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Well, they lied. Broadjam, that is. The pitch was if you signed up for their “Free Mini-MoB” account, you could upload a video for the Goodnight Kiss Music Contest. (The contest would still charge an entry fee, of course.) Alas, ‘tain’t so. I am told I am not “allowed” to upload any videos until and unless I sign up for Broadjam’s not-free ($5-a-month) regular membership, and on my non-existent salary, I am not doing that. (And I hate bait-and-switch tactics. I will not participate in them.) The alternative is to snail-mail it. I could do that—the old H-P laptop will burn DVDs (one of its few skills)—but I’d have to drive somewhere and purchase a blank recordable DVD, and suddenly the cost of entering a contest I expect to have little hope of winning just went up. I’m better off just sending them a couple of songs, instead of a song and a video. I was going to send the songs by snail-mail anyway, and I have the blank CDs for that—I buy them in quantity. I expect there will be other video opportunities. I would like the opportunities to be free or nearly free: I am in my infancy as a videographer, and the things I’ve uploaded to YouTube are really experiments—each one I’ve done has incorporated some new technique I’ve learned—on which I am primarily after feedback and input. And it’s not like any of these have “gone viral”; the most popular of them has gotten less than 300 “views” since it was posted back in January, so at best it’s “gone head cold.” Now, with songs, I think I know what I’m doing, and I’m okay with investing a little bit of money in showcasing what in my semi-professional opinion is a good (and potentially prize-winning) product. Videos? Not so much. What to send? There are 11 songs on the Deathgrass album; I’d already decided to send Goodnight Kiss “Dead Things in the Shower.” “No Good Songs About the War,” I think, will be the other. Production’s good—I love Mike Simpson’s harmonies—and I got to play lead guitar on it, too. That song did win a contest once, so I know somebody thought it was good. I checked on two other contests I entered—and comfortingly, the reason I hadn’t heard anything is they haven’t decided anything yet. The Angler’s Mail magazine song contest in England only closed yesterday (Oct. 31), and the Songwriters Association of Washington (D.C.) said they won’t be announcing winners until early in 2012. I thought I’d entered a third contest already this year, but if so I can’t remember what it was. With luck they’ll notify me if I won. I was asked at the Writers’ Group meeting what I expected to get out of entering these contests. Exposure, primarily; if I win top prize or close to it, I’ve got somebody else promoting not so much that particular song as promoting that I exist and I’m a writer. (I still get occasional comments from the Website of that writers’ group in England that awarded us first prize in their “Can you write like Dylan?” contest—back in 2009.) While exposure in remote places might not translate into the “butts in seats” that Madonna (among others) maintains is the key to making money in the music business, it might generate some online CD sales if nothing else. There is a new literary magazine starting up on the North Coast—the North Coast Squid, they’re calling it. First issue’s due out in February. It would be nice to send them something; it’d have to be poetry, I think—songs don’t lend themselves easily to publication solely in print, and plays (the puppet shows) are a little long for publication in a magazine. They’ll take photos, too, but my photography I am not impressed with. I do have one piece that might work: “The Cat with the Strat,” which started life as a poem; it only got set to music because The Collaborators, the Internet “band” I was working with at the time, wanted to record it and it had to have music for them to be able to do that. I have until the end of the month to decide whether I’m brave enough to send it. Music Thursday night at the Tsunami, Friday night at Garibaldi City Hall (gotta tell everybody about the Open Mike), Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook library, Saturday night in Bay City (the Open Mike at the Arts Center), and Sunday night at the Rapture Room. I’m ready. Joe

About The Opera: I don’t have a plot, or characters; one of the folks I told about the idea said if it was a Joe Opera, it had to have dead animals, and I suppose that’s right (Reputation To Protect and all). For all I know, maybe all the characters will be animals—animals are a lot easier to deal with than people. It’s been suggested I adapt something like Bryan Jacques’ “Redfern” series—science-fiction novels whose characters are all animals—but I don’t know as I want to get that cute. Cute anthropomorphic animals have been done to death (sorry) by the Disney people. It would be tempting—here’s that zeitgeist again—to have the opera be about the economy: the classic Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland routine, perhaps, where we’re out of money, the farm’s being foreclosed on—so “Let’s put on a show!” Twisted, of course: if I were doing it, the humans would be clueless, and the farm animals would put on the show—and somebody (a government agency?) would try to stop them. Unsuccessfully, of course. And because I’m not that into happy endings, the show would end up being a failure (perhaps because only animals come?) and the farm would still get sold and the animals sent to the slaughterhouse. Classic Greek tragedy, where at the end of the play only one actor is left alive—long enough to close the curtains and wish the theatergoers goodnight. I believe all the dialogue in an opera is sung (unlike a “musical,” where spoken word stitches the musical pieces together), and that’s quite a lot of music to write. One thing I could do to make my job easier would be to have each character sing differently (and consistently): the tempo might change, of course, depending on their being excited, &c., but “their” stuff would always be in the same rhythm and chord progression—the operatic equivalent of having the “Darth Vader Blues” play every time Darth comes on stage (a trick I did use in the first “Pig Wars” puppet show). That would also make the characters, whoever (and whatever) they are, more identifiable to the audience. One can do that with country music. I suppose my actors don’t need to be speaking (or singing) in Italian—but that could be fun, too. (I shouldn’t think about this so much. I already have a tag line for the “reprise,” that the animals in various groups will sing at various random points during the opera: “We’re gonna put on a show And raise a whole lot of dough And make the evil bankers go away!”) I got asked twice while I was at the speech tournament (as a judge), “When’s your next gig?” (I’ve been asked that a few more times just in the past few days.) I guess that means I should arrange one, ‘cause I don’t got one. Right now, the next gig is the Christmas benefit concert, though I don’t have a date yet. I haven’t gone around soliciting gigs for myself at the various live music venues, and I should do that, too. A few more things to do. Time to send off the CD and lyrics for “Dead Things in the Shower” to Goodnight Kiss Music for their contest (I’ll do the DVD entry for “50 Ways to Cure the Depression” online—it’s easier). At that point, my contest-entering for the year will be done. I haven’t won any of the others I entered. A couple more job applications to send off, too. Those are like the song contests, except that I think I have less chance of winning. Joe

For the Christmas Show, we want about an hour and a half’s worth of songs. That’s 18. I should start a list (I like lists). With “Alice” the ‘puter dead, I don’t have past setlists to work from; they were all on her hard drive. I have to invent one from scratch. Could include—not in any kind of order yet, of course: CHRISTMAS SONGS: Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up—fast bluegrass I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas—slow & sleazy Christmas Roadkill—slow & sleazy --and maybe: I Want a Man for Christmas—rock & roll (though a girl should really sing this) Another Crappy Christmas (Don Varnell)—fast quasi-pop FAILED ECONOMY SONGS: Things Are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—fast two-step Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More (Woody Guthrie)—fast two-step Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—deliberate two-step --and maybe: Final Payment (Gem Watson)—deliberate Gospel 50 Ways to Cure the Depression—folk-rock THE DEATHGRASS “STANDARDS”: Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues That’s 16. That’d leave room for a couple of new ones, should any happen in the next couple of weeks, or for a couple more Old Standards if they don’t. I’d like to concentrate on danceable music, just in case there are any dancers, and three danceables that aren’t on the above list are “Test Tube Baby,” Woody Guthrie’s “Dance a Little Longer,” and Diane Ewing’s “Distraction.” One rock ‘n’ roll, one country rock, and one two-step. (Or I could substitute Diane Ewing’s “Alabama Blues,” which is a heartbreaker as well as being a very danceable two-step.) An hour and a half seems to be a good length; people get tired (the band gets tired, too) if we play two hours. It being a benefit, I’d still have a quick break in the middle for the Donation Pitch, and probably one at the beginning, too. The mid-concert pitch should not be made by us (I could do the one at the beginning if needed). We’ll need refreshments—cookies, coffee and punch—and I’d like to enlist a couple folks to man a meet-and-greet-and-accept-donations table. Could we do more? Enlist some backup singers, perhaps? Maybe some additional instruments? (I do know some people.) Since it’s a benefit concert, I don’t have to worry about splitting revenue too many ways—there is no revenue, not for the band. I have to worry simply about putting on the best show possible, to attract the biggest possible crowd (and biggest amount of donations). It would take more practice, but maybe not a lot—most of the musicians I know are familiar with at least some of the material, and distributing setlist CDs makes getting familiar with the rest easy. Besides, as some more professional performers have pointed out, my music tends to be very predictable. It’s one of the things that makes it easy to play with me. Joe

