MID-YEAR REALITY CHECK...

I saw the suggestion on one of the writers’ Websites I subscribe to that folks should check their 2008 goals and see how well they’re doing. It is a good idea. We are halfway through the year now, and a reality check is definitely in order. (Had to check the original blog to see what was on the list.) Here’s where we’re at:

RECORD THE NEW CD. 8 of 13 songs recorded thus far. Remaining five were going to be done in July, but it may be later. Having CDs to sell by Christmas is still possible.
PUBLISHING COMPANY. Have the information, I think—just waiting on the money to file the papers. Need this, because Skip wants me to be his publisher for the song of his that’ll be on the CD.

WORK WITH A PERFORMING BAND. I did that with Screamin’ Gulch in Medford, but it ended when I moved. I also assembled an impromptu band of good musicians available to do gigs, and used them. Depending on where I’m living, I may have to repeat it all over again.

PERFORM AT “MOOGRASS,” FOSSIL, GRASSROOTS, & NESKOWIN HARVEST FESTIVAL. Moograss was cancelled; Fossil and Grassroots are out because of gas costs. Neskowin is not until fall. I do have two performances in southern Oregon (Central Point) in August.

ATTEND PINEYFEST. Pineyfest was cancelled this year, too (I couldn’t afford to go to Nashville anyway). Maybe next year.

ENTER TWO SONG CONTESTS. I did American Idol and the “Star of Stars” thing in Medford. I didn’t win either one, and I would like to win one, so I may enter more if I can afford it.

CD RELEASE PARTY. Can’t happen until the CDs are done. Southern Oregon would be the perfect place to do this; could couple it with a concert, and a pile of publicity.

This year’s goals were all about promotion, and not about writing; I have kept up some writing goals, however, from last year:

AN AVERAGE OF ONE GOOD SONG A MONTH. I haven’t pushed it, but it has worked out that way. I have been concerned more about QUALITY than quantity—but nearly all of the songs have been “keepers,” and that’s a pretty good track record. About the time the new CD comes out, I may have enough songs for the next one. I like working like that.

AN ALBUM’S WORTH OF CO-WRITES. Three more in the last few months, two with Beth Williams (“Syllables for Sale” and “Bad Sock, Good Sock”) and one with Rev. Skip Johnson, “Tune the Strings of My Soul.” That makes 12 (nine different collaborators), but it’s not an album because there’s no common theme—the songs run the gamut from deeply religious (“Tune the Strings of My Soul”) to outright R-rated (“Sheep Are Real Good, Too”). Maybe the best I can hope for is to turn them all into decent demos the authors can shop around.

And in the things-I-didn’t-count-on category, I have a VIDEO camera (which I still don’t know how to use), and some advice on putting together a WEBSITE—both probably necessities for a writer-musician in the Modern World.

So are we on track? Maybe. It has definitely helped to be unemployed, because it’s given me more time (if less money) to devote to music. (I knew there was a silver lining somewhere. Now if there was just the money for gas...)

Joe

HIDING OUT...

I’ll be going back to the Coast this weekend, to see fambly. “Sternwheeler Days,” Cascade Locks’ big festival, is this weekend, but I won’t be playing at it (I would have to have arranged that months ago). Used to be a regular gig for the Dodson Drifters, years ago when we were all, well, alive, and we always did it for free; it was unthinkable that The Local Band—The Famous Local Band, in fact—wouldn’t play The Local Festival in what had become our home town.

(Best compliment I think we ever got came from a city councilmember in Cascade Locks. “They’re a little strange,” he said, “but after a few beers, they sound okay.”)

These days, 25 years later, I don’t think half the people in town would know me, and of those that do, most don’t even know I’m here. I’ve been hiding out in the little house in the woods, playing carpenter/painter/electrician/plumber, living cheap (food expenses for this week are $20, and that includes coffee), and in my spare time thinking up innovative and satisfying things to do to squirrels. And the people who keep them as pets. (Never rent to people who have—or get—pet squirrels. Never.)

Musically, I haven’t done much. The “to do” list is longer than the “done” list, and maybe I like it that way—gives me something to look forward to. Beth Williams’ baseball song, “Foul Play,” still needs music, Vonee Rose’s “Texas Two-Step Rock” still needs a lead; and there’s a new write-a-song-from-a-title challenge—in this case, the title is “Something Missing,” and I wanted to avoid the obvious cliches of lost love, Iraqi war amputations, and girlfriends who cut off guys’ body parts for fun, because those have all been done before.

