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My take. Think 25 years ago. Then think more extreme. Back then, you had a mass proliferation of the technology of 4-track studios. Any band, or anyone, that was making money could afford one, and if you had someone who knew what they were doing, you could produce records (you did have to press 45s back then) and if you got to know some DJs, you could get 'em played on the radio. I was in a bluegrass band, The Dodson Drifters, and we actually became regionally famous doing that. The Industry countered with requiring more sophisticated technology none of us small-timers could afford, and finally music videos, and the rest, as they say, is history. The mass availability of the Internet, and the cheapening of technology--again--has allowed mass production of music again. The industry has at the same time become more concentrated; it is almost impossible to get anything played on the radio unless it comes from the Industry, because (as one 1960s TV show put it) "they control the audio, they control the video." They do not control the Internet, however, and that's why you see so much new music on the Internet. It and live performance are the only outlets most people have got. (Again, I've got a little experience. I write, and I perform, and I've got a CD out.) A good conspiracy theorist would blame the practice of ripping off music on the Internet on the Music Industry. If they did it, they did it at substantial risk to themselves--but they may have done it anyway, to preserve their "market share." It was (my opinion) the grossly exorbitant price of commercial CDs that prompted kids to find ways to get it for free; once they did, the Industry, instead of caving in and lowering prices to affordable levels, simply complained and sued kids--and did so long enough that free music on the Internet became a habit. Now, I think, it's impossible to break. The result is it's hard for anyone new to make money exclusively off the Internet, because music on the Internet has a habit of being free. I'm not sure how publishing fits into this. The basic rules haven't changed. Neither has the practice of musicians paying little attention to the legal niceties. It's maybe not surprising--they're not paperwork people, they're performers. The same was true 25 years ago, too.

How do you find a lead player on short notice? Wayne’s not sure he can do it (I’m not sure whether that means he just doesn’t want to do it), and the gig—a paying gig—is only three weeks away. The rest of the band will be tight—John (bass) and Chris (drums) are good, and we’ve been practicing—but I can’t do both rhythm and lead, and sing. (I’m not sure I can do any of those things separately, much less together.) So I stopped by the local (Tillamook) music store en route to playing music at the library Saturday afternoon. The music store is small, and a bit novice about this stuff (the owner’s new), but I figured if anyone was going to be a clearinghouse for musicians, it ought to be the music store, and if she wasn’t one, my request should get her started. I did happen to run into the guy (maybe he’s just one of the guys) who teaches guitar lessons, and posed the problem with him, and left him a setlist and a copy of my CD; he said if he couldn’t do it himself, he probably knew someone who could, and would let me know in a couple of days. I will keep my fingers crossed. I can dump drafts of all the songs onto a CD for whoever’s doing it, and that’ll reduce (maybe to almost nothing) the need for practice. On principle, the songs on the recordings are the way we do them in real life (or is that vice versa?), so there’s nothing strange to worry about. I should make copies for Chris and John, too, come to think of it—I haven’t done that yet. We (whoever “we” end up being) should get together at least once, so we know what to expect of each other. If it works—I hope it works—I will not worry further. We do have the Garibaldi Days gig coming up in July, but we can do it with Dick playing harmonica lead. On the other hand, if we end up with a Real Find in the form of our impromptu lead player, I’ll want to continue using him or her, too. An unrelated idea—came to me after visiting the music store. I know of four chicken songs written during the past year (got to play two of them Friday night); two are by me, one by Jack Fischer, and one by Gene Burnett. Gene started it, by writing “Free-Range Chicken” and then announcing he wanted to put out an album of chicken songs. Jack’s song addressed the question which came first, the chicken or the egg, and I wrote one that answered the question why the chicken crossed the road. I had even spec’d out an album cover before Gene announced he was abandoning the project. But I know a fellow who’s a salesman for Foster Farms, the grown-in-Oregon chicken people who have been running some rather funny chicken commercials on television. Might Foster Farms be interested in chicken songs? They are all humorous (it’s hard to be serious about chickens). All the aforementioned songs have potential as soundtracks for commercials; alternatively, what about an album of chicken songs as a promotional item? I suppose it’s worthwhile contacting the fellow. The plot, of course, is a little thicker—life is rarely simple. Aforementioned chicken salesman happens to be one of the people on the Phoenix City Council who wanted to get rid of me as city manager; he’s no longer on the Council, but I doubt he’s forgotten. So there’s a certain amount of trepidation on my part about contacting him. Still, he is a good salesman, and he should appreciate a good idea. I don’t know if he’s in a position in the organization to take advantage of it. I suppose all one can do is ask. Music at the Forestry Center Sunday, band practice Monday, and the Thirsty lion gig Tuesday (along with a job interview). It’s still going to be a busy week. Joe

At band practice tonight, we recorded the base tracks (rhythm guitar, bass and drums) for the two Dylan contest songs, “No Good Songs About the War” and “For Their own Ends.” Both came out good. The war song was just about perfect; guitar, drums, bass, even the scratch vocal were all about as perfect as one could get—on just the second take, no less. All recorded live, using only two microphones: a carefully-positioned instrument mike picking up the guitar (amplified), bass (ditto), and vocal, and my singing mike positioned overhead over the drums—picking up (because of its small, narrow “cone”) more of the treble sounds (snare, cymbals and blocks) and less of the heavy thumps of the tom-tom and bass drum. Very nice product. I think John is going to be one heck of a sound engineer. “No Good Songs About the War” needs only the harmonica lead, really, and it’s done. I’ll try laying down a simple lead guitar track, but it may be superfluous. On “For Their Own Ends,” John would like to re-do the bass (making it simpler) and Chris the drums (making them louder), and we can do that, using just my rhythm guitar as the base for them to play along with. We will want Dick’s lead harmonica there, too (underscoring the Dylan aspect of the song), but I’ll want a guitar lead as well—a simple one, of course, since that’s all I can do. I might use the Strat just on principle, but I might get a more competent product using the acoustic guitar, since I’m more familiar with it. (It’s easier to mute mistakes on the acoustic guitar. The Strat is less forgiving.) We also practiced “The Termite Song,” and that came out good, too. Slowed it down a little bit, which allowed me to enunciate the words better and let Chris and John put a rock rhythm to it. Practice Monday and Thursday next week after Chris and John get off work. That gives us about two hours per session to work with, and if we can continue to perfect three songs each time, we’ll be doing fine. The Museum gig is only an hour (12 songs, and Chris is already familiar with half of them from the Failed Economy Show). We won’t have Dick for the Museum show—he and Carol will be out of town—so I’ll have to find a lead player of some sort. Can’t do this as a trio. I’d like two leads, but would settle for one. Dick will be here for Garibaldi Days, and I made sure to get both the Talent Show (2-4 p.m.) and the band’s performance (4-6 p.m.) on Dick’s and Carol’s schedules so nothing else could get in the way. On the job front, along with one rejection letter, I got a notice of an interview; yes, some potentially misguided jurisdiction maybe wants me for their city manager. The interview will be by phone on Tuesday, right before I leave for the Thirsty Lion gig in Portland. They had “supplemental questions” for me to answer, too, and I’ve done it, but it wasn’t easy. How do you explain why you want to move to a town you’ve never been to? Theresa, the job coach at Goodwill Industries, had a number of good suggestions for “dumbing down” my resume to be less intimidating, so I’d have a chance at getting a non-top-dog job, and I’ll implement them. Applied for two more jobs today, one of them local (at the Tillamook Cheese Factory). And I have a diagnosis—not a good one—on what’s been making “Alice” the ‘puter act up lately. The latest you-have-no-choice-but-to-download-this “help” file from the phone company’s DSL service was corrupt—the second time that’s happened—only this time, it damaged part of Alice’s hard drive. Unfortunately, there’s only 12% of Alice’s hard drive left empty, after five years of word processing, music, and graphic design work. It is time, I’m afraid, to install the second hard drive. (Good thing I have a spare.) Might as well do it while I’m unemployed and have the time. Joe