Denise Drake has a new song: “Cheap Replacement,” I believe it’s called. We played it last night at the Tsunami, and I’ve suggested she record it—and she suggested recording it with the “jam band,” i.e., us. I think that actually might be doable. With my equipment, no less. Let’s say it would be a lot of fun to try. How? My Tascam has four channels, but I can only record on two at a time, and what I record will appear on both the left and right channels simultaneously—I can’t put some things on the right and some on the left, for instance. To do that, I’d have to be enlisting a computer and a lot more sophisticated software than I’ve got (studios have that stuff—I don’t). That’s not necessarily a bad limitation; it’s just one I have to live with. Rick (from the “Really Cool Stuff” store in Wheeler) has a decent 8-channel PA that the Tsunami’s been using on Thursday nights, and I believe the two mikes are his, too. I could throw my singing mike into the mix for the vocals, and we could use the other two mikes (which have a longer range) to pick up instruments like fiddle and harmonica and percussion that can’t be plugged in. Bass (we need bass—didn’t have one last night), Denise’s rhythm guitar, and lead (Aaron) would be plugged in directly. It would be essential for the PA to have a “line out” port (it’s new enough that it should) because that’s what would have to go into the Tascam’s “line in” port. (I do know a work-around if there isn’t a “line out” port but I’d rather do this normally.) Two sets of headphones (I have them—one for the Tascam, and one for the PA) with which the sound engineer (me, by default) would have to very carefully set everybody’s levels. Then push “record” and we get what we get. If everything’s set right what we get should be good. Because there will be two tracks left on the Tascam, it is possible to record two additional things separately, with the musician listening through the one set of headphones while his/her instrument is either plugged in or miked. (And that can be done later—it doesn’t have to be done in situ.) One of those extra instruments could be me, but it doesn’t have to be; I wasn’t doing anything special on the song, just my standard approximation-of-the-melody with a few blues licks thrown in—what I usually do when I don’t know what I’m doing. We had several really good lead players there last night, and it’d be much better to use them rather than me. (I can put effects on those “extra” instruments, too.) To minimize the impact on everybody’s time—this is a tavern situation, and it should not feel like work—I’d want to do some experimentation in advance with the Tascam and PA, to make sure I could really do what I think I can do, and I’d want the “band” to run through the song once while I set levels (that’d also give the musicians a chance to think about perfecting anything they were doing that could use improvement). And one could video this at the same time (mostly), too. (“Video is the new audio,” remember.) Two cameras, I think (three would be nice)—one fixed-focus on a tripod, filming the “band” from one vantage point all the way through, and the other(s) zooming in on various “band” members and the tavern audience. I’d want to film Denise separately later, lip-synching along with the song, so there’d be footage of her without a mike in her face. And of course I’d want help with that; I am not a pro with this stuff. I have heard the new fire hall in Bayside Gardens has a pole. That might make it a perfect venue for videotaping “Pole Dancing for Jesus,” and I need to talk to the fire chief. I may have a couple of folks interested in being pole dancers. Joe

I might have broken a writers’ block, finally—and I have the writers’ group to thank for that. It was Bobbi, one of our poets, who came up with the idea of a “Complaint Choir” (envision a gaggle of folks dressed as faux Victorian Christmas carolers, descending upon various places to deliver off-the-wall “carols” about current events) and suggested we all come up with “carols” to sing. (“We all” has only been three, lately. Participation has been just a bit short of abysmal.) So I did a “complaint carol,” myself, just a couple of hours before our meeting Tuesday night. Found I could write it down from memory the next morning (that’s important—if I can’t remember it, I assume it wasn’t worth remembering), and it’s been sent off for peer review at Just Plain Folks. “The Occupation Song” (tentative title) was triggered by a poster somebody’d sent from the Occupy Portland protests that said (roughly) “Occupy Your Library—You Might Learn Something.” The song just takes that to its logical, over-the-cliff conclusion—with caustic little side references to not having a job, or a home, or any money. Yes, it’s a political song—though it’s one the political hardliners would be unlikely to be interested in because of its tongue-in-cheekiness. They’d probably think I was making fun of them (which I might be). It’s probably a throwaway—but I am happy that it came together fast, and structurally is okay, and I’m relatively happy with it. And the words make sense—unlike the “Samba with the Llamas” song, which still isn’t finished. The music (ragtime) pretty much parallels my own “21 Steamer Drive,” but I think I can make it sound different by switching keys and giving it more of a rock rhythm, like Deathgrass does to Coleman and Lazzerini’s “So 20th Century,” which is also ragtime. I’m ready to try it out on a live audience somewhere. I find myself always asking “What can I do with this?” Songs rarely stand on their own; if they’re not to fade off into obscurity, one has to do something with them. Well, this is a protest song, and protest songs are supposed to be performed; I can do that, but I kinda do that a lot anyway. It would be fun to put together a real, live Complaint Choir to make the rounds in Victorian costume, caroling this and a few others (Bobbi’s carol, about Rockaway Beach, would be a great inclusion, too); I don’t know if I know that many performers who are inclined to be that outrageous. I’ll ask a few folks I know, though, and mention the idea both at the Rapture Room and at the Open Mike November 5 at the Arts Center. A Christmas show, perhaps? We’d need about an hour’s worth of these to pull that off. Of course I’ll record the song; I always record my stuff, if for no other reason than to preserve it for posterity, so they can enjoy my posthumous fame and fortune should that ever happen. It would be fun to record professionally a whole album of this protest stuff, and have it out just in time for Christmas (no, I do not know where the money to do that would come from). Yes, I already have a design for the album cover—graphic artist, remember? And if one is going to record, one should on principle do a video too. Slow week for music coming up: I’ll get to play at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler Thursday night, but there’s no music Saturday (I’ll be at a square dance in Woodburn anyway) and Sunday night I may be trying out for a part in a production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap instead of going to the Rapture Room. (That last depends on whether I think I can deliver an acceptable British accent. Both the parts I’d want require it.) Unrelated to music, I got a questionnaire from the Republican National Committee wanting my feedback on ideas for the 2012 part platform, and I believe I will give them a piece of my mind. I can spare it, and it’s obvious they need it. Joe

Took a survey from the Future of Music people; they wanted to know how us independent (i.e., non-record company controlled) musicians were doing in the New and Modern World. This independent musician is not doing well, thank you. How much money have I made in royalties from radio stations playing my songs? None. From movie and TV placements of my songs? None. From ringtones? None. (Nice idea though.) From record sales? From the new album, not enough—yet—to make back production costs. (That’s true of most of the Big Boys, too, but my production costs have a lot fewer digits than theirs.) From online sales? Some, but not enough for CDBaby to send me a check. From performances? Twice as much as last year, but still not enough to make even one mortgage payment. From session work? I have actually done some, but it was as a favor to friends, and no, I never got paid or asked to be. From teaching music? None. (That New and Modern World wants you to have a degree in that stuff—and one in teaching, too—before they’ll let you teach.) Blog? Yes, I have one of those—and 62 people from Latvia read it and I don’t know why. And no, I’ve never made any money off that, either. The question is regularly asked on writers’ sites, “Would you still be writing if there was no money in it?” I can answer that question easily, because there is no money in it and I’m still doing it. Money isn’t everything, of course. (It just helps with the food, shelter, &c.) I decided some time ago I couldn’t live without writing, and so I write; the stuff has to get exposed to people somehow, because there’s no other way to tell whether it’s good or not—and I end up performing it because no one else will. Everything else developed from there. I recorded an album to get the stuff more exposure (and now have three of them); I formed my own record company and publishing company because no one else was interested, and just might know enough now to be able to help somebody else. And the blog was just to keep track of what I was doing—and maybe to hope that someone reading it might have a shorter journey by not having to make the same mistakes I did. (It’s also great practice writing.) So fortune eludes me, fame I may already have some of, and both are extraneous to the need to write and to get better at it. It does mean that I have to have a job doing something else to take care of the food, shelter, &c. And three years into the economic collapse, I have no idea what that is. It is apparently not what I’ve done in the past. At this point, I’ve got five city-manager applications in the pipeline, and I’m not seriously expecting to hear good things from any of them (though I’ll know for sure by the end of the month). After I’ve gotten rejection letters from all of them, I think it’ll be time to go do something else. What? No idea. I guess that’s part of the journey, too. All the foregoing discouraging words are at least in part a reflection of the general discouragement that’s going on worldwide. And the more people get upset, and the more upset they get, the nastier they get about it, it seems; it’s a little like watching a progressive epidemic of rabies. I suppose that’s the general theme I’m ending up with in the “Samba with the Llamas” song: yup, things look bad; nope, they do not make sense (that’s why the lyrics are essentially nonsense with political overtones); all you may be able to do is stay away from it so as not to get infected. And you might as well dance. No, it’s not a solution—but as the Hindu deity Ganesha (the elephant-headed guy) maintained, if dancing doesn’t make the situation better, at least it makes you feel better. Myself, I don’t dance—but I’d be happy to write and play the dance music. And I’ll feel better. Joe