I do hear music for it—reminiscent of George Jones, whom I’ve never “channeled” before. Just need words (more words—I already have some). Good thing to work on while I’m doing carpentry—otherwise, I’d be talking to myself, which feels unhealthy. And up here in the woods, there’s nobody to complain.

Another job interview today; this one’s in a suburb of Portland, and if I got the job, I’d be commuting from Cascade Locks, which is 25 miles away. Living expenses would be cheap, because the house was paid for years ago. And yes, I’ve already figured out what I’d do for music if I were there. There’s both a Portland Songwriters Assn. and a Portland Folklore Society, and I’d probably hook up with both, find some jam sessions (the Portland Songwriters have some well-publicized open mikes), check out the live music scene in some of the neighboring towns, and see if I can insert myself into it somehow. All “been there, done that” stuff that’s easy to repeat.

Portland’s a lot like Medford in that there’s virtually no country music—maybe that’s a common feature of big urban areas. But my experience in southern Oregon was that people like country music even when they’re not used to hearing it—they’ll actually go places to hear it, and they’ll pay money to do so. It’s like country music was filling some kind of void, making up for something missing (shall we say) in people’s lives. I wonder what it is. I remember the old definition of country music: “Pain You Can Dance To.” Times are hard—real hard for some of us. I wonder if it’s an outlet people need (and if I can exploit it).

And if I’m living in the Gorge while commuting to that suburban job, I’m sure there’s some kind of live music scene in the Gorge, because there was when I lived here, and I just haven’t tried to tap into it while I’ve been here because I’ve been busy hiding out. That would change. (Of course, I have no idea whether I’ll be offered the job—and I don’t dare get my hopes up. There is a lot of competition for jobs these days.)

UPDATES: It’s shaping up to be a very slow Concert Season. The “Moograss” Bluegrass Festival won’t be happening Labor Day weekend (I’ve tried to get myself inserted in Central Point’s Labor Day festivities instead, but I may be too late); Pineyfest, in Nashville, isn’t happening either (and I couldn’t afford to go anyway). I haven’t pushed getting a performance slot at the Wheeler County Bluegrass Festival (early July), or the Grassroots Festival in Union (mid-August), because the price of gas for an unemployed person is just plain daunting. I am on the agenda for a Southern Oregon Songwriters concert in Central Point around the end of August, and hope I’ll be able to do that.

Joe

THE "STAR OF STARS" SHOW...

Played the “Star of Stars” fundraiser for Rogue Community College in Medford (OR) Saturday night with Darrin Wayne. Darrin and I were both contestants (there were 16) and arranged to back each other up—him on harmonica, and me on lead guitar.

Gave ‘em “Armadillo on the Interstate,” and we were note-perfect. (It helped that I came down a day early, and we’d practiced both the night and afternoon before the show.) Nice audience (they gave Darrin’s harp solo a separate—and big—ovation); big audience, too—the bulk of the seats in South Medford High School’s auditorium appeared to be filled. I did not have CDs on hand to sell (ignoring one of my own lessons, there) and could have used them—a lot of the contestants did have CDs, and were selling them. Real nice auditorium—down in Shakespeare Festival country, they do know how to build theaters—and a good (mostly) sound system.

I didn’t win, and probably should not have expected to. It is a benefit for the college, after all, put on by the students, and two of the three finalists were students at the college (one apparently a last-minute addition to the list) even though the lion’s share of the contestants were adult members of the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. Abovementioned last-minute addition student is also the one who took first place, and the lone ($1,000) prize. (The rest of us got gift bags. Mine had new guitar strings.) And the winners (and winner) may have been good, for all I know. I didn’t get to hear them.

There were problems toward the end with the sound system. One of the instrument cables wasn’t working, which meant my lead on Darrin’s song, “Rainy Day,” wasn’t audible, and the rhythm guitarist from the previous act wasn’t audible, and neither was the solo guitar from the performer before that. And the sound crew (students) kept using the same non-working cable, as if it would magically start working the next time they plugged it in. People in the audience kept trying to tell the guy at the sound board there was something wrong, but he didn’t do anything (and may not have known how).

The last few acts were understandably bummed, and felt they’d been prevented from winning (though in retrospect, they probably weren’t going to win anyway—a student was going to win, and that, as the late Walter Cronkite used to say, is Just The Way It Is). Darrin did get to wish his son a happy 10th birthday from on stage in front of all those people, and son Dylan was mighty pleased (and also got a big round of applause from the audience.)