Well, the Thirsty Lion IS a big place—and a nice one. Big stage (emcee Eric said they have bands on the weekends), decent PA system (not much different from the one Sharma bought for the Portland band’s Red Room show). Stayed for three acts—Eric himself, and two others. There will be good competition for that paying gig. The guys and gals I heard are not amateurs. (Well, I guess they are amateurs by definition, but some of them have been around the block a few times, are comfortable in front of audiences, and some of them are playing professionally.) I am not sure how this “showcase” is going to turn into a weekend gig if what they have on weekends is bands, and the Tuesday night stuff is pointedly soloists (or duoists—there was one duo). I did emphasize to Eric that I could assemble a band if needed. I don’t know how many of the others could. I got the impression from their styles they had mostly played only with themselves. (And I wonder what connection these guys and gals have with the Portland Songwriters Assn.? I may have to join to find out So many things I could use money for…) I’m not going to change the setlist; it is what it is, and it will go over okay, I think, with the mostly younger (and probably college) crowd that frequents the place. I won’t be drawing in the fans like that one duo did, because I know rather few people in the Portland area. This will be an opportunity to MAKE fans instead. It’s not too discouraging that most of what these guys are playing is folk music; Portland is not a hotbed of country music, and never has been. Neither was southern Oregon, when I moved there—but a lot of people seemed to appreciate it when they were exposed to it (at least, to the way I play it). Maybe it’s that people don’t consider country music an expressive medium. I do, and I can prove it—but I grew into it, too, playing rhythm guitar with (and writing songs for) The Dodson Drifters, years ago. The mindless pap that passes for “country music” on the radio is enough to turn most people off to the genre, I suppose—but that’s music controlled by bookkeepers, primarily focused on making money, and with most of the imagination part taken out. I think most other genres are probably the same way these days, and that could be why a vibrant live music scene is developing in so many places. The commercial music industry has ceased to have worthwhile entertainment to offer, and people are going somewhere else. I did get one new gig out of the trip to Portland. The Burgerville (fast-food franchise with ‘50s kitsch, mostly centered in Portland) in the Hawthorne neighborhood, where daughter Kimberly and I had dinner, has started doing live music on Tuesday nights; I gave them a CD, and one of the Thirsty Lion posters, and they signed me up on the spot. A kid band (not sure what else to call them) was setting up as we were leaving, and a crowd was drifting in. So it does work. 2-hour show, 6-8 p.m. Tuesday 25 August, and of course it’s unpaid except for the free food. I’ll blanket the area with posters, get a 6th pressing of the CD (I’m almost out—again), and see what I can do. I’ll need a little amplification—not much; maybe I can borrow Sara-the-librarian’s little 2-channel PA (she decided not to sell it when she got her new one, but said I could borrow it if needed). Also stopped by the Airway Café; I’d solicited a gig from them a while back (a couple of times, I think), responding to an ad on Craigslist, but never got an answer. They, too, got a CD and a Thirsty Lion poster, and maybe will remember me this time. It is a nice place, good performance area, and professional PA system that I assume belongs to the café. (If not, I guess I’d hit up Sara again. If I’m playing solo, I don’t need much.) An acoustic duo was playing when I went in. They do charge a gate fee for these (and performers get paid). Music Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this week—I’d forgotten about the first-Sunday-of-the-month thing at the Forestry Center. This time, I’ll go. Most of the attendees are from the west side of Portland, and I should be looking for opportunities to play. Three weeks till the Museum concert, and the band needs to practice more, too. Joe

“Alice” the computer’s “virtual PC” program—which I dubbed “Old Alice” since it’s running Windows 98—is no longer working, and I don’t know why. I’d set it up over a year ago to do the conversions from PageMaker to Acrobat. (Almost everybody has the Acrobat Reader program, because it’s free, but nobody except professional graphic designers like me has or uses the several-hundred-dollar PageMaker program.) I have the Windows 98 version of both programs and have refused to upgrade; I can make them run in Windows XP (a trick I picked up from another programmer), but I was never able to make them talk to each other in Windows XP. The “virtual PC” running Windows 98 was my work-around for the problem—but now it no longer works. (I was kind of surprised it worked in the first place. According to the specs, it wasn’t supposed to.) A Windows XP version of the program hasn’t been made since 2004, and I was lucky to find this one in 2007. In the meantime, I do have a less professional work-around I can use. For the Thirsty Lion posters, which I have to deliver Tuesday, I printed and scanned the PageMaker poster, converted it to a photograph (*.jpg) file, and dumped that into (uck) MS-Word. I can e-mail that as well as an Acrobat file. So we’re still in business. I just don’t like being told I can’t do what I want to do the way I want to do it. The “joelist” has been notified of the Thirsty Lion gig, and there’s notices on Facebook and MySpace. Musesk, too; there are some Portlanders who hang out there, and there’s a chance they might come. On Tuesday, when I travel to Portland, I’ll leave some posters with my daughter (boyfriend Eddie said he could post them around the college), plus I’ll give some to Music Millenium and the big music store on Hawthorne. There’s a little Portland coffee house, the Airway Café, that I’ve solicited a gig from (and never got a response from—dang Craigslist); this’ll be an opportunity to remind ‘em who I am, and drop off a CD—and tell them if they really want to hear what I sound like, they could stop by the Thirsty Lion in a week. (Never stop selling.) I have gotten well-wishes from a lot of people already (the Internet is a fast place at times); to all that may be reading this, thank you. I appreciate your confidence and support. I realize most of you live very far away and wouldn’t (and couldn’t) be coming to a 25-minute audition of me playing solo in a little tavern (and I wouldn’t ask you to). One of these days, we may yet get to meet in person. John advised he has maybe four tracks salvageable from the Failed Economy show video that could be material for the CD we promised everybody; we’ll try, when we practice this week, to record “No Good Songs About the War” and “For Their Own Ends,” and if they come out good, both will be fodder for the CD, too. (And one of those songs—don’t know which yet—is going to that Dylan contest in England.) If we’re going to do an album—either of my songs or Failed Economy Show material, or both—I think it’s going to have to be done here, by us, with this band and John’s recording equipment (supplemented by mine to the extent necessary). If there are commercial studios on the North Coast, I don’t know where they are or who’s running them (or how good they are). Besides, there’s no money. UPCOMING: Besides practice this week, there’ll be music Friday night at City hall, and Saturday afternoon at the Library. Not one call from any of the jobs I’ve applied for (but the deadlines for some of them haven’t happened yet—I checked). Still applying for more, though. What else can I do? Joe

Thirsty Lion setlist looks like: Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (slow and sleazy) Bluebird on My Windshield (fast bluegrass) Can I Have your Car When the Rapture Comes? (slow Gospel) The Termite Song (fast bluegrass) Hey. Little Chicken (a osrt-of blues) I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas (mod. slow country) Just about exactly 25 minutes (I’ve practiced it four times now). Still waiting for confirmation that I can be on first (like, at 8:30) if I show up first; that’ll be important for the advertising. I have warned the fellow in charge of the event that some of the folks who would be coming to see me still have jobs and have to get up in the morning. I want to go into Portland next Tuesday and stop in at the Thirsty Lion, and see how they run the show and what the hall, audience, and sound engineer are like. (The online photos don’t show the stage. It does look like a sizable place, but—having done it myself—I know how misleading photos can be.) That’d be the time to distribute posters as well Southern Oregon Songwriters want me to do the programs for the 2009 Summer Concert season at Pfaff Park in Central Point. Same format as last year. I’ll be in one of the concerts, too—22 August. I’ll need a band, and hopefully can assemble one from folks I know down there. It is time to start organizing Concert Season. Roughly from July 4 until some time in October every year is when I try to have the major concerts, festival performances, &c. I didn’t do much at all in 2008—I lost my job, moved twice, and a lot of festivals were cancelled (or I couldn’t get to them) because of the price of gas. 2009, however, may be shaping up better. The City of Central Point does their own series of summer concerts in the park, and I hit them up for a slot; it won’t happen this year (their agenda’s full), but I might be able to get one for next year. They have a Labor Day concert, too, that wasn’t on their schedule; I don’t know if that’s booked separately (I think it was last year). I forgot to ask about that one. I think we-the-band can have a slot at Garibaldi Days for the asking. We could have either two hours between 3 and 6 p.m. (roughly from the time the Talent Show’s over to the time the Beer Garden opens), or 1-1/2 to 2 hours in the Beer Garden from fireworks (10 p.m.) to closing (midnight). Drummer Chris’s suggestion was to take the afternoon, and I think everyone else agrees. More of a listening crowd, with less pressure to play dance music to make people drink more. An afternoon slot means we can do more of my music, too, and not have to learn a whole bunch more new stuff. Trade-off is the pay for the afternoon slot will probably be nothing (the Beer Garden does pay), unless we can sweet-talk somebody into being a sponsor. Donations for Garibaldi Days are way down, just as they are for most fun activities. People who don’t have money don’t give money. There’s going to be a Talent Show at Garibaldi Days, too, and I want to play. I wonder if I could enlist Dick and his wife Carol (she of the beautiful voice) to do it with me? We could do Gospel songs. The last time we did that was six years ago, at the county fair. So… Thus far we have me playing solo at the Thirsty Lion June 9, with the band at the Garibaldi Museum June 27, Garibaldi Days at the Talent Show and with the band, and in Central Point August 22. It’s starting to shape up as a decent Concert Season. I will have to forego the Columbia Gorge Bluegrass Festival, because it’s on the same weekend as Garibaldi Days—and much as I’d like to, I don’t see how I can make it to Pineyfest this summer. There’s just not going to be any money. Joe

