it needs one more verse, and maybe a bridge. I’m happy with the first verse and the chorus, but am still not sure about the second verse. The song is intended as a gift for fellow writers Polly Hager and Glynda Duncan, both of whom have been making “What’s it take to get a man around here?” noises lately. Having told them both there was a song in it, I now need to demonstrate what I meant. It is rock ‘n’ roll, of course (folk-rock, actually), because that was in the parameters I set for myself—but I do seem to have defaulted to the same rhythm I used in “The Dog’s Song,” and I don’t want the two being that close. The chord progression in the verses is at least different, and if I record “A Man for Christmas” in a different key (forcing me to play it differently on the guitar), it might sound different enough to be okay. ELSEWHERE: Three weeks until the Christmas concert—notice has gone out to the “joelist” and to Facebook, but I still need to do the press releases for the newspapers and for Oregon Music News (as an experiment—we’ll see if OMN really are only interested in events in Portland), and there are still more posters to distribute (I’ve been taking some with me everywhere I go). Band practice is scheduled for next Saturday, and our first radio spot (of two) is Friday morning. And it’s time to make copies of the Joe Songbook on CD. There are jobs to apply for, too—several of them, in fact. I just wish I felt more hopeful about the results. Joe

Hope everyone within earshot (or eyeshot) had a good Thanksgiving. I baked a whole salmon (traditional), so there’s a lot left; I’ll be making salmon quiche, and salmon fried rice, and other things, out of the carcass for a few days. There is a Nashville music publisher that apparently came up with the same idea I did, of marketing the songs of unknown writers to regionally well-known artists looking for material—bypassing the Big Boys and the Big Record Companies that aren’t interested in new material anyway. So I’ve been invited (along with a lot of other writers) to send them stuff. I have no idea who the regionally well-known artists might be. It’s possible the publisher doesn’t know, either; if I were doing this, I’d assemble the library of available songs first, and then go find the artists, and that may be what’s happening here. What to send? “Rotten Candy,” of course; it’s the most “mainstream” of all the songs I’ve written. “Crosses by the Roadside,” too, even though this publisher is one of the ones that rejected the song earlier (at the time, they were looking only at Big Name Stars as clients, though, and this might be different). Beyond that, I don’t know. I have three songs that I know are being performed in other places by other people, and I could include them: “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up,” and “Bluebird on My Windshield.” The first two are obviously seasonal in appeal. Tempting to include the Southern Pigfish song “For Their Own Ends,” too, because just about everybody who’s heard it likes it (I have no idea why). The collabs, now… There are several of those I could envision being performed by other people or other bands, in either small venues or on big stages: Stan Good’s “Don’t Remind Me You’re On My Mind,” Diane Ewing’s “Distraction,” Marge McKinnis’ “About Love,” Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” and Skip Johnson’s “Tune the Strings of My Soul.” I would want the authors’ okay before I submitted anything (though I half expect they’d say yes). Of those, “Un-Easy Street” is the only one being performed in public, but that’s by our band; on the other hand, the reason we’ve been performing it every concert is people like it a lot, and it gets them out of their chairs and dancing. More “one hand/other hand” considerations: I don’t know for sure if the publisher guy’s legit—he acts legit (a lot of presumed publishers do not), and hasn’t been after money (publishers work on commission, and aren’t supposed to ask for money), and I’ve reviewed (and think I understand) the “licensing” arrangement being proposed for songs in the “library,” and it doesn’t seem to be tying up the material so it couldn’t be pitched to or recorded by someone else. He hasn’t been “gushy” about my material, either (I would consider gushiness a sure sign of illegitmacy). I am inclined to try things out as experiments on myself, to see how well (or if) they work—but I’m not always the best guinea pig. I am aware that a lot of what I write appeals to a “niche” market; yes, it gets performed a lot, but it’s mostly being performed by me. Would people come (and pay) to hear anyone else perform those songs? Like I told people when I suggested “Serial Killer Starter Kits” (small shovels, knife, lye, cleaning supplies) might be popular Christmas gifts, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there? Music tonight at City Hall; practice tomorrow with the band—we’ll have all five of us in one place at the same time, finally. Press releases about the Christmas concert to do for a couple of newspapers (including the local one I write the weekly column for). No Santa gigs this Christmas season—I guess I’ve lost too much weight to be a good fit for the part. Joe

