MAYBE...

First performance in a while (hey, it was just a week, but I’ve gotten spoiled) was last night at the Wild Goose Tavern—my chance to practice on the drunks. They got “Milepost 43,” “Armadillo on the Interstate,” “Cuddle in the Darkness,” and (because the moderator asked for an encore) “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas.” I’m not sure how well they liked the “Cuddle” song; as I told one fellow outside, it was supposed to make the chicks line up. If it didn’t, then it wasn’t doing its job. The crowd did like the other three, and I sold one CD and got a promise to buy another.

Based on their reaction, “Milepost 43” is probably a candidate for the next CD. I’ll try it out next on a less inebriated crowd and see if I get the same response. There actually is a milepost 43 on the freeway near here, and I took a photo of it. With underwear.

Elsewhere in Promotion Land:

(1) The area big-city newspaper, the Medford Mail-Tribune, wants to do a story on my music. (I’d given the reporter who covers this town a CD.)

(2) Another song—“Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?”—got covered, this time by The Fintons, a husb&wife duo that play live. Playing live is where the exposure’s at, I think.

(3) Mike Dunbar, who led the Pineyfest Demo Derby sessions, offered to re-do my vocals next time I come to Nashville (which might be in January or so, if there’s another Demo Derby scheduled). That was after a couple folks said I sounded better playing it live on stage. Frankly, I think the recording is great—but there’s no denying I do a better job on stage. I’d really like to find a girl singer willing to do it; the song (my opinion) is made for a female voice. What I don’t know is whether there’s anyone willing to risk their reputation on performing it.

(4) The songwriters’ association folks keep telling me about upcoming showcases, wanting to make sure I’m there. That’s a good thing, I think. It may mean I’m developing a reputation as a writer. I noticed I got the attention of two poets at the Wild Goose Sunday night (and one of them is a really good poet—I’d told him before that some of his works would sound good set to music).

And then there’s the studio. I checked out the guy’s Website, which is still in its infancy; he doesn’t have a lot of clients (but one of them is a formerly famous band). If he knows what he’s doing—which I’ll find out—this could be good: somebody who’s “on the make” is likely to give you more promotion than somebody that already has a lot of work.

One pushing-the-envelope thing I want to do, though, is record the next CD Patsy Cline style (live with the band), just like the last one. Studio Dude knows how it works (we talked about it), but I’m not sure he’s ever done it. (The same was true of the fellow at Listen Studios in La Grande 2 years ago. But he managed to do it just fine.)

Still working on the band…

Joe

THE LATEST...

Met a fellow today who owns one of the area recording studios (it does help to work at City Hall—you run into everybody sooner or later). He hasn’t recorded any local country musicians, but said he’d done stuff for a Name Act that was country. I think we can do a deal. We traded URLs of our Websites, and I said I’d get him a copy of the CD. (I don’t keep those at work.)

Still looking for a band. I’ve got one fellow who can play a good blues lead guitar, another who can do rock ‘n’ roll leads like Jerry Garcia, and a fellow who can play just about anything (I’d want to use him for fiddle, mandolin, and/or standup bass—he’s got all of those), and another who can play blues harp. That’s actually probably enough to do an album with—but they mostly don’t know each other. I’ll have to introduce them. (And congas. I know a guy who plays congas. I ought to be able to fit that in somehow.)

This is a neat area to live in—I really could play music just about every night, but I have to pick and choose where I go because of all the evening meetings in the course of my job. This week, I got to do Monday night with the Southern Oregon Songwriters, but avoided Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights; next week, I think I can do Sunday and Tuesday, but will miss Wednesday.

Sunday night I kind of look forward to—it’s playing for the drunks, and they’re an interesting experiment in attention-getting. I did well last time (3 weeks ago, that was); I gave ‘em “Eatin’ Cornflakes fcrom a Hubcap Blues,” “The Termite Song” (dutifully announced as my global warming song), and “Naked Space Hamsters in Love.” And it definitely got their attention. Next time, I think, I want to try “St. Paddy,” “Dead Things in the Shower,” and “Armadillo on the Interstate.” I want to build them up to being able to play “Cuddle in the Darkness” as the closing song of a set and see if the chicks really do line up.

Joe

BACK FROM NASHVILLE...

Fun trip, except for the plane rides. The plane rides were enough to sour one permanently on the idea of commercial air travel; being marooned overnight in San Francisco (because United Air Lines abruptly cancelled the last leg of my flight) and having to pay for my own hotel room (because United decided my “discomfort level” wasn’t high enough to warrant them doing it) is not an experience I’d care to repeat.

Six demos—one song all mine, the other 5 co-writes—done by Mike Dunbar and a team of consummate professionals, for the most part in one take in one afternoon. I did notice all the guys are getting up in years; I don’t think people aspire to be session men any more. When I was a kid, one of the highest careers one could aspire to in music was to be a session player, and these guys are proof why. They’re very, very good. The product is “radio ready,” and I (and several others) have approached Mike about seeing whether our tracks could be put on CDs that are offered for sale. It would entail paying the session guys more money under Musicians’ Union rules—we just don’t know how much more.

And I got to perform at Lyrix, the downtown club where the Pineyfest sessions were held: twice during Pineyfest, and once for Just Plain Folks, who had one of their “roadtrips” there the last night I was in Nashville. The Pineyfest crowd got “Dead Things in the Shower” (the song I co-wrote with Bobbie Gallup) and “The Termite Song” the first night, and “Armadillo on the Interstate” and “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” the second; the JPF folks got “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” and “The Abomination Two-Step.”

Reactions were predictably good. I was told by one performing songwriter that Nashville crowds don’t usually act like that (I had ‘em singing along with the dead dog song), and that I did really well; of course, most of the folks in MY “Nashville crowd” were other songwriters from out of town. I think I did impress Barbara Cloyd, the Nashville writer who was running the sound system at Lyrix, and I don’t think Barbara impresses easily (or much). Barbara is a gatekeeper, one of those people who decides what gets heard (and therefore published and recorded) in Nashville, and a lot of her work is telling aspiring writers like me we’re not good enough. I didn’t bother to ask. I probably did get across that what I write plays as well in Nashville as it does anywhere else. The follow-up question is what I can do with that. I don’t know.

Stay tuned.

Joe