Finish one blog, start another. Sometimes life is like that. I’m waiting for an answer to a phone call (which I may not get), for calls for job interviews (which I’m sure I’m not going to get), avoiding cleaning house, and holding off on applying for another of those jobs I’m not qualified for. An exhaustive search for songwriting contests on line uncovered one potential gem—a competition in England, of all places, for original Dylan-type songs. They’re calling it “Doing Dylan.” They want (this is from their Website) “ORIGINAL songs which sing out against SOCIAL INJUSTICE, POLITICAL CORRUPTION, RACIAL BIGOTRY, RELIGIOUS FANATICISM!” It appears to be a small outfit; only one judge (he does have connections to the BBC, though) and the entry fee is in British pounds sterling. (The prizes—all small—are all in pounds sterling, too.) I do have a couple of songs that would be worth submitting under those parameters. (I can pay by PayPal, which will calculate the exchange rate.) Bob Dylan is one of the brightest stars in my Heaven of Heroes, and I’ve emulated his styles (he had a bunch of them) a lot, trying to learn every writing trick I could. The two potential contenders for the contest are “No Good Songs About the War,” which is country music, and the Southern Pigfish song “For Their own Ends,” which is folk-rock. I would probably just give ‘em one of the two; I don’t have that many pounds sterling to my name, no matter what the exchange rate is. “No Good Songs About the War” was a deliberately classic protest song intended as a demonstration of how protest songs are supposed to be written. Dylan wasn’t doing country music back when he wrote his most famous protest songs, of course, but country music is what I write, and this song adapted his rules to my style, as it were. It was the only song the band did at the Bay City concert that we had a definitive arrangement worked out for; Dick Ackerman played “Amazing Grace” on the blues harp at the break (turns out the chord progression is the same), and a few bars of “Taps” at the end. Nary a dry eye in the house. “For Their Own Ends” tackles a completely different Dylan period—and again, does so deliberately. With “For Their Own Ends” as a pre-assigned title (for a contest), I went for the only style that would allow me to write anything I wanted—classic Dylanesque obscurantism from the folk-rock period, where titles had no connection at all to the lyrics. (The song has no chorus, either—though it does have a hook. That’s also typical of Dylan songs of the period.) “For Their Own Ends” is an angry-sounding look at the economy through the windows of a thrift store, written just about the time the economy started to fall apart. The band played that one in the Failed Economy Show—and we had people out of their chairs dancing. The recordings I have of both songs are just drafts, done on the little Tascam with me playing all parts. For the “Doing Dylan” contest, I’d want to do better. I have proposed to bass player John that we try out both with his recording equipment, and he appears willing. I’ll overlay a simple lead guitar; it’s Dick’s harmonica lead that’s going to carry the song in both cases. AND ANOTHER GIG: Tuesday, 9 June, at a pub in downtown Portland called the Thirsty Lion. Solo, unless I can persuade blues harp player Don Johnson (late of the aborted Portland band) to come with—he’d be a nice touch, but he may be working. Just a 25-minute set—6 songs, if I’m doing it solo. They say they’re offering paying gigs to those who bring in the most traffic, but I don’t know if I can generate that much. Joe

It’s almost June—and almost time to take a mid-year look at those goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year. It won’t be a pleasant look; I have, I think, accomplished virtually nothing on the list. It’s easy—too easy—to point to outside factors (no job, no money) as reasons for not getting anything done. They are really just excuses. The operative question (as Richard Nixon would say) is what I’m doing with what I have. I have a habit of freezing up when confronted with disappointment, and that’s a dangerous tendency that needs to be controlled. Taken to its logical extreme—which I can do easily—I do nothing, because I’m accomplishing nothing. The flip side, of course, is I’m accomplishing nothing because I’m doing nothing. Hardly a recipe for success. My solution—the same one I gave employees when I was a city manager—is a Work Program. Here is a list of things to do. We will do them without worrying in advance about the results. After they’re done, we will look at them, and decide what we can do better next time around. But not until after, okay? First action in the Work Program (first because it’s simple) is to enter the Great Lakes Songwriting Contest. The Goals call for entering at least two contests each year; this will be one of them. The contest appears to be the effort of a local group (in Michigan), and winning includes getting to perform on stage—both pluses. Deadline’s not until September, but there’s a $3 discount if I enter before 31 May, and since I am waydam cheap and almost out of money, I will do that. What to send them? “Bluebird on My Windshield,” I think; I consider it one of the best I’ve written, and it hasn’t been entered in a contest before. It’s under five minutes (these folks have a 5-minute rule, like a lot of contests), and I do have a recording I can send them that was done in a professional studio with a real band. (I would not send a home recording to a contest I wanted to win.) A nice (for me) feature of this contest is I can disconnect entering and winning. The winners won’t be announced for a good six months, and by then I may have even forgotten I entered. If I win, it’ll be a nice surprise, and if I don’t, it won’t be anything to be discouraged about. Is there another contest I might want to tackle this year? Right now, there isn’t an obvious one. No Hank Williams Festival this year (too bad—I wanted to send them “Hank’s Song”), and no Woody Guthrie contest, either (and I had a couple of good contenders for that one, too); both are apparently victims of the Depression. American Idol didn’t do a contest this year, either; reportedly AI’s new judge, who’s a songwriter, got it written into her contract that she, not someone else, would write the New Song to be performed by the winning contestant. (Critics, I guess, were not very impressed with the song she wrote.) There won’t be a talent show at the Tillamook County Fair this year, either. The Fair Board, following their conviction that there is no such thing as local talent, decided there was no point in having any talent show. So Tillamook will be the only one of 36 counties that won’t be sending acts to perform at the Oregon State Fair. That does give me an excuse to enter talent shows in county fairs to the north, south and east; the State Fair’s rules allow it, but I don’t know if I want to take advantage of it. The Rogue Community College “Star of Stars” contest in southern Oregon, which I entered last year, is attractive—and it was fun; however, I did learn from experience that it’s not one I have any chance of winning. The winner will be a student from the college, and the contest is intended to raise money to give that student a scholarship. It’s a great cause, and I’d help in a heartbeat if I either (1) had the money or (2) lived in the area. From 300-plus miles away, it costs a few hundred bucks in gas to be a part of it, and I don’t have it. The other possibility for a contest this year may be the one put on by the Portland (OR) Songwriters Assn. Its deadline is in September. There’s a discount on the entry fee if you’re a member—and I’ve thought seriously for several years now about joining the organization as well as entering their contest. Portland is not a hotbed of country music—but southern Oregon wasn’t, either, before I moved there. UPCOMING: Music Friday night at City Hall, Saturday at the Library (and someone may be there from the West Linn Library, where I’ve applied to be part of their local entertainment). Practice Sunday with the band, I think. Joe