Well, part of the Tascam’s problem was a dying power adapter, and I was able to get a Radio Shack replacement. The Tascam still has Volume Issues,.and I need to dump all my mixes into Audacity these days and boost the volume. My biggest headache, though, is my favorite soundhole pickup in the guitar—the one that makes the acoustic guitar sound like an acoustic guitar—is about dead, and I don’t have a replacement. (John has been miking my guitar at all our shows since July.) Nonetheless, by being very, very careful about how and where I stood (I usually don’t need to worry about moving, because I tend to be motionless when I play, in order to not stray from the mike), I was able to get the rhythm, lead, and bass parts, along with my vocal, recorded for Stan Good’s “One More Time,” my latest musication effort. It’s a serious song—Stan, like me, doesn’t often write serious stuff, so the serious ones really get your attention. Since the song could be sung by either a guy or a girl, I suggested we do both, and make it a duet. And the girl’s part is going to be sung by none other than Polly Hager! I am honored. It has been said that if Linda Ronstadt were going to be reincarnated as a higher life form, it’d be as Polly Hager. So the recording, with my vocal “bits,” has been sent off to Polly. And I am anxious to hear the result. It was Polly who suggested I write a Christmas rock song (she normally does rock music), and it is an interesting challenge. Rock has very minimalist lyrics (my “Test Tube Baby” probably uses less than 50 words, despite being four minutes long), and Christmas songs are stuck with an extremely limited “stable” of imagery to boot—there’s the Santa stuff, and the winter stuff, and the baby Jesus stuff, and not a lot else. Can one take those limitations and write something new? (I have done it three times, but it was country or bluegrass music, not rock.) And the fans will want their usual dose of dead things, Christmas or not (and I’ll hear about it if I don’t put them in). It might well be filling a void (and that is normally how these projects start). I’m not sure there are any good Christmas rock songs. The only ones that come to mind—“Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”—are pretty poor songs. They may get played a lot around Christmastime because there really isn’t much else. Since I don’t know where to start, really, it may help to resort to first principles. There are four elements to a song—Genre, Subject, Style, and Point of View—and one can mix them up to make things interesting. If I were teaching a class, that’s how I’d start the kids off, I think—draw elements out of hats, and say, “Okay, what can you do with this?” That was how I got “The Dog’s Song”: it was deliberately a country (genre) love song (subject) in the style of The Ramones (style) from the point of view of the dog (point of view). So we could have (for instance) a rock ‘n’ roll Christmas song in the style of (say) Woody Guthrie from the point of view of… the reindeer? Maybe. It’d be an opportunity to deliver a few caustic comments on the economy and politics that people could dance to. Sounds like another Southern Pigfish song, in fact. Music Friday this week; I’ll miss music at the library on Saturday because the band is practicing at the same time. It’ll be the first time all five of us have played together, and I am curious what we sound like. I haven’t heard back from the Oregon Music News people; it is quite possible they’re really not interested in any music scene outside Portland (despite advertising for a writer on the Coast). And I’ve been corresponding with a fellow an hour’s drive to the north of here, and one an hour’s drive to the south, both still trying to put together local bands and not having much success at it. It’d be nice to meet them both in person. Joe

It was about this time last year that I did the “Year in Review” assessment, to see how many (or how few) of the year’s goals I had managed to accomplish. In 2009, I didn’t do well. I think I spent most of the year waiting for something to happen, and it never did, and if there’s a plus in that, it’s that I finally figured out there’s no point in waiting, and I just have to move on. What I’ve accomplished that was on the list: FIND/CREATE A BAND. Did that. “Deathgrass” are the best group of musicians I have ever played with, and they want to keep playing together. (And we’re doing mostly my stuff. This is cool.) I did okay in the WRITE department, too—10 new “keepers” thus far this year, plus a dozen musications of others’ lyrics. I did PERFORM ONCE A WEEK, if you count the sessions at the library and with the Friday Night Group; actually, the band’s been doing a concert about every two months, and I’ve had a solo gig about once a month. My attempt to crack the Portland market, both solo and with a band, did not work out, however—it was a waste of time and money, and I see no point in continuing. I learned how to DO VIDEO; the three experiments I did taught me the limitations of my equipment, which are not excessive, and how to get a good product. (The experimental videos also got a little cult following.) I’m ready to try a real music video now. I did SIGN UP WITH BMI, as a writer (which was free), but not as a publisher (which costs money); I will need to sign up as a publisher for release of the next album, because it will have a couple of co-writes on it with published writers. Didn’t FINISH THE NEXT ALBUM, but we are working on it. Got the band (“Deathgrass”), got