Would I do it again? Yes—but with a caveat: I wouldn’t make a special trip 8 hours in each direction to do it—not with gas at $4.30 a gallon—knowing that it’s not possible to win. It is a good cause, and I’m happy to have my name associated with it, and it does reach a big, new audience that hasn’t heard my stuff. (And I would make sure to bring CDs, and the signup notebook for the “joelist.”) And if something in the sound system didn’t work, I’d make sure to say so, from the stage, even if nobody else did, and make somebody fix it; I realize the “Star of Stars” organizers were trying to stick to a tight schedule, but that’s no reason to shove people out on stage with stuff that doesn’t work.

This is only the second song contest I’ve entered this year; the other was American Idol’s 2008 song contest, which I did as a matter of principle (they got “When I Jump Off the Cliff I’ll Think of You”). I knew I wasn’t going to win that one, and I was right. (Sometimes I hate being right.) I haven’t entered any others—yet—but I’d like to. I want, as usual, to concentrate on contests I can win, and for me, that seems to usually be contests that involve live performances.

It’s too late to audition for the Tillamook County Fair (they start their very organized process in mid-June), and reportedly the Jackson County Fair doesn’t have any talent contest (I thought every county fair in Oregon did). I haven’t sent “Free-Range Person” to this year’s Woody Guthrie Song Competition; the grand prize of $500 these days won’t cover even a fraction of the cost of getting to Woody’s old hometown in Oklahoma to perform the song on stage. There’s a Hank Williams Festival, too (held around Hank’s birthday, in September), too, and “Hank’s Song” could be a contender there—but it’s the same sort of deal: the prize money won’t cover the cost of getting there (“there” is a little town in North Carolina). And these days, that cost is important. I don’t have any money.

Joe

"BAD SOCK, GOOD SOCK"

Today we pack for the trip to southern Oregon. (Do laundry, too—we’re going to show up with clean clothes on.) Place to stay, people to see, music to play—hopefully, above and beyond the “Star of Stars” fundraiser Darrin Wayne and I will both be in Saturday night.

I did an initial recording of “Bad Sock, Good Sock,” Beth Williams’ pun-laden ditty about love and loss among the footwear. I did end up tweaking the lyrics again, ostensibly to make them easier to sing (I did that with her “Syllables for Sale,” too); in this case, I added a whole half-verse, to make everything match up, and a chorus.

(Songs do not always need a chorus—I have written a few myself without choruses—but you do need a place to park the hook, as it were, and a chorus is usually a good place. I did work hard at not repeating any puns, but it wasn’t difficult—there’s an amazing number of tongue-in-cheek things one can say about footwear, and Beth and I e-mailed and PM’d a lot of them back and forth.)

The rhyme scheme is limerick style—A, B, CC, B, with the B’s and C’s rhyming, of course—which lends itself really well to waltz music (and love songs, especially tongue-in-cheek love songs, should be waltzes, to rub it in). But it also works well in 4/4 time. The Dodson Drifters did that, with “The Lightning Express,” an old bluegrass waltz about a dying mother; played in 4/4 time, it cooked, and we had a hit on our hands. (And it is one of the happiest-sounding songs about death I have ever heard). So I did that here, robbing a trick John Prine used in some of his songs: it starts off as a waltz, but at the “lift” (Beth had a “lift”), it jumps into 4/4 time.

And the music is kind of a cross between “The Lightning Express” and a bouncy French waltz from the 1920s (also playable as a two-step) I ran across about the dangers of premarital sex. (I found the sheet music for that one in a thrift store. I have no idea how it made it past the censors of the time—but maybe nobody ever bothered to translate the French.) And of course, there’s enough differences thrown in to make sure my music is original, and not recognizably either of those other tunes.

The initial recording is a tad long—5-1/2 minutes—but there are some easy places to shorten it up. I’ll just have to re-record it. Re-recording is probably a Good Thing—I need to work on my guitar playing, which atrophies quickly if I don’t keep at it. Need to be at the top of my game for the “Star of Stars” show—a lot of the competition are other Southern Oregon Songwriters, and they’re all very good.

Beth and I have also scripted out a music video for the song, with a cast of (what else?) sock puppets. I think it would be hilarious—and it’s something that could be done easily and well with limited technology. I have got to get the video camera working, and practice using it.

STILL TO DO: The music for Beth’s other song, “Foul Play”; the lead for Vonee Rose’s “Texas Two-Step Rock” (that may have to wait until I come back—I have to unpack the CD burner to play her base track); a base recording of “Paradise: The Columbia Gorge Song” to take to southern Oregon; and a base track (again) of “Twenty Chickens for Ixticihuatl” to send to Gem Watson to do magic to, to make it sound like a rock ‘n’ roll tune. (That one, too, may wait until I come back.)