ONE WEEK left of unemployment benefits, and then it’s all over. I can get a cheap job (if there are any to be had), see if I can squeeze out enough to pay for school… Yes, it’s time to go back to school. After 14 months out of work, I’m pretty unemployable as a city manager. I do have five applications still pending, but I’m not expecting anything out of them. My old job as city planner in Phoenix is being advertised again (after a 14-month hiatus), but they’re requiring a college degree in planning I don’t have, and can’t have for at least two years. I responded anyway (I warned the folks in Phoenix I would do that), and included—just to rub it in—the Official Letter from the vice-mayor (one of the guys who voted to fire me) saying what a great planner I was and what an asset I’d be to just about anybody. An assistant librarian job to apply for (pays nothing, but it’s at the local library), and the “FAFSA”—that Godawful pages-upon-pages Federal application for student aid that everybody in Creation uses—to fill out, plus still more paperwork for the community college (it appears I can get up to 8 credit hours free if I can convince the right people). Musically, I’ve started mining Craigslist again for solo gigs in the Portland area. One of the more interesting solicitations came from the city library in West Linn, Oregon, a suburb of Portland; they’ve created a nice performance space for their musicians, and they do pay. Recalling the general level of expertise of a lot of the folks who do gigs like that, I expect I’d have a chance. Being a public agency, one would hope they’d have a less lackadaisical attitude about answering responses than most Craigslist advertisers, but it’s too early to tell. Somebody from the West Linn Library is reportedly coming to the Tillamook Library in a week to hear the music, so that’s an opportunity to impress someone. Maybe. The “American Blues Blog” people never did respond to my entries (while sending a few e-mails promising they would), but they’ve hired other folks while I’ve been waiting—from New York (two), Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Pittsburgh. The insistence that only big cities matter gets annoying at times. I did run into a book about the blues, full of a lot of theory and tons of juicy quotes and lyrics; it was a science-fiction novel, of all things—The Gutbucket Quest, supposedly by Piers Anthony (but actually written by a friend of his, an out-of-work musician). So now I know a lot more about the blues, but have nowhere to go with it. (There is probably a song in that.) On the good news front (there is always a good news front—it’s just that sometimes, as the Weather Channel will tell you, those fronts can be kinda weak), I have—finally—a complete first verse to “The Reincarnation Song,” which has been kicking around in the head for over a year. (The title is tentative, of course. An audience will tell me what the title really is.) I don’t know if it’ll be The Best Thing I Ever Wrote; sometimes they are, and sometimes they’re not. It is nice to know I wrote something, and it wasn’t garbage. A lot of writers keep their writing muscles exercised by writing something—anything—every day, and I don’t; for me, it’s got to feel “right”—not necessarily perfect (we’ll take care of that later), but “right.” If it ain’t right, I will deliberately forget it. I don’t have memory cells to waste. It’s a love song, and that’s one of the things that’s made it hard—I’m not very demonstrative, so love songs are hard. I’ve written only two, I think, in my whole life, not counting the drivel I did as an over-hormoned teenager with a reluctant-to-get-into-bed girlfriend. This one will be bluegrass, of course, since it’s got death in it (one can’t have reincarnation without death, after all). I also had a chance to do some recorded lead guitar work, on someone else’s blues instrumental (it’s supposed to get words later), and that was fun. It’s excellent practice for the mostly tone-deaf ears—I have to spot chord changes without the luxury of seeing another player’s hands. So I did three leads, two on the Strat (one on the bass strings and one treble) and one on the Electric Banjo. They’re all simple (and if listened to separately, painfully so), but they hang together okay, and are nice against the rhythm piano track the fellow sent. I don’t know what the author will think of them. Music Friday and Saturday (and a square dance Saturday night). I still want to put new strings on the J-200. --Joe

I have no formal training in music myself (hardly seemed any point, with the tonedeafness and all). I have picked up some music theory, et al., on my own, and could see where an actual education could be useful. On the other hand, I've also seen formal training inculcate people with some very bad habits (like being dependent on sheet music). I guess my recommendation would echo Chet Atkins', when he was asked how much formal music education one should have: "Enough to know what you're doing, and not so much that it gets in the way of your doing it." Joe

UPDATES, first: I sent a draft first column to the “American Blues” people, and am waiting to hear back from them. (It’s been a couple of days.) I’ve questioned their insistence on the correspondents having to come from Nashville, New York, L.A. and a couple of other big cities. These days, the Internet makes such distinctions meaningless—and I’d submit a place like Portland, 90 miles from me, with a fairly vibrant live music scene, probably has more and better blues being performed than, say, Nashville. So you’ve never heard of the performers? So what? Maybe it’s time somebody did. The band (the one on the Coast—there’s only one now) will get together to practice Sunday, and we’ll try our hand at recording “Rotten Candy” for Polly Hager while we’re at it. We’ll see in the process what we can make John’s recorder do, and see what we have to do to record drums. We’ll do what I described (no one having figured out a better alternative)—record a “base” with drums, bass, rhythm guitar, and a scratch vocal, mix it, send it (sans vocal) to Polly to record her voice, then add blues harp and guitar leads when we get the vocal track back. What’s going to happen with the song? I don’t know. If the product is good enough, I might enter it in that song contest in Michigan, and see what happens. The recording is really irrelevant, though; what would be most important to me would be getting the song performed. If Polly and her band add the song to their repertoire, and it starts getting played around the venues in Cincinnati, what I’ve done is clone myself. (And the intro—“this is The Song That Was Rejected By American Idol”—is guaranteed to get some attention. I’ve done it myself.) Just give me credit as the writer—that’s all I ask. This isn’t the only way for a writer to make it in the music business, but it is one of the best—it gives you the maximum bang for the buck. It’s nothing new; it was something done extensively back in the 1960s. Somebody who couldn’t sing (Bob Dylan was a prime example) had their stuff performed by people who could sing, and in the process got attention as a writer—to the point, finally, where they could no longer be ignored. It still works—a good tool can be used by anybody—even though the music business today is a lot more centrally controlled, and maybe more determined to make sure outsiders don’t get in. So ignore the Big Boys, and let them play their internal games. There are plenty of performers—some even regionally famous—who need good material to get themselves even more attention. Why shouldn’t they have mine? Not all the songs I’ve written would work for other people. Folks have said some of my material couldn’t be effectively presented by anybody but me, and they may be right. On the other hand, I have heard some surprises. “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” originally written by me as a bluegrass tune, has been performed by a punk-rock band, and recorded both as rock ‘n’ roll (by a keyboard player I know) and as electronica. (I like the electronica one best.) You never can tell. I haven’t pushed it, and sometimes wonder if I should. While I fulminate about the music industry’s attitude towards promoting yourself to people who are in a position to help you—I think the prohibition is driven more by the industry not wanting any outside input—I guess I have taken it to heart, to an extent. I don’t push. I just try to be a lot of places, and in contact with a lot of people, and keep letting them know I write stuff. (That’s become my standard introduction at concerts—“I’m Joe. I write stuff.”) I wonder whether I’m doing enough. I haven’t seen enough results to satisfy me. This performing other writers’ stuff does work both ways—I should be doing their stuff, too--but it’s been hard for me to do other people’s material because I mostly can’t sing it; it’s outside my narrow voice range. However, I do have some I can do now. We got a mess of material for the Failed Economy Show, and I learned to sing some of it, and the band have learned to play it, and I’d like to keep incorporating it in our concerts, if the authors thereof are willing. Songs that get people out of their chairs and dancing are songs that should be performed, anywhere and everywhere possible. Joe