In Going Bovine, by Libba Bray, the protagonist, a high-school kid diagnosed with fatal Mad Cow Disease (hence the title), escapes from the hospital on a quest to find—within two weeks—the one doctor who can cure him (he has to save the world at the same time). The kid fails—turns out there is no cure and never was one—and he dies. His complaint to the angel who sent him on the quest: “But I wanted to live!” And the angel tells him, look, you traveled all over the place; you made a new best friend; you changed a bunch of people’s lives and may even have saved one; you stole from a drug dealer; you were hunted by the police; you played bass with one of the best jazz musicians on the planet; you saved the world; and you lost your virginity to the chick you had the hots for in school—haven’t you lived? I want to go to Ulan Bator. (Not “I think I want to go”; one piece of advice I got years ago from Stan Sheldon when he was Mayor of Garibaldi and I the city administrator was, “Never say ‘I think.’ You’re the expert. You don’t ‘think.’ You know.” Why Ulan Bator? It’s remote, I’ve never been there, and it’s somewhere I have no preconceived notions about. I’ve never really been outside this country (Tijuana and the Virgin Islands don’t exactly count)—and like the video (the new one) says, if you’re going to do it, you might as well go all the way. Thing is, I want to go there as a musician, and be playing a concert. There is some work involved in that: I know no one in Mongolia, and have no fans there that I know of. I’d have a better shot in Latvia, where according to Google there are 29 people reading the blog (though I have no idea who they are or why they’re doing it). I have a little experience breaking into new markets—all small, of course, and the people did mostly speak English—and they were markets where people didn’t previously listen to country music. I wonder if that’d be enough to start with? I’ll have to try. (And I can try to develop a fan base in Latvia while I’m at it.) The “Twenty-Four Seven” video is done and uploaded. (I probably should say a DRAFT is done and uploaded; and it is in fact the third draft.) The new video software—something called “Prism”—has some limitations, but it works enough like Windows Movie Maker and its Macintosh equivalent so the learning curve wasn’t too bad. In the same vein, Photoshop Limited Edition does pretty much the same stuff that Photo Deluxe used to do. Link is The photos themselves were all taken in Tillamook County, between Tillamook and Mohler (where The Cow Nobody Wanted is, in front of the Grange); the two communities are about 25 miles apart. I don’t know if I could have done better or not. The experimental part—besides using all that different software—was combining video (of the Rap) with “French style” slide show (of the song). And next? We could intersperse video with still photography. Or we could do one that was all video, but interspersed clips. (That latter might be easier—and I think it’s how the pros do it.) The video of “Blue Krishna,” when it’s finished, will be all interspersed video clips, but it’ll be fan-generated—the result of the old digital camera being forwarded around to different people. I want to do one myself, too. I’d like to film me playing the “base” track on the guitar, then extract the audio track, add lead and maybe other instruments and film little clips of them, and put that together. I wonder which song would be good for that? Lazarus’ new keyboard has arrived. Work to do… Joe

Working on the video… A lot of the photos I took were dark (it is dark around here a lot because of the clouds and rain) and I have been fixing that, photo by photo. I also have a habit of taking photos of a wider area than I need, planning on cropping what I need later. (I have cropping to do, too, in other words.) It’s a far cry from the days of black-and-white 35mm cameras, when you had to frame each shot very carefully because the lab in San Francisco was going to give you back—just in time for your deadline—exactly what you gave them. Technology allows you to be sloppy—not necessarily a good thing. My old (1996) Adobe Photo Deluxe photo-manipulation software is finally dead, and I couldn’t find the Jasc software I’d acquired some years back as a replacement, but my old (1998) PageMaker program came with an early “limited edition” of Photoshop, and that’ll work for my purposes. Downloaded Windows Movie Maker, and a copy of the recording of “Twenty-Four Seven” off Soundclick. Guess I’m ready. I’ll need photos—or film—to display during the Rap, too. I’d forgotten about that. I wonder if I could use the Webcam and just film me talking? I haven’t done that yet. Got appointed entertainment chairman for Garibaldi Days. I had told them I didn’t want to do that—I just wanted to make sure they knew the band wanted to play—and they told me the best way to ensure that was to have me in charge of entertainment. (I knew that, but I wasn’t after the obvious conflict of interest.) I think basically, they want the band to play anyway. I think we did put on a good show last July. So I get—again—to tell all the musicians I know that I’m looking for entertainment. Just like the Relay for Life, this’ll be a freebie (though unlike the Relay for Life, I won’t be trying to find entertainers to perform in the middle of the night), and to the extent possible, I’ll be after only local (Tillamook County) acts. I have a feeling there are plenty. Is it possible to fill the entire time between the end of the parade and the time (early evening) when the paid bands start performing at the taverns? I think so. The best everybody gets is exposure (because we can publicize the heck out of their being there), tips, and the ability to sell CDs and other “merch.” (Down the road, when the festival is a lot bigger, entertainment can get paid. That’s not now.) I think I can rig publicity so these local entertainers get a lot of bang in lieu of not getting any bucks. Writers’ group meeting was good—not many people, but lots of ideas, and that’s what’s important. Ever hear of a “complaint choir”? Envision a gaggle of Victorian-dressed carolers descending on a public place—and singing pointed hymns about current events. First one I got was from Bobbie, one of our poets, and it’s a sweet little ode directed at Rockaway Beach, our local role model for a dysfunctional government. It needs music, and I’ll do my best to provide some. A cross between “Good King Wenceslas” and a sea chanty, I think. We’ll each bring a “complaint carol” in either musical or poetic form to next Tuesday’s meeting. If we can polish and practice them enough, we could surprise the audience at the November 5 open mike with them. The other thing I asked everyone to do is bring something of their own to the meeting that they’d want to perform at the open mike, and we’ll work on polishing those, too. We have a couple more sessions before the open mike happens. And just a couple of odd opportunities—not income-producing ones, of course, just fun ones. It was suggested at the Writers’ Group meeting that I had a song the Occupy Portland demonstrators might well be able to use as a theme song—“Final Payment,” the late Gem Watson’s sweet-but-caustic Gospelly number that’s been a regular inclusion in Deathgrass’ Failed Economy Show concerts. No, nobody’s exactly in charge of the Occupy Portland “movement” (I noted that in an earlier blog), but I do know a couple of folks who’ve been going down there; as I’m fond of saying, “I know people.” And there’s a group in Kentucky that’s reportedly planning a big party—with live music—for the upcoming Prob’ly-Not-Going-to-Happen-This-Time-Either Rapture, and I’ve asked whether I could send them “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” Joe

I should turn into a computer hardware person for a while. A friend replaced the keyboard on his Dell laptop, and said it wasn’t too much of a pain; Lazarus’ keyboard is different, though (Dell was getting as bad as IBM with their “every model must be completely different” mantra)—non-standard shape, and all—but it turns out I can get a replacement keyboard online (and cheaper than going to a repair place) and according to the instructional video, it’s not hard to install. That’d be more professional-looking, too, than hooking up a standard keyboard to Lazz through the USB port. And if that works, I should consider repairing on my own “Justin,” the big Dell desktop I bought surplus from the Farmer’s Market. I think—but have no way to test—that the reason “Justin” isn’t working is his on/off switch is broken. Solution if that’s the case is to replace the on/off switch. Justin, I was told by the expert who tore into it for me, is a custom-built “gamer’s” computer, with oodles of RAM, a big hard drive, and very high-resolution graphics—exactly what I need for my work. If replacing the on/off switch is as easy as I think replacing Lazarus’ keyboard will be, it’d be a lot cheaper to do that instead of taking a day to trek to Portland with it. Words that rhyme with “samba”: I’ve already used “Hamas,” “drama,” “mama” and “pajamas” (yes, they all can be made to rhyme). “Okhrana” (the Russian Czar’s secret police), “Donder” (the reindeer) and “lambda” (the Greek letter) are probably too obscure, and “Osama” and “Obama” too current-events (I’d said I didn’t mind, but there are limits). “Dalai Lama” would probably be okay, though (I knew—an aside—somebody who had a llama named “Dolly”), and so would “McDonalds.” And “trauma,” “sauna,” and even “bomber” and “manana.” Yes, they will all rhyme when I’m done with ‘em. More? I don’t have to have everything rhyme with “samba,” of course; in that first (and at this point only) verse, I’ve also got “Wall Street” and “Main Street,” and “proper” and “opera,” and in the ending tag line there’s “December” and “remember.” But the more words I have trying to rhyme with “samba,” the more sense it will appear to make. I have no hope of it really making sense; we will have to rely on appearances. Though I refuse to force these things, I would like to be done with it before the weekend; I have a class to help teach on Friday, a funeral to attend Saturday—and maybe a writing seminar to attend, too. A lady in the audience at the library Saturday videotaped me playing “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” with the group; she did ask if she could post it on YouTube (and the answer to that one is always “yes”), but I haven’t seen it yet. I got to hit up the musicians—the rest of them are collectively the Ocean Bottom Blues Band—about performing at the 2012 Relay for Life July 7-8, and they’re interested. I’ll hit up the folks at the Rapture Room tonight, too; there are folks from two or three bands that regularly come to that. I expect the hardest part will be finding bands willing to play in the middle of the night—but the event is a 24-hour one and somebody has to. And the Relay folks don’t want just bands, either—they’d like all sorts of acts. There are three dance schools in Tillamook, and the square dancers (if there are enough of them around during the winter)—but I know some unconventional entertainers, too. How would Relay for Life feel about standup comedy? Or a fire dancer? (That would be cool in the middle of the night.) I’ll have to ask… Joe