a good sound engineer with good equipment (John), and one song is “in the can.” I am inclined to let that take its course—it’s working out the way I’d like it to, even though it’s doing it slowly. I managed to STAY IN TOUCH WITH EVERYBODY, too, I think, despite not traveling much. More travel next year. One group I need to add to the “must stay in touch with” list is the city managers I used to work with, because I won’t be doing that kind of work again, at least for a while. And some of them are fans, and some are musicians. I did not FINISH THE SOUTHERN PIGFISH ALBUM, but I got two songs closer; “The Dog’s Song” and “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails” were both “Pigfishies.” I think I know how I want to do the album, but my players haven’t committed yet. The “Doing Dylan” contest in England was the only SONG CONTEST I entered this year, and we didn’t win that. UPGRADE THE RECORDING EQUIPMENT? Nada—my excuse is I couldn’t afford it. (I still hope Santa’s listening. Dude, I have a List…) Ditto for the WEEK IN NASHVILLE. The CD-BABY ACCOUNT is still deliberately waiting for the new album. For the JOE WEBSITE, I really have no excuse; I’ve started a couple of times, but gave up when I couldn’t produce anything acceptable. I want to take a class in Website design this winter (the community college offers one, and it’s on line). There were things I did that weren’t on the list (and listing those will help me feel better). I’d done the Joe Songbook last Christmas, but this year I converted it to an “eSongbook” and got production costs down to a reasonable level. I produced an album for somebody else, and managed to make production costs reasonable there, too, even though the thing was (and was intended to be) a gift. I did a couple of PBS shows, too—true, Ashland is a small market, but I never thought anything like that would happen. I performed in a burlesque show—and hooked up with some really neat writers and performers that I hope will continue to tolerate me. I’ve done some graphic-design projects (all for free, to resurrect my reputation, but I’ve finally been invited to bid on a paying one, too). And I’m writing for the local paper—both a column (for four months, now) and (just last week) news stories. And I’ll finally get paid for that, too. The power has gone out twice while I’ve been writing this (ah, winter on the Oregon Coast), but it hasn’t stopped me from finishing it. I should approach all of life the same way. There are no excuses for not getting things done. You just can’t let things stop you. Joe

More Christmas concert promotion: I caught radio station DJ Tommy Boye (Coast105 FM) just as he was finishing his show, and gave him Christmas concert posters; I’m now scheduled for two 15-minute promotional slots, one two weeks before the show, and one the day before. (John suggested he and either Mike or Doc come down with me, and the three of us play “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” on the air. That’s a great idea. I wonder how we could fit us in Tommy Boye’s little bathroom-sized sound room? Or could they mike us out in the lobby?) More posters distributed; about the only people not enthusiastic about the show were the local newspaper (I was allowed to put a flyer on their bulletin board, however)—but I mentioned the show in my column I write for the paper. First practice is this Saturday, with John, Chris and Doc. (Mike won’t be there. It’s his birthday.) I found an outfit called Oregon Music News (they were soliciting on craigslist for a writer); interesting Website, with quite a bit of information. It’s all about the music scene in Portland, though—Portlanders do tend to assume they’re the only part of Oregon that matters—and doesn’t say a word about country music, which I’ve noted before is not a popular genre in Portland, despite being ubiquitous elsewhere. I e-mailed the editor a Christmas concert flyer, and we’ll see what happens. The Old Mill RV Park says they’re interested in having me play at one of their Christmas bazaars December 11 or 12. That’s a change from last year (they were very much not interested last year), but they also say they’re not paying anybody (and they did pay, last year—they may not have very many performers interested if they don’t want to pay any more). I’ll take them a CD. They say they just want Christmas music, though (again, that wasn’t the case last year), and I can’t give them much of that—nor do I want to. I have played a lot of places for free, and that’s not going to change. Here, though, I am not so sure it’s a good idea—because they did pay their performers last year. I don’t mind the exposure; I expect I could generate a good crowd, and it’d be a good opportunity to promote the Christmas benefit concert for the Food Pantry the following week. And I might even end up with money in the Big Yellow Bucket, and sell a few CDs—things I’ve never managed to do when I played for free in Portland. On the other hand, a 2-hour solo show is quite a bit of work—I’ll be promoting it, too, because I know they won’t be—and I do not want to get a reputation as the guy who can be counted on to play for free when you were paying everybody else. We will have to talk. And there’s apparently a band somewhere in Canada that wants to perform “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up.” I told them