Got the video of the Failed Economy Show, and alas, it’s probably not marketable. I don’t know if it was the microphones we recorded with or the awful acoustics of the hall, but the sound isn’t very good. The vocal is too faint, and so is the harmonica—sometimes the harmonica isn’t audible at all—or maybe it’s that the rhythm guitar (me) is too loud. I am not doing anything particularly interesting on the guitar, and it definitely shows. Some of the songs come off too slow, too—partly because I was almost shouting to make myself heard, and that slows things down. If the vocal could be made more prominent electronically, the music could be faster. So if I had (or have) the chance, I’d like to re-do all the songs. Which songs? Basically, everything except the Woody Guthrie ones—seven by me, and nine by other people, a maximum of 16 songs (which I understand is the maximum that can be fit on a standard CD, anyway). I’d want to contact the eight authors whose material we used; every one we got an okay from, we’d use on the CD. I can think of two ways to do the recording, one with John’s new mixer and the other with mine. I have more confidence in myself as a recording engineer since putting together the “Broken Record” CD for Beth Williams; the four songs I recorded for that (all on the Tascam) were, I thought, as good quality-wise as the professionally-done stuff I was sent, and the fellow who did the mastering didn’t distinguish mine separately from any of the others. So I can do studio-quality work with what I’ve got, even though what I’ve got is old, primitive, strange, and operated by a mostly tone-deaf guy. Good to know. I would record rhythm guitar, bass, drums, and a “scratch” vocal live, then overlay the harmonica, lead guitar (or other lead instrument), and “real” vocal. If we were using my equipment (the 4-channel Tascam and my ancient 6-channel mixer), I’d have to mix the guitar, bass and drums first, before dumping it to the computer, and then add the other three tracks separately. I would probably end up doing the mixing on the computer (in Audacity). I know John’s mixer has more channels; what I don’t know is how much more memory it’s got. One of the frustrating aspects of the Tascam is its digital camera-chip brain, that can hold only one song at a time (I think I could make it hold two if we were real careful). That’d mean for recording the “base” tracks (drums, bass, and rhythm guitar) on the Tascam, I’d have to haul “Alice” the computer to wherever we were doing it, so I could upload the mix, song by song, and clear the Tascam’s chip-brain for the next song. Otherwise, I’d be limited to doing two “base” tracks a day, which would make this take a long time. It would be easier to use John’s equipment. One nice advantage of doing the “base” tracks and then overlaying leads is I could get nice touches like a piano on Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century.” There’s a piano in the music room at the Tillamook Library, and the librarian knows an experienced piano player. The Tascam can go anywhere there’s electricity (and if the electricity isn’t exactly close, I have a 100-foot extension cord). Polly Hager, who sings with a rock band in Cincinnati, Ohio, is interested in doing a lead vocal on “Rotten Candy,” the song that was rejected two years ago by American Idol, but she’d like to use my band rather than hers. We can do this, I think, if the band are interested. I’d do it the same way—record a “base” track with rhythm guitar, bass and drums, have her record vocals to that and send ‘em back to me, and then I’d overlay lead guitar and Dick’s harmonica. It would be an interesting experiment, and good preparation for the rest of the recording. Joe

The Portland band is breaking up. The bass player is getting a divorce and moving to California (not necessarily in that order), the blues harp player got his job back, and I’ve already mentioned the lead guitarist going flaky. I hope both the bass player and harp player continue practicing their instruments, because they’re new at them (albeit good at them), and I hope the lead guitarist realizes he should be practicing, too. I’ve solicited a gig at a Portland coffeehouse (no word back yet, of course), but emphasized it’ll have to be solo. At home, in between applying for jobs (I now think of it as applying for rejection letters), I’m constructing a raised garden. As with the garage studio a couple of years ago, it’s being done all with on-hand stuff—I do not expect to pay for anything except some extra dirt. Growing one’s own vegetables is a good Depression activity; yes, it cuts into the profits of the grocery store (and I know and like the guy who owns the local grocery store), but at some point I have to give him the same message I give folks about the music business: The world is changing. Deal with it. And where DO we go now with the music business? Pretty quickly, I won’t have the freedom to travel, because there will no longer be any money at all (I’ve been preparing for it, I guess, by minimizing everything I do). But I do have a few things I want to do. I want to record another album. Two albums, actually; one of Failed Economy Show songs, the other of my stuff. I wonder if that’d be possible to do with that new mixer John got? If the levels could be set right—which may be difficult to do with a drummer in the mix—we could record bass, drums, rhythm guitar and vocals live, and then overlay a lead guitar part and Dick’s blues harp. For about half the songs in the Failed Economy Show—the country ones--I could do an acceptable lead; for the rest, I’d need someone else. (It’d be nice to have a piano doing the lead on the ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” for instance.) And I want gigs. Not only is public performance the only outlet I have for exposing my music to the public, but Madonna’s Mantra says performance is the only way to make it in the music business these days. We start small, I guess—me and solo guitar down at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. I have to ask the owner (who may well say no—Jeff was the main attraction there, not me). But having a “home base” is important for getting other business. If by some wild chance I end up getting another out-of-town job, the Ghost Hole gig can just disappear. It’ll have been just for tips and exposure anyway. I’ll have to see if my two tiny (and old) amps are enough to do the job—it’ll be two more weeks before the librarian has her new PA, and can sell me her old one (if I can afford to buy it). Need some contests to enter this year, too. American Idol won’t be having a contest this year (rumor has it the new judge, who is a songwriter, will be doing it as part of the deal that got her the judge job); I don’t think there’s a Woody Guthrie song contest this year, either, or a Hank Williams Festival—both were abandoned last year. I don’t see any point in entering any of the big ballyhooed competitions whose purpose seems to be to generate income for the organizers. (I did find one in Michigan that recently decided to start accepting submissions from Outside. And its grand prize, like a lot of the contests I enter, is performing on stage.) On the good news front, I did musicate Beth Williams’ “Kidney Stone Blues,” and it was okay—people liked it. And I did manage to pull it off in one take (well, four takes—one each for rhythm guitar, vocal, lead, and bass guitar). Now I need something else to do. Besides apply for jobs and shovel dirt. Joe

Having received three rejections in two days (one each by phone, e-mail, and letter), I had started writing a “discouraged” blog, but had to give up—I really can’t stay discouraged too long. I usually can find things to keep me busy, and happy if not satisfied. I’ve toyed with the idea of announcing to my colleagues in the city managers association that I’m going to award a prize for the best rejection letter—there are still a few cities I haven’theard from. Prize will be one of my CDs, of course—that won’t cost me any money. Time to assemble a setlist for the Garibaldi Museum concert (26 June). That’ll be an hour-long show, and between the songs from the Failed Economy Show and the March concert in Bay City, there’s a good 3-1/2 hours of material to pick from. We’ll have a different lead guitarist—Wayne, if he’s interested. Practice a week from Sunday. The suggestion was made that I write up a setlist of about 15 songs, and have the band pick a dozen of those (which would be just about exactly an hour’s worth of music). Works for me. My choices? Well, I’d start with the ones people seemed to like the best from the Failed Economy Show. Those are: For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock Final Payment (Gem Watson)—Gospel two-step Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie)—swing with strong beat Things are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—also a two-step, but a little faster and in a different key So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—two-step Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (me)—mod. slow & sleazy quasi-blues Free-Range Person (me)—fast bluegrass First four are the ones that got people out of their chairs and dancing. Rest are ones they didn’t dance to, but seemed to like the best. And then from the Bay City concert, where the songs were mostly mine: No Good Songs About the War—mod. slow two-step Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy Tillamook Railroad Blues—mod. slow traditional blues Bluebird on My Windshield—fast trucker rhythm Dead Things in the Shower (me & Bobbie Gallup)—pretty fast two-step A couple more? ‘The Termite Song,” maybe, because it’s really fast, and “Duct Tape,” because it’s one of the most-requested. We could close the show with “Duct Tape,” or one of the fast-moving Woody Guthrie songs, either “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad” (which the Grateful Dead used as a final number) or “Worried Man Blues” (which the punk-rock band Screamin’ Gulch used to use). Another possibility: “Doing Battle with the Lawn.” It is lawn-cutting time again on the coast, and with all the rain we’ve had, people—the guys, anyway—ought to appreciate the sentiments. John (bass) and Dick (harmonica) are familiar with all of these; Chris (drums) only knows the ones we did at the Failed Economy Show. Wayne (lead guitar) was at the Failed Economy Show, so he did hear all the songs we did, plus he’s been to enough Friday Night Group sessions that he’s probably heard all of my songs on the list. We could be okay without a lot of work, in other words. The other thing I’d like to do, if possible, is record some of these—with Wayne playing lead guitar if he’s willing, and me if he’s not. (There are a few of the Failed Economy Songs where I could do a decent lead—but not many,) I understand our videotape didn’t come out very good, and the audio recorder only caught a few songs (its memory wasn’t as big as everybody thought)—but we did have people sign up to be notified when the CD came out, and I’d hate to disappoint them. TO DO: Talk to the owner of the Ghost Hole Tavern about having me take over playing music Wednesday nights (I don’t think Jeff is coming back); talk to the librarian about her little PA (cheap, I hope); music Friday night at City Hall and Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook Library. A Beth Williams song to musicate, now that I have time, and a lead guitar track someone wants me to do on a blues. And rejection letters to apply for. Can’t forget those. Joe