Well, the Tsunami Grill was fun. Small turnout because of the Oregon Ducks game, and that meant I got to play more stuff, which was nice—but what I really go there for is the chance to play lead guitar to (mostly) rock ‘n’ roll music. I wouldn’t call it “practice,” because I’m trying to be perfect when I do it, and I don’t have many chances to do it. With a few exceptions, the cover songs the other musicians are playing are things I’ve never heard the originals of, so I’m not trying to recreate somebody else’s lead; I just do something that I think fits in. Hopefully, it does. (And what I do isn’t actually lead work. It’s simply competent—and interesting—rhythm, that’s capable of standing on its own as an in-lieu-of lead if no one else is playing lead—which last night was often the case. I’m still pursuing the role that was marked out for me some years back by a rock band I played with that did a lot of Beatles covers. They wanted me to be their John Lennon, and I decided he wasn’t a bad role model: a competent rhythm guitarist who could sometimes play lead. And wrote stuff.) I was asked at the Tsunami when my next gig was and had to admit I didn’t have any lined up. I should take care of that. (I said that before but haven’t done anything about it.) I don’t mind playing solo for free and just having the Ugly Orange Bucket out for tips and trying to sell CDs; if I’m playing with the band, though, I want the band to get paid. Just a few more photos to take for the “Twenty-Four Seven” music video. I need to photograph copies of Great Expectations and Fear of Flying at the library, the lighthouse at God’s Lighthouse church, the billboard in Garibaldi advertising the 2-foot long jerky, the “free hearing tests” sandwich board in Tillamook, the golf course sign next to the cheese factory, the arcade and espresso stand and one of the “Thanks for Visiting!” signs in Rockaway, and The Cow Nobody Wanted up at the Mohler Grange (which ultimately decided they did want it). And then I think I’ll have everything and can begin putting the video together. “Samba with the Llamas” started to turn political, and I decided I’d let it; it’s likely to be a throwaway anyway, since it’s got (presently) a rather nonsensical (albeit risqué-sounding) tag line. It’s okay if the song talks about current events—I’m not hitting for “timeless classic” here. And I can always safeguard my reputation as a nonpolitical writer by telling folks, “This is a Southern Pigfish song.” They do the politically-charged stuff. I don’t. One thing I will need before I’m done is a whole lot more words that rhyme, or almost rhyme, with “samba.” Since I refuse on principle to use a rhyming dictionary, I’ll be dependent on what I come up with myself and what suggestions I get from others. (That was a hint, folks.) I always try to figure out where melodies come from. This one’s bouncy, danceable melody, near as I can figure out, was partly robbed from Jimmy Buffett, partly from the Beach Boys, partly from Stan Good’s “Real Good Coffee and a Real Good Wife” (which I musicated) and partly from Don Varnell’s “Another Crappy Christmas” (which I also musicated). Put ‘em all together, with a few extraneous beats, and it does sound original. I have no idea whether it’s a real samba or not. I haven’t danced the samba since I took ballroom dancing in junior high school. And if I’m attributing the song to Southern Pigfish, it doesn’t matter. What would a folk-rock band from Arkansas know about sambas? Music Saturday at the library, and Sunday night at the Rapture Room. Opportunities to remind everyone that I’m the entertainment chairperson for the local Relay for Life campaign, and I want them to perform. July 7-8 at the county fairgrounds. Joe

Stuff to do… “Lazarus” the laptop needs to learn some more programs, mostly of the graphic-design variety; if he’s going to be the “basic” computer he needs to be able to do more basic stuff. Really important is going to be equipping him with a conventional keyboard (one without 3 missing keys, in other words). For the nonce, all the desktop computers—the nearly-new Dell that doesn’t work, the short-on-brains Compaq I got as a temporary replacement for “Alice,” and old “StuartLittle” the semi-portable, can go out to the garage studio. Once I clean the studio, of course. I am slowly compiling a list of things that need to be done on a trip to Portland, and I’ll endeavor to do them all on the same day; if I’m going to invest $40 in gas, I’m determined to be efficient about it. There’s an employment consultant who’s asked me to come see her, an interim city manager I want to visit with about becoming his permanent replacement, and some computer parts to score—and I’d take the Dell to a professional computer geek if I could find one there. If I could arrange to do a performance while I was in Portland, either at Eric John Kaiser’s Songwriter Showcase (which is on Tuesday nights) or Whitney Streed’s Tonic Lounge comedy night (Wednesday nights), that’d be perfect. What to perform? I haven’t written anything new lately (but there are some more risqué numbers Whitney’s people have not heard yet—I could do those). And with the looming possibility I could end up with an interim city manager job in short order, I should probably schedule this trip right away. Of course, my track record at landing job interviews hasn’t been particularly stellar of late—but there’s no real excuse for delaying the trip (and the longer I wait, the worse the weather’s going to get, too). Last two meetings of the writers’ group have had only two people. I fear we are headed for irrelevance, here. I think the assignment I’ll give everybody is to prepare for next Tuesday something to perform at the upcoming open mike at the Arts Center Saturday, Nov. 5; that’ll give us maybe two more meetings in which to polish it. After that, if we haven’t garnered more participation I’m going to have to pull the plug on it. And that “preparing something” includes me, too. The Coventry songwriters group wanted a “dance song” this month, and I just might be able to deliver. Something happy, bouncy and thoroughly devoid of meaning (at least right now—it might acquire meaning later, as these things sometimes do). Tentative title: “Samba with the Llamas.” And in case anyone was wondering, no, it is unlikely any of the llamas will die. And a couple of extraneous notes. I got approached by one of the fellows involved in the Food Pantry; he’s trying to put together a Christmas toy drive, and wanted to know if Deathgrass could put on a toys-instead-of-food benefit concert. I bet we could. And I’ve been tapped to round up and organize the entertainment for next year’s Relay for Life, a 24-hour anti-cancer run; I think the assumption was that I know a lot of musicians (I mentioned that to somebody, and they told me that yes, I do know a lot of musicians). Music Thursday night at the Tsunami Grill, and Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook Library, I think. Friday? I don’t know. My time might be better used getting some recording done. And I still want to finish the “Twenty-Four Seven” video. Joe

I think this works. We'll see. Features Charlie Wooldridge from Deathgrass on lead guitar, "Chippewa Bob" Lichner on the baritone saw; I'm playing the Electric Banjo. Joe

The Hoffman Center crowd really liked “Pole Dancing for Jesus”; I think it got the best applause all evening. Don’t know how to translate that into an income, but I’m definitely getting known. Met another writer who was also performing, and encouraged him to come to the Sunday night jam at the Rapture Room. Went to play with the Friday Night Group at City Hall but there weren’t many performers there, or much audience, either; Elsie (accordion) and I were about the only ones who could play lead. I had heard from a couple former regulars (who weren’t there, and may not be back) that they, too, had gotten frustrated by the couple of people who can’t keep time, can’t play in tune and don’t seem to be learning—but keep coming to play. I understand. I expect I have a higher frustration level than most folks, having been a city manager, but I haven’t gone much lately myself. I don’t run the show so I can’t change anything. All I can do is not be there. No offense to the non-frustrating folks there—but I want to be playing music on Friday nights and would rather be doing it somewhere more productive. Without a high level of expertise in the group, I had to stick to the familiar, so the crowd (using the term loosely) got Leon Payne’s “Lost Highway,” “Pole Dancing for Jesus,” “Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues” (because somebody requested it) and Hank Williams’ “You Win Again” (the only Hank song I can actually sing). One out-of-town fellow in the audience asked me how long I’d been playing guitar; when I told him 30-odd years, he nodded, and said “I figured—you sound just like those old guys.” I think it was a compliment. (He was a Hank Williams fan.) Since the Train Set gig was cancelled, I went to play music at the library (good crew of musicians there, all of whom used to play on Fridays at City Hall), and they got “One: I Love You,” “In the Shadows I’ll Be Watching You,” “Leavin’ It to Beaver” (which I almost never play because it’s so long) and “Naked Space Hamsters in Love,” along with “Pole Dancing” (I was trying to practice that one a lot). At the Arts Center’s reception for the Shoe Project, there seemed to be a bunch of people crowded around my piece, which plays Donna Devine’s “Sometimes She Could Scream.” Hopefully, they were listening—and hopefully they liked it. What’s next? I really don’t have anything on the horizon, so I need to make something happen. There’s some stuff to finish, of course: two videos, one of which I have control over and one not, and one more song contest to enter. It would be good to schedule another Failed Economy Show benefit for the Food Pantry—maybe this one could be timed for around Thanksgiving. And I should hit up some of the venues around Manzanita, Nehalem and Wheeler that book solo-or-duo acoustic acts, and see if they’d be interested in me. Before the memory of the Hoffman Center Talent Show fades completely from folks’ consciousness. And sad news: the Oyster Shooters, one of this area’s most famous rock bands (and arguably the best), have broken up after ten years in business. That leaves, I think, a huge void in the local music scene. Could Deathgrass fill it? Doubtful—it’s a different style of music—but there may be a few opportunities, for us and for others. There is a Depression-driven demand for local live music that seems to be getting bigger. Joe