of course, they can—with my blessings. That’s something that doesn’t happen enough, to me or to other writers. Credibility as a writer entails that your material be performed not just by you, but by other people, and that it still be attracting and pleasing audiences even when it’s not you performing it. Back 30 years ago, if enough other people were performing your stuff, you would get noticed by the music industry and they’d be trying to co-opt you as a writer; these days, with the industry attempting to be a determinedly closed circle, not so much—but it’s still the only way to get noticed as a writer by artists looking for material. I try to do my part, too, to cover songs by other writers. The Christmas show is going to include songs by Gene Burnett (“Things Are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse”), Colin Lazzerini and Tom Coleman (“So 20th Century”), Betty Holt (“Our Own little Stimulus Plan”), Stan Good (“Un-Easy Street”), and Gem Watson (“Final Payment”). Somebody needs to be out there saying these guys and gals are good, and encouraging people to listen to their stuff. One of those somebodies is going to be me. Joe

The 2009 Joe Songbook is done. (Mostly. I’ve found a couple more corrections I can make. I like to be perfect.) The product is a 1.67MB Acrobat (*.pdf) file, that can come on a CD with a cute Depressionistic label if people want. I can sell the CD for five bucks, including mailing, and recover costs. Or e-mail it for free. (Anyone within earshot (or eyeshot) who’d like one e-mailed for free, contact me through the Usual Outlets and I’ll take care of it. I will need your name and e-mail, of course, and I think we’ll do a trade-off (since things shouldn’t be entirely free or you’ll assume they have no value)—if you do this, I will add you to the “joelist,” if you’re not on it already. Don’t worry—as I routinely tell people at gigs, you’re only going to get notices of gigs, and of when the next CD comes out. So you won’t hear from me a lot unless things get really busy, and you are not going to be bothered with “important news” about what I had for breakfast.) I was asked how I’m managing to reach this songbook market. I’m not. I don’t think there is a market, really; the only person who’s likely to want a Joe Songbook is another musician who’s interested in performing my stuff, and I think that’s a really limited number of people. I mostly wanted to see if I could do it, and get the production costs down to a reasonable level, and I did that. I expect I will be giving away a dozen or so of the attractively-labeled CDs as Christmas gifts. Sara may want a couple for the county library, and there’s one music-store owner I would like to make sure has one on his shelves. The primary value of the “eSongbook” may simply be as an example. As noted previously, I do not know of anyone else doing this—but it’s doable (here’s proof). Could I do this for others? Sure, it’s easy; I’d recommend keeping roughly the same format—including a discography, links, and a bio, and peppering the lyrics with lots of photos, in other words—and I’d want everything, including the photos, supplied to me so I didn’t have to spend time either hunting for or creating stuff. (When I ran my own graphic-design shop, I used to charge double for work I had to do that the customers could have done themselves.) There’s a bigger question being begged here, though. What AM I doing to promote my music? The answer, I’m afraid, is “Not much.” I’m still well-known to only a small group of people. Yes, the fans I have are pretty determined ones—but there’s not a lot of them. And I’ve sold CDs (I’m almost out again)—but again, not a lot of them. A large part of the “not doing much” problem may stem from the being-unemployed problem. Except for the occasional gig or job interview, my life completely lacks structure: I don’t HAVE to do anything, including eat and get up in the morning; add in a severe paranoia about being rejected (having been rejected for every single job I’ve applied for for 18 months), and I’m encouraged to put just about everything off (not that I needed much encouragement—procrastination has always been one of my strong points). I did see in a blog by fellow songwriter Vikki Flawith tips for imposing structure on one’s life; the tips were intended for the self-employed, but it seems they’d work equally well for the unemployed. A key point is setting aside blocks of time for certain activities (something I used to do when I was working)—so many hours a day in the studio, for instance. I could expand on that easily, setting aside blocks of time for promotion—and for job applications, even. Doing that stuff simply because “this is the time when I do that stuff” might help defuse the paranoia factor, which has gotten really bothersome. So I’m up early (high winds and horizontal rain woke me anyway), and I’ll keep to that routine, and since I like to sit at the computer when I first get up to unstiffen my back, I’ll do the Red Queen Thing (“half a dozen impossible things before breakfast”). I do have some promotional things I’ve been putting off (of course). And I took all my rejection letters out to the burn barrel and burned them. I don’t know if that was cathartic or not, but it sure did make a big fire. And as several people have already reminded me, there is probably a song in it. Joe