Tom Yeager, one of the songwriters at Just Plain Folks (http://www.jpfolks.com), is fond of passing on gig opportunities—usually in the Nashville area, where he lives. One recent one was a solicitation to write a blog. An “American Blues” Website wants six writers, each to write a weekly blog about the blues; one will be posted every day. I could do that. “The Writer’s Blog” has been a regular writing exercise for 2-1/2 years now—a little over a page in the word processor, at least once a week (and more like two to four times a week since I got unemployed 13 months ago). It has kept honed the old newspaperman’s skills of writing for space and writing for deadline, and expressing a complete thought in reasonably literate language. (That’s good training for songwriting, too.) But BLUES? I may be a musician and songwriter, but do I know enough about the blues to be able to write something intelligent about it every week? I would probably have to do it a little differently. (I always seem to be saying that.) I do know a lot of writers; that became obvious when I was assembling material for the Failed Economy Show benefit for the food bank—I got tons of stuff from people all over the world, and picking out an hour and a half’s worth that the band liked, and thought we could do justice to, wasn’t easy. One reason I wanted to pick independent, unknown writers is because they’re independent and unknown, like me; these are the people who have been closed out of the music industry. It doesn’t matter whether their stuff is better than what you hear on the radio (and much of it is)—they’re not part of The Club, and they’ll never get attention. Some are gigging, and some not. (One guy was 92 years old.) I could talk about the ones who “do” blues, and why, and what triggers the stuff they write; I could try analyzing some of their material, suggesting maybe why it was good writing—emphasizing that like any artistic analysis, my opinion is wholly subjective and personal (just because I know what I’m doing does not mean that I’m right). I could tell folks where to find their material—their Websites, if they have any—and whether they’re gigging, and whether they have records for sale. The same stuff I put in the Failed Economy Show program handouts for the writers whose stuff we performed there. Do I know what “the blues” IS? People tend to think they do; they’ll hear a piece of music and say, “that’s blues,” but they’re often not able to say WHY. It’s an amorphous thing, like a little kid peeing in the swimming pool—you know it’s there, but can’t quite pin down where. Maybe that’s a question that should be asked of the blues boys and girls: “What makes what you do ‘the blues’?” I’ll offer my own definition (I am fond of pat one-liners), one I picked up from an old blues guitarist. The blues, he said, “is all about getting up in the morning.” That’s a dig at the stereotypical opening line of a lot of blues songs (“I woke up this morning”—I used it myself, in my “Blood on the Floo’ Blues”), but it goes deeper. It’s an ATTITUDE—life is not pleasant, and things happen to you, but you have to get up in the morning and deal with it anyway. Determination, in other words, colored in many cases by a good bit of pain—and it permeates most of the blues I know, even the happy ones. It’s perhaps not surprising that a lot of early blues music was written by Southern blacks who USED TO be slaves. That enough? I’ll contact these “American Blues” folks and see if they’re interested in hearing from me. If not—well, there’s probably another blues in it. Joe

The Failed Economy show is done. Fingers are sore (and I broke the D string again), but I can still type. A quick post-mortem: The crowd wasn’t as big as I’d have liked, but they stuck around—danced, even—and were generous. The Food Bank was ecstatic, and the City got some cash in the toilet-shaped piggy bank for the Sewer Discount Program, too. The video lady didn’t show, but we got good video with Dick’s camera, I think, with sound fed from John’s new mixer (and that should be good). The 21 songs went for 2 hours and 10 minutes. A big surprise was the number of people who were up dancing to the Southern Pigfish song, “For Their Own Ends.” I know Chris the drummer and John the bass player like it—it’s rock ‘n’ roll, and both of them come from rock backgrounds—but I had no idea the audience would like it, much less be out of their chairs dancing to it. Other good dance numbers: Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer” (which we had deliberately arranged as a dance tune), Gem Watson’s “Final Payment” (another surprise), and Gene Burnett’s “Things Are Getting Better Now that Things Are Getting Worse.” (I’ve sent congratulatory notes to both Gem and Gene.) When you got people dancing, you know you’ve got a keeper. These are keepers of the first order. People also liked our ragtime version of Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” (they listened raptly), Betty Holt’s “Our Own Little Stimulus Plan,” my bluegrass “Free-Range Person,” and Woody Guthrie’s blues number “Aginst the Law.” All are probably includables in future sets, whatever the subject matter. It was good to “do” the hall early; since we had the Dance Floor for the weekend, we started setting up at noon, and spent four hours at it, getting everything perfect. We had two sound systems—the “live” sound configured for the Dance Floor’s rotten acoustics, run through the Friday Night Group’s PA, and the “recorded” sound, picked up from two overhead mikes set up out in the audience, and re-mixed with John’s new mixer and fed to both the audio recorder and the video camera. Tested everything repeatedly. Then we all got to go home, shower, eat, nap if we wanted, and at Gig Time, just had to flip a switch and play. Allowed us to come across as very professional. I was approached by Wayne, the lead guitarist I know, offering to fill in any time we were sans a lead player; he said he wouldn’t need to practice (I heard that from another lead guitarist recently—is this a genetic thing?). Wayne is very good; I tapped him to play lead on a recording of the old Gospel hymn “Turn Your Radio On” for a contest a couple of years ago—his country-barroom lead was and is a perfect fit for a hymn, the more so because it’s so unexpected. He regularly plays on Friday nights at City Hall with the Friday Night Group and Saturday afternoons at the Library, so he’s familiar with a lot of my stuff. And I did get one suggestion for a band name. (That means somebody read the program—I didn’t mention it anywhere else.) Next step, I guess, is to see how the video came out. If the sound is good, we’ve got a promotional tool. The fact that we did the Failed Economy Show should get us in a lot of doors—people may not remember the show, but they’ll remember the publicity. Lessons? (There are always lessons.) We need someone separate from the band to run sound; I’ve heard that from professional sound engineers before, but the show underscores their point. It’s impossible for someone in the band to both play and deal with levels at the same time. Recent practice is a good idea; all the songs that we practiced that day—under the guise of testing out the sound levels—came off really good in the evening’s performance. Next scheduled gig is at the Garibaldi Museum, last Saturday in June (unless we get one before then), and I think everybody’s up for it. Joe

Post-Red Room, pre-Failed Economy Show post. Will do another post-mortem after the Failed Economy Show. (The band will need to discuss how we did, I think.) Red Room gig went well. Don the blues harp player wasn’t there, but lead guitarist David was, and we were okay. Even lead guitarists have to practice, though; we (and he) could have been better. We had better control over the sound this time, and even though it was a Thursday night we had a good crowd. (And just like last time, the majority of the crowd left after we were done. I don’t know if they were there to hear us, but they sure weren’t there to hear the other bands.) The two “bands” on after us—an electric guitar soloist, and a drums-and-electric-guitar duo, were way too loud, and we didn’t stick around even to pick up our “pay” (which we expected, like last time, to be minimal). My video camera didn’t work, and Sharma’s got lost, I think, in our haste to get out of there and away from the noise, so no video. It’ll be a little while before I find out how the audio recording came out. I don’t know where the Portland band is going to go. Perhaps nowhere; it consumes a lot of time, and don’t make a dime—and right now, there isn’t a lead instrument. Maybe I should just go back to concentrating on soliciting solo gigs in the Portland area, and when I get one that has to have a band, re-assemble the band. In the meantime, we can play occasionally for fun. (And I do want to encourage Sharma to play bass.) We won’t have lead guitarist Jeff at the Failed Economy Show—I had rather expected that, having left messages for over a week that didn’t get returned. I did reach him at the last minute—that’ll teach him to answer the phone without checking who’s calling, I guess. He admitted he’d been avoiding me, feeling guilty about not doing the gig (I didn’t chide him—I have a tendency to do the same avoidance thing). I think Dick, our blues harp player, will do just fine as the lead instrument, though I’m sure people will miss Jeff, and ask about him. Down the road, I think we can find us a new guitarist; John knows one, and I know one, and we’ll ask ‘em. Or maybe it ought to be a different lead instrument. Any “non-whiny” lead would do—banjo, mandolin, dobro, pedal steel. It really doesn’t matter. (I think I know a banjo player, too.) On the positive side, the lady who usually films the county commissioners and suchlike public meetings will try to be there with her video equipment; she’s excited about the idea of doing a food bank promotion on cable TV covering two counties (I’d hoped she would be). We’ll have Dick’s video camera there, too. And John got his new mixer—came three weeks earlier than they said it would—and it’ll be better, he thinks, than the Friday Night Group’s PA (and it’s a teeny fraction of the size, too). We’ll have the afternoon to play with the sound if we need to. Maybe time to practice some of the songs again as well. I have all the songs memorized, I think, having spent every waking minute singing to myself for several days. Can I do them in order in front of a crowd? I hope so. Jeff’s departure from the local scene does mean there’s an opportunity for a weekly performance at the Ghost Hole tavern. I don’t have a PA system, though—but I know someone who’s getting a new one, and I have let her know I’d be interested in her old one, if it was cheap enough. (She is aware I am waydam cheap—and unemployed to boot.) With that, I could do it—and maybe attract others. There is a crowd—a small one—that has gotten used to having live music at the Ghost Hole on Wednesday nights. It’d be good to not disappoint them. Joe