Are things getting back to normal? I hope so. (Then again, one is tempted to paraphrase Bill Clinton: “Define ‘normal’.”) Lazz has only a couple more accomplishments to learn before he can be a Real Computer, I’m finally getting some work done on the house, and every single one of the job applications outstanding is to be a city manager somewhere where I’m not only qualified, but someone knows me. (Of course, the “someone knows me” isn’t necessarily a good thing.) Two—ultimately three—new ones to apply for, too, with the same conditions (or limitations). A video thought, with respect to “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” We start with one scantily-clad pole dancer, then two, then four, and so on. Chorus is sung by a few pewsful of a “congregation,” in their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ garb, with open hymnals. At (or somewhere in) the second verse, we switch—it’s the congregants acrobatting on the poles, and the chorus being sung by the scantily-clad pole dancers, in the pews with the hymnals. I can’t take credit for the idea—‘twasn’t mine—but it sure would be fun to do. Actually, the go-to-meetin’ folks wouldn’t be hard to enlist—I think absolutely everybody likes this song. Finding the pole dancers (and the poles) might be a little problematic. I’ve got a few dance enthusiasts I can talk to locally, though. And I have run across a videographer. He’s young, but from what I’ve seen of his work, he’s very, very good. I’d like to turn him loose on “Born Again Barbie” if he’s interested, and see what he’d do with it. I’d scripted out a sort of stop-motion video a couple of years ago, working within the limitations of my old digital camera (so everything was actually still shots, and I relied on the camera’s zoom feature to create the illusion of movement)—but I wouldn’t want him to pay any attention to it. Allowing creative people to “do their own thing” with your raw material encourages the maximum amount of creativity. I would want to re-record the song. Co-writer Scott Rose had recorded it originally, but I never had a good copy (and he said he’d lost his), and I never had it archived on Soundclick or ReverbNation, so now that “Alice” the ‘puter is dead, the old recording of “Born Again Barbie” is probably gone forever. It’d be good to record it with a real band, too (Deathgrass would be my first choice). I am insistent on doing this for no money, though, so I’m not sure what we’d use for studio facilities. I do know a few folks with home studios, but I don’t know how good they are at what they do. In the Pushing the Envelope Department: Having done an art project that plays music for the Women’s Resource Center, it’d be fun to do another, more ambitious one. CART’M, this region’s combination transfer station/recycling center/thrift store (I think of it as what a dump would be like if it were run by hippies who were really serious about their principles), does a “Trash Art” exhibition every year; could I make something out of thrown-away (or throw-away-able) stuff that would not only play music, but be animated? That portable CD player I was going to use for my Shoe Project art piece never would play CDs, but its little motor does spin—and little motors like that can make things move. An animated robotic Elvis, perhaps, gyrating its hips as it sings “Test Tube Baby”? That’s another song it’d be nice to re-record—I really like how Deathgrass does it—but I do have the demo that was done in Nashville in 2007 at the Pineyfest songwriters conference. In a pinch, that’d work. Even has a saxophone in the mix. Mercenary thought. (What? Aren’t we really doing all this stuff just because it’s fun and out of the kindness of my heart? Sure.) What I may be accomplishing with some of this stuff is expanding public awareness of my existence—exposing people in a bigger variety of “venues” to the music through forms they’re used to (even if they’re not what I’m used to). So we have a piece of artwork with shoes that plays a song, and—maybe—a robotic Elvis doing the same sort of thing. In addition to the playing music in all sorts of different places, like with the rockers at the Tsunami Grill and at the Talent Show in Manzanita. Part of that trying to become a household word. (“Toilet paper” is a household word. I haven’t even got that far yet.) Joe

Oh, fun stuff… Had to cancel the Deathgrass performance for October 1, after getting word drummer Chris wasn’t going to be available either. I had substitutions for John (bass) and Doc (blues harp), but this was just getting too difficult. I’m expecting the “Golden Spike” people will be able to get along without us—they have a pretty full agenda. Should be impressive even without us—and despite the rain the National Weather Service is predicting for that day. It is just as well; that leaves me two nights free this week and I could use them. I’ll play music Friday (didn’t do squat Tuesday). Couple of new jobs to apply for, and I still need to get the important files either extracted from or usable from Alice’s hard drive. Most of the photos for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video are there—and some of them aren’t easily replaceable. However, there’s something wrong with Alice’s old hard drive, and I may need professional help to get those files off. I’m not looking forward to it. As a fallback, I have started re-taking the photos I can, just in case. The work-around for Lazarus’ inability to burn CDs is the other laptop (I inherited two), a much smaller (and a year newer) Hewlett-Packard. It will burn CDs—maybe DVDs, too—without problems. So I simply transfer files. The H-P still has Windows Vista (uck) but I’m not going to use it for any recording or graphic-design work at this point, so it doesn’t matter. Step by agonizing step, Lazz is being taught how to do all my stuff. We now have sound, and a remote mouse, and Internet, and can run the Tascam, scanner and printer, and both digital cameras; haven’t managed to hook up a remote keyboard, but I need to—that’ll take care of the problem of Lazz missing 3 keys, which really slows down the typing. Bottom line is of the four (four?) computers currently upstairs in the bedroom, I can probably safely ship two off to the garage. Finally. And then there’s music. I have really accomplished very little lately: no new songs since “Blue Krishna,” and no musications, either (though I still need to record Ahna Ortiz’ “Nomad Man from Nowhere”), and Concert Season is basically done for this year. Two videos in progress, “Blue Krishna” (which is fan-generated) and “Twenty-Four Seven” (which will be a “French style” slide show), but neither one’s done. I entered the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, and that one for the fishermen’s magazine over in England; I’m not expecting any more results than I usually get from job applications, of course, but both were contests I felt comfortable I could win. I still have the entries to send off to the Goodnight Kiss Music Contest (I think I’ll send them “Dead Things in the Shower” off the Deathgrass album and—since they’re also accepting videos—the video of “50 Ways to Cure the Depression,” if I can get it off Alice’s hard drive). Jane and I auditioned for the talent show in Manzanita, and it sounds like we’re on the agenda. The show is Saturday night, and they’ll get “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” (And yes, that’s another one that would make a great music video.) Joe

“Alice” the ‘puter is dead. I don’t know if ‘twas I that killed her, or whether her motherboard just finally reached the end of its useful life, but she finally gave up the ghost this week. I haven’t quite been ‘puterless; there is “Lazarus,” daughter’s old laptop which got resurrected from the dead and equipped with Windows XP. Lazz does have 2 gigabytes of RAM, but needs all my old software installed to be useful, and that could take a while. His biggest “issue” is he can’t burn CDs—and that’s apparently a structural defect: user groups have apparently been complaining about that particular model of Dell laptop for years, and specifically about that particular problem. The fancy DVD/CD-rewritable drives never did work. There are work-arounds, of course—one thing I am good at is work-arounds—but it is a time-consuming pain. Got a replacement computer that’s presently housing Alice’s old hard drive, but it’s got a few problems of its own, that might or might not be related to housing Alice’s brain along with its own (yes, it’s The Machine With Two Brains); it’s too early to tell. It is appallingly slow, and loses track of things, and it shouldn‘t do either one. I have more tests to run. If that computer can be made to work properly, it could help for a while: it’s even got a “firewire” port so I could hook up the Arts Center’s older video camera. It’s a little slim in the RAM department, but it’s not bad. And I’m not investing money in it. I am trying to avoid investing money in anything. I was going to list the Train Set in this issue of the blog, but I’ll wait; the Lions Club, which is organizing the celebration Saturday—yes, just one week away—has an impressive, if last-minute, schedule of events that may result in Deathgrass not being able to play much at all. I’ve e-mailed them, thanking them for the schedule and asking what they’re up to, and we’ll see. Why is it the free gigs that are always the most trouble? Of course, we’re not perfect, either: both John (bass) and Doc (blues harp) will be out of town October 1, so Jane Dunkin will be lead on fiddle and Wayne Moore, who played bass for 45 Degrees North, has agreed to do bass. I was hoping we’d get two nights’ practice in this coming week, what with two of the band (and half the material) being new. On the plus side, I did get the Shoe Project done, and on time; I had to substitute an electric CD player for the little portable one (which didn’t work, despite the thrift store’s protestations), and that meant re-designing the whole project at the last minute, since the big CD player was not going to fit in a little flower basket. The Women’s Resource Center was excited about having a piece of artwork that played music, and I hope they like the song. It plays “Sometimes She Could Scream” (lyrics by Donna Devine, who lives in The Netherlands, music by me—and it is one of the Tascam recordings that came out decent), which is a slightly different look at “abuse.” It was also a deliberate attempt on my part to demonstrate that country music could be a good vehicle for addressing social issues—something it’s almost never used for. The Shoe Projects—they have something like 75 entries—go on display at the Arts Center October 1 but if I manage to get to their reception it won’t be for long: Jane and I are scheduled to be performing at the Talent Show in Manzanita that night. We’ll be treating the assembled multitude to “The Abomination Two-Step.” Joe