Still no job offers (but there may be a song in it—I keep hearing the line “You want fries with that?”). I think I have managed to make myself kinda busy—and I’m re-registering for college, too, if they’ll take me. Ain’t having fun yet (I still want to do awful and satisfying things to squirrels), but I’m working at it.

Joe

SOME VIDEO THOUGHTS...

I suppose it’s time for more updates—not that I’ve done a lot lately. Been fixing a lot of squirrel damage in the Cascade Locks house. (Those critters are as bad as termites—only larger. And people don’t keep termites as pets. Do they?)

Got asked to do the lead to Vonee Rose’s “Texas Two-Step Rock,” and to set Beth Williams’ song “Foul Play” (it’s about baseball—sort of) to music. Both are kind of departures from the norm for me, and departures are supposed to be exciting. (Beth’s got another song, too—about love between socks—that is crying out for music. A waltz, I think, with washing machine noises in the background.) Still need to record “Twenty Chickens for Ixticihuatl,” the rock ‘n’ roll song that answers the question, “What happens when it’s time for the volcano god’s sacrifice and there’s no more virgins?” (Am I the only one who tries to answer these questions?)

I did think of a song I could do a slideshow video to, I think. It’s one that hasn’t been recorded since the days of vinyl records (it was on a vinyl record, in 1985, and it got radio airplay—one of only two songs I wrote that ever did). Hight “Paradise: The Columbia Gorge Song” (the subtitle was to distinguish it from two other songs entitled “Paradise,” one by Joni Mitchell and one by John Prine, both of which eventually became known by their subtitles—“Big Yellow Taxi” and “Muhlenberg County,” respectively).

A political song—it became the local folks’ anthem during the “Gorge Wars,” the decade-long fight over making the Columbia Gorge, where I lived, a Federal park. (We lost, by the way. It’s a park now—and I don’t live there any more.) It’s an instance of using words as weapons, which I try to avoid doing most of the time—they can cut very deep. (In this case, the use of words as weapons was deliberate. There was a war on.)

I don’t play the song any more—it makes people cry. (Probably because we lost the war. It was intended to make people mad, and then go do something.) That’s why I don’t write many serious songs. People are more inclined to want to pay you to make them happy rather than make them sad.

I always thought the song would be good background for a slide show—the Gorge is and was a very beautiful place. At one point, I had a slide show all scripted out—but the technology at the time was insanely expensive. It isn’t any more. I’d have to re-create the photography on the digital camera (they didn’t exist back then), and some of the shots might be difficult—I had had slides made from some historic photographs I borrowed from some, well, historic people. They are probably all dead now. (One or more of the local museums may have some of their stuff, though. I’ll have to check.)

I am here in the Gorge temporarily, and it’d be a shame not to try it. And when I go down to southern Oregon Friday, I could take the Tascam and maybe get some leads recorded to it. That would be fun. The song deserves more than I can put into it myself.

Most of my other songs don’t lend themselves to slideshow-type videos. An exception is “Born Again Barbie,” where I had scripted out a music video a couple of years ago—at Len Amsterdam’s request—that could be done with my digital camera (with a lot of creative zooming), using my daughter’s crates of old Barbies for a lot of my cast. I needed Windows Movie Maker, which I didn’t have at the time. I have it now. (I need clothes for the Barbies, too. They’re all nekkid.)

For most of my songs, I think the imagery is just too strange—it has to be left up to the imagination. If I were to do a video, it could be only a video of people playing the song. (I have seen those on youtube, too, and they’re okay. Porter Wagoner’s last song, “Committed to Parkview,” was done that way—in black and white, even. And it came out very nice.)

Then again, I could see a video of “The Termite Song” that was just four minutes of termites scurrying around doing termite things (which is eat, I guess). Could intersperse some photos of a partially-eaten house—which I have, thanks to the squirrel. Could be fun.

Joe

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FRIDAY NIGHT GROUP...

Got to play music with the Friday Night Group in Garibaldi this weekend. I hadn’t been by in close to a year, and it was nice to see not much had changed.

Pat, who’s been the group’s sound man and tireless cheerleader, tells the story this way. 6 years ago, he and I and another musician started playing music on Friday nights. Back then, the only live music in Tillamook County was a “jam session” at a local tavern that was dominated by the tavern owner. It was a smoky place, and we knew one lady with a beautiful singing voice (church choir trained) who couldn’t go there because she was allergic to smoke. That meant her husband, one of the better harmonica players I’ve met, wasn’t going there either. It did beg the question how many more people there were like that. We decided there needed to be some place to play music that wasn’t a tavern.