Good suggestions all. I recommend constantly keeping one's eyes and ears open. Life is just chock full of inspiration. If you're not noticing it where you're at, change location. Do something different, go somewhere new, listen to different stuff, yada yada. When you come back, things will probably look a little different. I definitely study the work of songwriters whose stuff I admire, and try to figure out what it is they're doing that appeals to me. Then I try to *apply* it to my stuff. I guess I don't have to worry too much about being imitative, because anything I write is going to come out country whether I like it or not. Really shocked my teenaged daughter when I adapted an Avril Lavigne rhyming scheme to a bluegrass song. It did work, and I tend to use it a lot. I read once (not here, I don't think) that the four elements in a song are GENRE, SUBJECT, STYLE, and POINT OF VIEW. It's fun to mix 'em up. What if you did (for instance) a country (GENRE) love song (SUBJECT) in the STYLE of The Ramones, from the POINT OF VIEW of the dog? Wouldn't *that* be interesting? Have fun... Joe

Tune, I believe you have hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head. Remember, though, that we did have much the same situation with respect to pot in the 1960s, '70s, &c., and it never has been resolved. The stuff is still illegal, and large numbers of people are still using it. But the laws remain basically the same. The same could end up being true of recording piracy. It would be great if a business model could be developed which would accommodate both sides. But since one side is insisting on getting paid, and the other on obtaining product for free, that may be hard. Those are rather mutually exclusive viewpoints. I don't mind the record companies not making a fortune, but as a small-time writer, artist and performer, I want to make sure that whatever system there is allows *me* to get paid. In the meantime, I rely on the basic morality of my fans and potential fans. I do have a couple of OMDs where folks can download some of my stuff for free, but I try to entice them to concerts and to buy CDs, and they seem to do dat. (My CDs are only $10, less than the Big Guys charge.) And I quote the Bible to 'em a lot: "The laborer is worth his hire." Joe

What is it with lead guitarists? I have two–one in each band–that have gone flaky. Neither one’s been practicing (one maintains he doesn’t need to), and at this point I have worries whether either one is going to show up for the gigs–which are, at this point, just days away. I thought I’d gotten out of coddling people when I ceased being a city manager. (At least I got paid for doing it back then.) It’d be possible to get by with just a blues harp lead–but in both bands, the blues harp players have been sick. One’s still sick (flu), and the other’s just out of the hospital and recovering from a major operation. The Portland band is at least tight (drummer, bass player, and me), and I hope the Coast band is going to get there, too. Provides a good framework for a lead player to build upon–but are we going to have a lead player? I think problems like this are one reason why so many songwriters prefer to perform solo; it’s not hard to depend on yourself. Yes, there is probably a song in it. Life and its issues are just chock full of songs. Sometimes, though, you have to sit on something a little, and wait for some of the worry to get squeezed out and get replaced with some humor. Life (and its issues) should not be taken too seriously. Practice with the Coast band Sunday (without a lead guitarist) did go good. Dick Ackerman is one of the best blues harp players I know, and he did real well on all of the material. If we don’t have Jeff there to play lead guitar, Dick can carry it just fine, so I will try not to worry. Now, if Don, the blues harp player in the Portland band, can get over his flu by Thursday, we should be okay at the Red Room, too. I saw a discussion on line about the importance of FIRST LINES in songs. The point was made that a lot of hit songs either have the hook in the first line, or have “subordinate hooks” that suck the listener in, and make them listen until the real hook gets there. “True dat,” as they say. I have a few of those myself, but not many. In “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” “I Broke My Girlfriend,” and “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You,” the first line is the hook–but in at least half my songs, my suck-you-in line doesn’t happen right away. The first line is actually pretty innocuous; it’s usually the second one that signals that something a little twisted might be about to happen. That is delaying the suck-you-in maybe a little longer than normally desirable. (The folks who do these studies are right, I think, about attention spans. They are short, and you have to accommodate that.) I think the Rap helps; I almost always have a Rap to introduce the song, that I’ll do when I’m performing, and sometimes I’ll include it on the recording, too. The Rap does help set the stage, I think, and maybe encourages the listener to be patient, and wait for the Something Twisted that’s coming, but just not right away. I suppose that’s not so much violating the rule as just finding a way around it. Distributed more posters for the Failed Economy Show; found a $5 toilet for our “piggy bank” for donations to the Sewer Discount Program; and I have all but two (I think) of the 22 songs memorized. (I still need to be able to play a couple of them better on the guitar.) John has inspected the Friday Night Group’s PA system and thinks he knows how to adapt it for our purposes. Announced the concert at the Friday Night Group’s get-together, and had posters for everybody there, too. There were still some posters left over after the performance, which I hope were noticed by the Square Dance Club, which had the Dance Floor the following night. (I couldn’t go to the square dance–I was in Portland at band practice.) I haven’t seen any posters up at downtown Garibaldi businesses; I’ll have to distribute them. At least two more practices before the Failed Economy Show–Monday afternoon, and Saturday morning before the performance Saturday night. (We’re testing the sound system. We might as well make sure we’re okay at the same time we make sure it’s okay.) No more practices with the Portland band before the Red Room concert. We’re on. Joe

SETLIST for the Failed Economy Show looks like this: SET #1: 50 Ways to Cure the Depression (me) Glad That You’re Here (Stan Bolton) Worried Man Blues (Woody Guthrie) Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues (me) Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt) Have a Good Day (Frank Papa) So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini) Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More (Woody Guthrie) For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish) WD-40 the Economy (Stan Good) Alabama Blues (Diane Ewing) SET #2: Un-Easy Street (Stan Good) I May Write You from Jupiter (me) Aginst the Law (Woody Guthrie) Oil in the Cornfield (me) Final Payment (Gem Watson) Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie) The Emperor (Zmulls & Tintner) Things Are Getting Better Now that Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett) The Day the Earth Stood Still (Jeff Tanzer) Free-Range Person (me) Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad (Woody Guthrie) Six by me (I wrote the Southern Pigfish one, too), five by Woody Guthrie, two by Stan Good, one each by nine other writers. We have ragtime, calypso, blues, bluegrass, country, and folk–even one waltz. (And I have nearly all the songs memorized. Recording them was definitely the way to go.) I have CDs for everybody in the band with all the songs recorded, and I’ve delivered lyrics to Dick and will do the same for Jeff. What’s necessary now is more practice, and to make sure the sound system works the way we want it to. First priority is for a decent sound through the PA system for the audience; the City Hall Dance Floor, with its concrete-block walls and low acoustic ceiling, is a rotten acoustic space to work with. That’s one reason why the Friday Night Group has such a sophisticated PA system. They need it. John and I will check it out Friday. Second (or third) is to feed mixed sound to at least one of a pair of video cameras (the other camera only needs sound as a tracking device, so that video can be matched up later). We want DVDs of the Show for later airing on cable TV, and to make clips from for getting gigs from other venues. Third (or second) is to feed an audio recorder, so we can produce that “Songs from the Failed Economy Show” CD I’ve been talking about. We will need to use John’s little recorder for that–it records to a real hard drive, rather than a digital-camera chip like the Tascam does, and can hold a couple of hours’ worth of music easily. John thinks he can break both video and audio into one-song increments so they can be played with on the computer. (He can manipulate the video from Dick’s camera, but not mine. He says my camera’s too old.) For the recording, the plan is to do it separate from the Friday Night Group’s PA--recording instead from some strategically located omnidirectional mikes John thinks he can borrow, using my 6-channel mixer and then splitting the output three ways–one to the audio recorder, and two to the video cameras. When I go to Portland Saturday, I’ll need to pick up a couple of adapters to make the cabling all work. And one other option for the recording I’ve got to follow up on–I know a local minister (I keep saying “I know people”) who has some good recording equipment; he has a studio set up in his house, but says his experience is all with recording live shows (mostly with Christian bands, I think). Wonder if he’d be interested in recording this one? It’d have to be for no money–everybody’s donating their time on the Failed Economy Show–but it might be a worthy enough cause. We’ll see. Joe