The Rocktoberfest—at least, our part of it—is over. Yes, it was a good show. Played a lot of people’s favorites, and still managed to concentrate mostly on rock music (with some blues and ragtime thrown in, of course). Larry (sax) was great—a saxophone is ideal for rock ‘n’ roll, and I think Larry would like to play more with us. And while Larry said he liked the rock ‘n’ roll songs best—heck, they all do—I thought some of his best leads were on the more “countrified” songs. “The Dog’s Song” and “Angel in Chains” are still the hardest songs for me to sing; I’m hitting the very bottom of my voice register on both. (Of course, that doesn’t matter much with “Angel,” because that’s country death metal; it’s okay for the lyrics to be delivered in a flat monotone. It’d be nice, though, to have a lot of reverb on the voice mike when I do that—for ambience.) And some folks told me afterwards “The Dog’s Song” was their favorite of the ones we did, so I do need to be able to sing it better. Perhaps doing it in a different key would help. For the rest, I could tell people liked Odd Vindstad’s “Simple Questions” (I could see their toes tapping) and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (that one has been popular absolutely everywhere it’s been played)—and of course the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends,” which is a consistent hit. Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” makes ‘em think even while their toes are tapping, which is neat. Sold a CD at the concert, too. Did I mention it rained? (In fact, as this is written, on Day Two of the Rocktoberfest, it is still raining.) It rained pretty good (though the weather was nice and dry while we were setting up). I think this year, every outdoor gig we’ve had has had rain (we’ve been under cover, though, so it didn’t matter that much); when the weather’s been nice, we’ve been playing indoors. Go figure. The plus side of the rain—which started back up midway through our performance—is it drove the folks who’d been walking around outside into the performance tent, where it was dry, and increased our audience substantially. (Some people did brave the rain to come see us, which was real nice. And some folks said they’d even gotten up early to come, which I think may be the height of dedication.) I had hoped we would be a hard act to follow, and we might have been. The band on after us—a quintet of older blues musicians—were tight, and quite good on their instruments, but I think we were more entertaining. Yes, those guys could play really, really loud, and had really long (and interesting) lead breaks, but we had lyrics. People act surprised that all our stuff is original; I know we’re a little odd in that regard, but I see no reason to want to play covers. And as the writer of original music, I’d like to see more performers doing my stuff, and stuff by other unknowns, rather than already-famous stuff by already-famous people. I’m just not sure how to arrange that. Deathgrass is proof, I think, that one can do original material and still have an audience and fans. Next, the Train Set. There’s quite a bit to do for that one (October 1), and it’s occurred to me (finally) that two weeks is not a lot of time. I think we’d better be prepared for bad weather, too. I have been predicting an early fall all year, and I think it’s here. So much for that global warming. At least, I’ll have excuses to play “The Termite Song” and “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails,” both of which talk about the causes of global warming, as audiences huddle and shiver in their winter clothing. Music at the “Rapture Room” tonight; shares of our Rocktoberfest pay to distribute to the band—and the Writers’ Guild is amenable to meeting on a different night (freeing me up Thursday nights to go play music at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler). Joe

I have over 150 photos taken with the “Twenty-Four Seven” video in mind, but I won’t use all of them. I continue to run into “photo opps” that are better than ones I’d taken before—having a camera on hand constantly, and keeping one’s eyes open, is a great habit to get into. With very few exceptions, I have my illustrations for most of the lines in the verses. The chorus is more problematic. The chorus happens four times, and I wanted the photos to be different each time. “Twenty-four seven,” the opening line of the chorus, is one of the hardest to “picturate.” There’s only one 24-hour restaurant in Tillamook, and it doesn’t advertise the fact. (I did find one sign for it, though.) There are other things that are open all night, though: the hospital, the Sheriff’s Office… I’ll go there. “You boggle my mind…” There is a kids’ game called “Boggle,” and I did find a copy in a store. The other three iterations of this line need to be something different, though. Are there signs that boggle the observer, for instance? For “Any which way you slice it,” I have a couple of sales racks of knives and saw blades. A couple of deli signs should fill that out. I know an outfit that sells pizza by the slice, too. No luck at all with “You’re my bottom line.” I wanted to get photos of some accountants’ front doors, but I haven’t found any. (I know they’re around. Probably hiding—accountants aren’t very popular in These Troubled Times.) May have to illustrate this with some outrageous sale signs instead. “The cream in my coffee…” A coffee shop sign. Creamer. And a fridge magnet of a cat drinking coffee. One more, and we’re good. “My moment of truth…” I’d wanted to use entertaining church readerboards, but there aren’t many churches with readerboards around here (and the ones there are aren’t particularly entertaining). Truth may have to take a different (and non-religious) form. “If wishes were horses…” No horses, alas. I can substitute elk, though. And cows. There are lots of cows in Tillamook County. (In fact, one could do a whole video just of cows. I’ll have to try that. I wonder which song I should use?) For “I’d marshal my forces,” I’d originally thought of chess sets—and I might still find one. Got a photograph of a group with shovels posing for a groundbreaking, though, and a painting of a convoy of warships at sea. And there are always cows-in-formation. “And have a field day with you.” No shortage of fields around here (some even without cows), but that wasn’t really what I was after. I want signs. Golf courses, yard sales, perhaps; maybe some of those impromptu anniversary or birthday parties that seem to be rife on the Coast. And I suppose one could always use a field with cows for this. It’s raining, which I hope is a good thing; the weatherpeople were predicting rain in Portland on Saturday, and we’re usually a day ahead of them on the Coast. With luck, the rain will be over for us by the weekend, and we’ll have nice weather for the Deathgrass Rocktoberfest concert. The Mid-Atlantic Song Contest got their entry today—“Dead Things in the Shower.” So I did accomplish something. (Applied for a job, too.) I’ll go play music tonight at the Tsunami in Wheeler—I am still obsessed with strengthening my fingers for the gig. It’ll be a chance to practice some of the rock ‘n’ roll numbers on ‘em—to date, they haven’t heard any of those, and they are all rock musicians, after all. Joe

FIVE DAYS till the Rocktoberfest, and there’s lots to do. The Rap is written (though not practiced), and notices sent out; won’t get to practice until at least Thursday night—just two days before the gig (and it might even be Friday instead). Before then, I must play, play, play. Need strong fingers. Answered a couple of ads on Craigslist (I still check Craigslist), one from a self-described songwriter in Tillamook (I’d like to meet him), and one from a film student in Portland interested in making a music video (I gave him some suggestions—and told him yes, of course he could practice on my stuff). I don’t know if I’ll hear back from either one—people who advertise on Craigslist don’t seem to respond very well. Music at the “Rapture Room” was nice. About four out-of-towners there, I think, and I hope it impressed ‘em when the whole room sang along with “Pole Dancing for Jesus” and “Armadillo on the Interstate.” I think that’s how writers used to get started, back in the days when you didn’t have to be related to somebody famous to get noticed by The Industry. People liked your songs—ideally, bigger and bigger groups of people. Other people performed the songs (I understand that’s happened a couple of times with “Armadillo”). Eventually, a local DJ got the song on the radio, because they were sure people would listen to their show if they did that. (That’s happened to me at least once. And I hope the DJ was right.) All that stuff still happens—it just never gets past the “local DJ” point, in part because everything past that point is controlled by the club that doesn’t want any new members. (One Nashville insider told me my attitude was “curmudgeonly.” However, he also didn’t dispute what I was saying.) There is still the Internet—though the Internet, because it is anarchic, is primarily useful as a promotional medium, not a money-making one. Making money off music, as Madonna once said, is a matter of “butts in seats.” And I still don’t have a lot of those. Transferred Sedona’s pieces of the “Blue Krishna” video to the laptop (yes, it worked), and passed the camera to Kathryn to work with. At this point, the laptop won’t run Windows Movie Maker, though—it says it doesn’t have a sound card (I think it does, and with the new/old operating system, it just doesn’t know it). The laptop also won’t do Internet—though I don’t really care about that, and have a wireless card I can plug in if I want to fix that. “Lazarus” (what else would one call a computer that was brought back from the dead?) does have 1.8 gigabytes of RAM, which is nice, and can burn both CDs and DVDs; it would be good for video work, if I can get the sound working. At this point, if I have to transfer the film footage to “Alice” to work with, I can—but “Alice” still has only 2 gigabytes of free space on her hard drive, even with all my archiving. Photographs are what fills up the hard drive, because of my insistence on having the highest resolution possible—and “Alice” just got loaded with 65 photographs for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video. And I’m nowhere near done. A lot of those were duplicates, as I tried to find the best camera angles, and I won’t use all of the photos I shot, anyway. (I’ll delete the unused ones later, though I hate to.) Among the hardest shots to find: the horses (or rather signs advertising horses), the “moment of truth” (I wanted to use church readerboards, but I’d like to find entertaining ones), and the “24/7” (there’s only one restaurant in Tillamook that’s open all night, and they apparently don’t advertise it). It’s possible “Justin” the new computer’s no-workee problem may be just a failed on/off switch (“It is a Dell, after all,” I was told). It still may cost a couple of hundred dollars to find out. Elsewhere, I have the Linda Adams interview to do—I think I’ll discuss the inspirational aspects of roadkill. And I got Scott Garriott’s album in the mail. Yay! Joe