Nice rant, John. It is too bad virtually no file-sharer is likely to read it. I would dispute the claim that you need production to put on a show for any kind of crowd. I don't. I can put on a show of three hours of my stuff easy--solo--and have the audience thoroughly entertained all the way through. It does sound better with a band--and the last 2 shows I did were with a band, and the next 2 shows will be, too. But I'd let the Big Boys--the ones on the verge of going bankrupt--do the fancy shows with huge production. I can get by with a small, competent band and nothing fancy. People will pay to hear good writing. And there, I think, is an opportunity the Big Boys can't take advantage of. (They may not even be aware it exists.) We have a Depression on, and one of the hallmarks of the last Depression was a public craving for cheap entertainment. And there had to be a lot of it. I see folks not going any more to the $50-to-$200-a-head concerts in the Big City--but they will (and did) pack a $5-a-head concert by local musicians at the local Arts Center. I intend to ride that trend as far as I can. Joe

Jes' a thought (and not very well thought out yet). You may have hit something on the head with the remark about no longer selling a product. (Hopefully, whatever it was was not badly injured.) What if we don't? What if we said (or admitted) that what we're selling is an *experience*? This may work better for those that perform (I perform), but it follows Madonna's prediction a year or so ago that the way to make money in the music business in the future was going to be to perform. It follows that the "merch"--not just the T-shirts and buttons, but the CDs as well--are simply *icons*, that we obtain, keep, give away, &c., as memories of the *experience*. Does that--or would that--work as a model? Joe

The trick to memorizing the Failed Economy songs is to RECORD THEM. I’ve done that for Zmulls & Tintner’s “The Emperor,” Coleman & Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer” and “Ain’t Got No Home,” Gem’s “Final Payment,” Frank Papa’s “Have a Good Day,” and Betty Holt’s “Our Own Little Stimulus Plan,” doing each in one to three takes, and by the end of the process–one to two hours apiece–I’ve got the song mostly down, and can play it without looking at notes. I’m overdue to get the rest of the band CDs with the setlist songs anyway. As this is written, I’ve only four more songs to do, three of them by \Woody Guthrie–and two of those are old standards that everybody ought to be familiar with. The recordings I’ve done are all simple: rhythm guitar, vocal, and a real simple lead guitar. The vocal’s done with one of the instrument mikes I got from Bodie (John’s got the singing mike at his house to play with the mixer and sound system)–not perfect, but it works. I’m not going to post them anywhere (with the exception of Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street,” which I sent to Stan for approval first). When we do the show, we should get better recordings–but I’m still not sure how we’re going to accomplish it. The Friday Night Group’s PA system, which we’ve been invited to use (and John wants to use) doesn’t have a “line out” that I know of, but it does have 8 inputs. One could interpose my 6-channel mixer before the signals go to the PA, but that doesn’t take advantage of the capabilities of the PA (and they are nice). My mixer is old, and nowhere near as fancy, and I’m sure wouldn’t produce as good a sound. The solutions that come to mind–having a splitter for each circuit, or running everything through a patch bay–involve purchasing equipment, which I’m not about to do when I don’t have an income. I begin to understand the challenges Sharma’s facing with recording and amplifying the Portland band. (Her equipment is new, and a lot more sophisticated.) Distributed more Failed Economy Show posters today, too. Whenever I go to Tillamook, I should take a stack with me; every place I stopped at wanted to post it right away, and I ran out of posters pretty fast. Got to chat briefly with some still-employed city and county officials I hadn’t seen in a while, too–and everywhere promoted the idea of “This should be imitated.” Wednesday, I think I’ll head north; four more city halls, another newspaper, and the Recreation District to hit, plus I want to buy a junk toilet at the recycling center to turn into a sort-of piggy bank for donations to the City of Garibaldi’s Sewer Discount Program, which we’ll also solicit help for during the Failed Economy Show. And one idea I hadn’t thought of. I do (or did) know one of the producers at Oregon Public Broadcasting in Portland; she and her camera crew visited Union several times while I was city manager there, doing a documentary on volunteerism–and of course, I sent her the “Santa’s Fallen” CD when that came out. I have no idea if she remembers me, but I sent her the invitation and poster files for the Failed Economy Show, too, emphasizing what I’m after is IMITATORS. I’d like to see a lot of people doing this–as our county judge put it, “putting your mandolins where your mandibles are.” Is OPB doing any shows about the economic mess? According to their schedule, they’re doing a lot of them–including one on the growing hunger problem. Could be right down her (and our) alley. I doubt OPB would send any film crews on a 2-1/2 hour drive over the Coast Range on bad roads to film us–but it’d be nice if what we’re doing got mentioned. Another instance of the desirability of staying in touch with people. You never know when a particular contact may be important, either for you or for them. TO DO: The four last Failed Economy Show songs to record; CDs to burn (and distribute) for the band; three more jobs to apply for. Music at the tavern Wednesday night, and at City hall Friday night, practice with the Portland band on Saturday and the Coast band all day Sunday. I may be unemployed, but I have plenty of work. Joe

Someone actually requested “Hey, Little Chicken” at the Ghost Hole last night. Good night for tips, too—we’re starting to see some five-dollar bills along with the ones. Come Sunday, we actually might have the whole Coast band together for practice for the first time, and I want to make sure I’m ready. I still need to master the words for Zmulls’ & Tintner’s “The Emperor,” Frank Papa’s “Have A Good Day,” Gene Burnett’s “Things Are Getting Better,” Stan Good’s “WD-40 the Economy,” Coleman’s and Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” and four Woody Guthrie songs—“Worried Man Blues,” “Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More,” Dance a Little Longer,” and “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad.” Need to have the music down for Jeff Tanzer’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” too. On the plus side, I may have finally found a key I can sing “The Emperor” in, and a Keith Richards-style guitar riff for “Dance a little Longer” that’s almost rhythm-and-blues—probably not at all what Woody Guthrie intended, but people can definitely dance to it. Gem’s “Final Payment” is down pat; so is Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street,” Stan Bolton’s “Glad That You’re Here,” and Woody’s “Aginst the Law.” And the six songs that are mine, of course. I ought to know my songs by now. Over the next couple of days, I should assemble CDs with the setlist songs; I’ll have to re-record a lot of them, because the way I play them is different from the way they were sent to me. At very least, my voice range forces them to be performed in different keys than the authors—all of them better singers than I—sent them to me. I asked the “outside” authors for photos and links to Websites where people can listen to or buy their music, and heard back from most of them the same day (and from a couple of them within minutes). One bright aspect of all this unemployment is it has made communication faster; you don’t have to wait for most people to come home from work because they’re not working. Went to the Lions Club’s organizational meeting for Garibaldi Days; the top officers weren’t in attendance, so little was done—but I did find out it was the Tillamook Eagles, not the Lions, that shelled out the big bucks for beer garden entertainment last year, and the Eagles’ Sharon Stafford is my next person to contact. The Lions were complaining the open mike scheduled on the Friday night of last year’s Garibaldi Days was a flop; of course it was—any Friday entertainment is going to have to compete with the Friday Night Group up at City Hall, and probably can’t. I told them there was no point. I did offer my graphic-design services to the cause; we’ll see if anybody wants to take advantage of them. And I was asked the next day (by the Lions president) if I’d be willing to handle the entertainment for Garibaldi Days. I think the answer is yes. I do know people who perform, both individuals and bands; it’s a matter of contacting them and asking them (1) if they’re interested and (2) what they’d charge. (Unlike most festival promoters, I do assume the performers are going to get paid.) I’d want five performers—soloists or bands—playing roughly an hour each. Then I can go back to the Garibaldi Days people and tell them how much I think it’ll cost, and find out how much of an entertainment budget they really have. They’ll need to hire a PA system, too, and somebody to run it—I presume the same people they used last year. And I do not want to put a lot of effort into it. I want our band to perform at this thing, so I don’t want to get caught up in anything that’d be a distraction from that. I don’t want to babysit the bands, and I don’t want to do sound (tone-deaf sound engineer? Come on…) But finding the people? Sure, I can do that. I’ll talk to people from one band tonight when the Friday Night Group plays. Joe