It’s the tenth anniversary of September 11, and the airwaves and cyberspace are full of 9/11 songs. I don’t have one. I tend to leave the serious stuff up to others, and this is no exception. I wasn’t directly involved, and don’t know anyone who was. As a city manager, I noticed our firefighters were the most affected: these are folks who lay their lives on the line regularly, and 9/11 was and is a reminder you don’t always get that life back. And the terrorist attacks? It’s a little like losing a leg, I think: no, your life is not over, but you are going to do things a little differently from now on (though hopefully not a lot differently). Politically, I saw the terrorist attacks used as an excuse to limit people’s freedom by people who were primarily interested in restricting people’s freedom, and I like to think if I had been directly involved, I’d still feel the same way. Saw a few videos of the old rock ‘n’ roll song “Signs,” with slide shows of (what else?) signs—at times illustrative, at others just funny. A lot of the photos were obviously off the Internet: online photos tend to be poor quality, very fuzzy and “pixillated” if you try to change the resolution. I think that’s because those photos had to be slimmed down to very small file sizes in order to get posted in the first place. I decided some time back not to use any photos from the Internet in any music video. I either take the photos myself, or have someone e-mail me directly photos they took—and in the latter case, I tell them to make sure they’re high resolution (my camera is always set to maximum resolution). I figure that’s one of the trade-offs for high quality. Took a bunch more photos for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video. I expect I can get most of what I need in the immediate local area, but there are a few shots I need that may entail my traveling as far afield as Lincoln City or Seaside (about an hour north and south). Found a new contest to enter: Angler’s Mail, a British fishing magazine, was soliciting fishing songs, and one of the themes they were looking for was conservation. So they got “Dead Fishes,” the Elizabethan bluegrass song about a child’s view of pollution. I’m not expecting to win, though it is the sort of contest I like—small market, not much in prizes (they’re giving away a guitar), one judge (who, importantly, does not appear to be from the recording industry). I’m primarily interested in getting a little attention for my stuff, and also for the Coventry Songwriters (I mentioned they were the people who’d told me about the contest). That, the Goodnight Kiss Music contest, and the Songwriters Association of Washington (D.C.) contest, will take care of my contest-entering for the year, I think. I didn’t search any of these contests out randomly; the D.C. and Angler’s Mail contests I heard about from other writers, and I knew about the Goodnight Kiss contest because I’m on the publisher’s mailing list (and I actually wrote one of the press releases for the thing). I doubt any of that gives me an edge as a contestant, but it does make me more comfortable about entering. The Rocktoberfest is just one week away, and I need to strengthen my fingers, again. I should play music every chance I can during the next week. Sunday is the jam session at the “Rapture Room” in Nehalem; Monday’s out because of the Arts Center board meeting, but there’s music up north on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and I should go. Thursday and maybe Friday the band will practice—it’ll be our only chance before the gig. I still have the posters to make for the Rocktoberfest gig, and notices to send out to the “joelist.” I have all the pieces, too, for the Shoes Project. I found a good pair of women’s dress shoes at a thrift store, a CD player at another, and I have the headphones to cut apart for the speakers that I’ll bury in the soles of the shoes. I need to outfit “Alice” with her new CD-rewritable drive (I’ve been avoiding doing that)—I need that to make entry CDs for the other contests, and Train Set CDs for the band. Joe

10 songs definite for the Train Set, thus far (and I haven’t gone through everything yet). They fall into the following categories: GOSPEL: Life’s Railway to Heaven (trad.)—fast Gospel (starts slow) Glory Train (Katherine Fear)—fast Gospel NOSTALGIA: Tillamook RaIlroad Blues—deliberate blues HISTORICAL: Wreck of the Old 97 (trad.)—fast bluegrass Steamboat Bill (Shields & Leighton)—1910 rock ‘n’ roll ODDITIES: Underground (Scott Garriott)—mod. fast folk, with railroad beat California Zephyr (Christopher Smith)—fast ragtime The Lightning Express (trad.)—fast bluegrass (starts slow) The Last Saskatchewan Pirate (trad.)—fast folk Blue Yodel No. 2 (Jimmie Rodgers)—rock ‘n’ roll It’s exciting to have permission to do a Scott Garriott song. I really like his music—compelling melodies with very strange lyrics. (And “Underground” has a nice train rhythm. The recording on YouTube has a fiddle lead, too.) I was told Scott’s new album, Dragon in the Doorway, has me playing lead guitar on one of the songs (“Mattress and the Snake Pit”). I remember recording the lead, but I never have heard the final product. I’m getting a copy of the album. I may well already have the couple more train songs I need to make up an hour’s set. Nonetheless, I assigned the Writers’ Guild “homework” to come up with train songs (actually train lyrics, that I can musicate—it’s mostly poets that have been coming to the meetings), with two caveats in mind: (1) With “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” in mind, ask what you can say about trains that’s different. Or (2) if you’re going to be nostalgic, answer the question why we’re nostalgic about trains. I’ll e-mail the “homework” assignment to those who weren’t there, and we’ll see what develops. Bottom line for them all is if they come up with something that’s good, and we can use it, it’s going to get performed by a very good (and quite popular) band, and the writers will be able to be there and hear it. And that, if it happens, will encourage the writers to do more. “Hey, they’re playing my song!” is a powerful incentive. A bunch of the Train Set songs need to be recorded. I have “Tillamook Railroad Blues” (off the album), and a draft cut of “Steamboat Bill” done for last year’s Bay City centennial, and there might be a video of our “band scramble” band performing “Wreck of the Old 97” at the Jews Harp Festival that I can maybe extract the audio from. The rest I’ll have to record. I did get recordings of everybody’s submissions, but I’ll have to transpose the ones I can sing into a key I can sing them in. I figured out I can do the music video of “Twenty-Four Seven” with (mostly) photos of SIGNS. It’ll be reminiscent of Dylan’s early music video of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” except that mine will be photos, not film, and they’ll be snapshots of real signs. (Mine will be in color, too.) The cliches (I prefer to think of them as “cultural shorthand”) are everywhere. I began snapping photos for the video yesterday; might take several days to get ‘em all. I think I need around 65 photos. A few may be hard to get—like finding a “High Water” sign to photograph in the middle of Drought Season. (I do know a public works superintendent, though. Wonder if he has one of those signs stashed away somewhere?) Supposed to be some passing-through bluegrass musicians coming to the “Rapture Room” jam session Sunday night. Could be fun. Joe

Still going through train songs… Thoughts below are not complete (and neither is the list—I haven’t digested or tried to play everything yet). There seems to be a paucity of themes running through train songs, and I’m not sure why. There are a lot of Gospel songs, of the “bound for glory” genre, and most of them are quite good. Trains are a good religious metaphor: a train almost defines “straight and narrow,” has a definite destination, and is rather unstoppable once it gets going. I probably wouldn’t want to do more’n two or three, though, because I don’t want our Train Set to sound like it was all Gospel songs. Katherine Fear’s “Glory Train” is an ideal example of the genre—and neat because the verses have an unexpected chord progression. One of the best-written Gospel train songs I know is actually public domain—“Life’s Railway to Heaven.” (It was copyrighted by the patent-medicine-salesman-turned-revivalist-preacher who stole the song from a black church, but he did that in 1918, and the copyright’s run out.) It’s a long song, though; five verses (counting the one I wrote for the Dodson Drifters) of 8 lines each, and five choruses (and you have to have one or two lead breaks). But I can sing it. There are the “history” songs, mostly about train wrecks (and most of those are old songs, because train wrecks don’t happen much any more); we’ll do one, “Wreck of the Old 97” (with the verse Johnny Cash added, and the one I changed)—and we’ll also do the 1910 song that prompted it, “Steamboat Bill” (in which, after Bill’s boat explodes, his widow tells the kids, “Next time, we’re marryin’ a railroad man”). My “Tillamook Railroad Blues” is nostalgia—a quasi-sad snapshot of the “train on life support.” There is some nostalgia these days about the end of railroading, but it doesn’t seem to take a lot of different forms. There are perhaps opportunities there that aren’t being taken advantage of: yes, we’re sad to see it all go—but why? I’m not sure even “Tillamook Railroad Blues” answers that question. Something (or someone) should. There are the “oddities.” (I like oddities.) Christopher Smith’s “California Zephyr” is about a baby being born on a train (supposedly a true story), delivered in a nice ragtime style. ”The Lightning Express” (an old bluegrass traditional), about a kid traveling to see his dying mother—and getting kicked off the train because he doesn’t have the fare—was a Dodson Drifters staple; delivered Grateful Dead style, it’s one of the happiest-sounding songs about death I’ve ever run across. Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 2 (T for Texas)” is a lost-love blues, with some great punch lines; it works real well as rock ‘n’ roll. A real odd one I ran across—it’s British, and apparently public domain—is something called (I think) “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate.” Yes, if you’re going to embark on a career as a pirate in the board-flat wheat fields of Saskatchewan, you’re going to be “sailing” a train, not a boat, and the “gold” you’re going to be stealing is going to be some of those “amber waves of grain.” It’s cute. The moral—never expressed outright, of course—is that yes, you can follow your dreams, but be prepared to make compromises. I haven’t found sheet music (or a recording) for this one; I might have to invent something myself. What else can you do with trains? “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” suggests the field is really wide open—but I don’t see many people out in the field. Stan Good sent me lyrics (which I’m not sure I can musicate) about a relationship “headed for a train wreck”; the economy, or what’s left of it, appears headed for one, too. A lot of people are upset about the “gravy train,” also—though there’s a lot of disagreement about who’s on it. And there was that old urban legend, popularized by Huddie Ledbetter, that if you stood in the light of an oncoming train at midnight, you could get out of jail. Is that why so many people are stuck in prison? The train doesn’t come by any more? Writers’ Guild Thursday night; might practice Friday with Larry and Charlie for the Rocktoberfest gig—can’t get the whole band together until just a couple of nights before the gig. And the Train Set to figure out. Joe

One of the things I like about playing music with diverse groups of people is you get interesting ideas. Take “Italian ragtime.” I don’t know who at the Rapture Room suggested it, but somebody did. Turns out there is such a thing. (Thanks, Google.) Not much of one, because ragtime was a very short-lived genre, and very specifically American (and black American to boot), though ragtime did enjoy a momentary worldwide popularity—there’s some Czech ragtime, even Indonesian ragtime. And yes, Italian ragtime. I ran across two Italian ragtime tunes, one by an American composer, Rev. Gary Davis, and one by an Italian composer. It’s actually fairly simple stuff, and I could play it on the guitar with a little practice. Ragtime isn’t about what you play so much as how it’s played. My favorite definition, among those I found, said that ragtime was an attempt to play African-American banjo music on the piano. (That one makes sense—to me, anyway.) Ragtime music doesn’t generally have words, of course—but anything I write has to have words. Words is what I do. I suppose for Italian ragtime, they’d have to be in Italian (“Alice” the ‘puter does have a translator program). Could make it a cowboy song (of the “spaghetti Western” variety, of course). Add that to the list of things to do. The first thing I am going to finish is cleaning out the garage. After that I will worry about other things. Michael and Sedona have the old digital camera, with a freshly-scrubbed brain and new batteries; they’ll call or e-mail when they’re done with it, and I’ll download their footage, wipe the brain again, and pass the camera on to someone else. The final product of this experiment—a music video of “Blue Krishna”—should be interesting. Sent out a few politically charged Labor Day messages; to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, this Labor Day a lot of people didn’t have anything to labor at. The song that got the most attention? “50 Ways to Cure the Depression”—I think because it was on video, and the others weren’t. Like Len Amsterdam said, “Video is the new audio.” That’s a reminder that I should turn all of my music that I can into video—not because there’s any money in it (I have not seen any for me, at least), but because it’s an attention-getting tactic. If I want people to notice my stuff, I have to reach them through the medium they’re noticing in. I have the video of “Blue Krishna” underway; I’ll see what I can do about “The Dog’s Song” this coming week (I do have a good recording of that, off the Deathgrass album). One that can be done “French style” (fast-moving slide show with text overlays) is “Twenty-Four Seven,” the all-cliches waltz. The soundtrack for that one isn’t bad, even though it was done on the Tascam. As with the “50 Ways” video, I’ll script out what photos I need, and snap them as the opportunities present themselves. Despite being the same “French style,” it will be different—I am insistent on each video being different, just like I want each song to be different. Other stuff to do: the laptop to set up for video work; Ahna’s song to record; footage to film for the video class (I am really behind); the Train Set to organize; the garage studio to expand; the “My Baby’s On That Train” song to work on; more of Alice’s hard drive to free up (she’s only 95% full now). And the contests to enter. Don’t know about that local bluegrass band—I haven’t heard anything more. I did respond to ads on Craigslist from a couple of country vocalists (one in Texas, and one about 60 miles from where I live) looking for material—and they’ve responded back. Might be an opportunity there. Joe

http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=11015399 “Free-Range Person,” off the Deathgrass album. It’s Labor Day weekend, and (to paraphrase Woody Guthrie) a lot of folks don’t got no jobs to labor at. I suppose at the Library (today) and the “Rapture Room” (tomorrow), I should concentrate on Failed Economy songs, in honor of Labor Day. I do know rather a lot of them. That rumored bluegrass band will reportedly have banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bass, and guitar (I’d be the guitar, they tell me—and I can play bluegrass guitar). I don’t know what they have in mind to perform; a lot of my stuff lends itself easily to bluegrass, but bluegrass musicians tend to be thoroughgoing traditionalists. (And traditionals—public-domain songs, in other words—are okay, too. I just think it’s important to avoid covers when you’re being paid. There are copyright issues, even if no one else pays attention to them—and as a writer, I’m kinda insistent on paying attention on principle.) As far as my availability for practice, I reminded them that when you’re unemployed, every day is Friday. Just call. As with the job front, I will not hold my breath. What happens, happens. In the meantime, I have stuff to do. “Alice” needs that replacement CD-rewritable drive installed; after that, I can make the CDs to send to the Goodnight Kiss Music and Mid-Atlantic song contests. I need to burn a CD of “The Dog’s Song” for a local librarian who’s reportedly got a hyperactive kitten that could star in that music video. (Got to catch them kittens while they’re young. Aslan and Hansolo at home are constant reminders that kittens get big real fast.) And I’ve got a ton of files to archive to free up hard drive space on “Alice.” I have “Nomad Man from Nowhere” (Ahna Ortiz’ song) to record; I’ll dump the product to the refurbished laptop, to see if my vision of mobile recording is really going to be as simple as I thought. (The way things have gone, I no longer expect anything to be simple.) A thought: the laptop is only four years old. Does that mean it can burn CDs, too? I’ll approach folks Sunday night at the “Rapture Room” about shooting footage for the video of “Blue Krishna.” Potentially, I’ve got three digital cameras to work with, but I might just use one for simplicity’s sake. If everybody’s local, I can pick up and dump video and transfer the camera fairly easily. In fact, if I can connect the camera to the laptop (I have the software), I could do camera transfers on a while-you-wait basis. It is time to start assembling the Train Set. I’m waiting on songs from one more writer, but he’s been having trouble sending them—I don’t know if I’ll get them. Don’t know if I have enough usable material, that I can both play and sing, to fill an hour’s gig. Have to see. (And following that, I have all those songs to record, so they’re in the key and arrangement we’ll use for the gig.) For the Musical Shoes, I’ve got a set of headphones to dismantle, and a pair of shoes to tear into, too (the ear speakers will go in the soles), and a memory card to find for the 50-cent *.mp3 player (which I hope works—I don’t know that yet). Can I use the laptop to program the card? If not, maybe one of the Macs at the Arts Center can do it. There are work-arounds for almost everything—some of them just aren’t easy. In the course of cleaning the garage (which job is not finished), I have figured out how to about double the size of the 5x7 studio—and still (maybe) leave room to park a car (not that anyone would ever use a garage for that). My excuse for doing the expansion would be that I need to move my old watermaster’s desk (vintage 1906, rescued from the City of Vale) out to the garage, and I need somewhere to put it, and it might as well be used as a desk. And it won’t fit in the studio as presently constituted. Expanding the studio is a tad ambitious project, but I do have the materials on hand. Have to finish cleaning the garage first, though, so I have room to move things around. Joe

Well, “Justin” the new computer may not have been such a good deal after all. I believe his power supply has quit now, and that’s a fairly spendy item to replace (and I can’t just swap out one from another computer, because everything in “Justin” is New And Different). I did isolate the keyboard-don’t-work problem: it appears to be a defect in the BIOS (though how it happened, I have no idea). They have fixes for that (which suggests the problem occurs frequently with Dell computers), and I downloaded them—for what it’s worth. Not much I can do with it now. So “Alice” is back. (Say hi to everybody, Alice.) I will install a replacement CD-rewritable drive, archive a whole bunch of files off the 99.9% full hard drive, and keep her alive a little longer. And “Justin”? He’ll sit in a corner until I can afford to take him to an out-of-town tech—which could be a while. I’ll need a job first. Biggest frustration is I feel I’ve wasted my time (not to mention a little money) these past several days—and I consider wasting my time an unforgivable sin. It’s especially unforgivable when I do it to myself. On the positive side, the laptop has had its brain wiped and Windows XP installed (no more Windows Vista) so we can start with a clean (and usable) slate. (And no, I didn’t do that myself—I had it done by someone else.) I want to use the laptop for (among other things) mobile recording; it doesn’t need to do anything fancy, just recognize the Tascam as a portable hard drive. (Doesn’t even have to do Internet.) This will overcome the Tascam’s biggest limitation—the digital-camera chip “brain” that can hold only one song at a time. I can record remotely on the Tascam, mix the product on the Tascam, and then dump it immediately to the laptop—and then wipe the Tascam’s little chip-brain and do it again immediately, instead of waiting until I get back home. Next time I go to southern Oregon, I could accomplish a lot of stuff. No gigs this weekend (and it’s Labor Day weekend—I shouldn’t let that happen again). I got to go to the Tsunami jam Thursday night and play lead, and I’ll play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, too, and wear my Deathgrass T-shirt and remind people that I am in a band, and both I (solo) and we (band) are interested in gigs. There are rumors that a local bluegrass band might be starting up, and I’ve encouraged that; I don’t know if they’re interested in me being part of that, but it’d be nice. I sent a couple more promotional CDs off (one to a concert organizer, one to a radio station in southern Oregon). I’ve still got Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song to record, and it’s time to move “StuartLittle” out to the garage studio, too (and clean the studio), and see if he can do wireless Internet from there. I keep coming up with snippets for the new train song (tentative title “My Baby’s On That Train”), and we’ll see if something jells in time to be used in the Train Set. I’ve got The Shoes That Play Music (specifically, Donna Devine’s “Sometimes She Could Scream”) to build for the Women’s Resource Center’s art show, too. I did find an *.mp3 player at a thrift store (50 cents); it needs a digital-camera chip (one of the older, larger ones, it appears), and if I can’t get that locally, it’ll have to wait for the next trip to Portland, whenever that is. For the speakers, I have a broken set of headphones I can cannibalize. And the shoes themselves I’ll get from the garage (another reason to clean the garage). Entry forms have been posted for the Goodnight Kiss Music contest, so I’ve downloaded mine. I think I’ll send “Dead Things in the Shower” if co-writer Bobbie Gallup okays it. I’ll need the new CD-rewritable drive installed to copy it. For now, though, it’s off to the garage to work. Say goodnight, Alice. Joe