The local hotel let us occupy space in their lobby—and almost immediately, other musicians started showing up. We never publicized—people just told people, who told more people. We outgrew the lobby; the hotel let us have their conference room, and we outgrew that. (By that time, we were starting to get an audience.) We moved to the cafeteria at the old plywood mill, a big barn of a place with tremendous acoustics, and outgrew that, too. We finally landed on the Dance Floor at City Hall (built for the old Firemen’s Balls of the 1940s)—it’ll hold 500 people if they’re friendly.

(We didn’t need that much space—but we did have as many as two dozen musicians showing up on Friday nights, and an audience that might number 100 people. And then the tour buses started stopping by…) I knew we’d arrived when the local taverns—four of them—stopped scheduling anything on Friday nights, because they didn’t have customers. (One of them since started having a live band—on Saturday nights.)

We had three simple but rigid rules. ONE, the audience was irrelevant. Nice that people came, but WE were there to play with each other, not to perform. (That helped pacify the non-professionals who could get weirded out by crowds.) TWO, we did the “circle thing”: we took turns, in order, and nobody got a pass. Your turn, you led a song, and the rest of us would either follow you or stay out of your way. THREE, we shut down at 8 p.m. (playing “Goodnight Irene”) so those musicians who wanted could get to the Dairy Queen for ice cream before it closed at 9.

Pat got the local Lions club to “sponsor” us, so we could be insured if anything happened, and gave us a name—“Asleep at the Switch.” We still weren’t a band, and never pretended to be. Just a bunch of people who got together to play on Friday nights.

The band (oops—not a band) made money, too. Pat started leaving out this ugly wooden llama made out of an old orange crate with a sign that said “Feed the Kitty,” and people put money in it. Rather a lot of money. The band (oops—not a band) ended up with a very sophisticated PA system (needed 2 dozen mike inputs, after all); this year, they got new, very good mikes. They pay the City rent, and repainted the place this year.

So I got to play with ‘em Friday night. They still remembered me (got applause when I walked in, which was nice), and the songs. A few folks aren’t there any more—some died or gone to nursing homes--and there were some new ones. Same eclectic mix of music, from church hymns to barroom blues to ethnic folk dances to old show tunes from the 1920s. And of course, everybody knew everything. Two accordions, three harmonicas, a saw, bass, and the usual run of guitarists, three of whom (including me) could play lead. I’d heard worries that $4.30 gas might cut down on attendance, but there were still only a few empty chairs even in the audience.

With 16 musicians, there was time for only 2 songs each, so they didn’t get any of my new ones. I did the “Welcome to Hebo Waltz,” because Pat wanted to record it for the folks in Hebo, and since Carol (she of the beautiful voice) was back from vacation, “Turn Your Radio On,” my favorite Gospel song, with her doing harmony. People were dancing (it’s a good dance floor).

The lesson? (There’s always a lesson.) If there isn’t a live music scene where you’re at, you can start one. The raw material exists almost everywhere. You just have to coax it out of the woodwork. And you might be surprised.

An additional lesson, for the music industry (which is unlikely to listen). This is a demographic the industry is ignoring—people who don’t buy records, but who can and do pay money to go to live performances. And y’know, there seems to be a lot of them.

So if you’re in Garibaldi, Oregon (pop. 900), on a Friday night, come by City Hall 6 to 8 p.m. There’s music up on the Dance Floor. And there’s probably nothing else happening in town, ‘cause everybody’s up there.

Joe

ALMOST FATHER'S DAY...

JOB SEARCHING gets a little discouraging sometimes. Got one rejection notice almost by return mail of being interviewed; two more are probably coming (one from my hometown), one more to apply for and one that’s too early to tell (but it’s within commuting distance so I wouldn’t have to move). And I’m almost out of money, and still have a lot of things undone.

On the good news front, the songs I’ve posted on the Whitby Shores Website that are intended for the new album are getting a lot more play than the others. Admittedly, it’s a small group of people still, but they do listen to stuff. I think I picked good. Len Amsterdam, who founded and basically runs Whitby Shores, has been pressing me to do videos; he says that’s the coming technology, and he may be right.

I have a video camera I got given, an old Fisher 880 (made by Sony, I think) that appears to be pretty good—even has stereo input from outside (like a house PA system). Battery packs are still made for it (but are currently beyond affordability—I really am poor). There appears to be no such thing as an owner’s manual any more. I’ll have to figure it out on my own.

Is there anything I can do in the meantime? Maybe—I’ve watched a lot of youtube videos with this in mind, and there are a lot of them that are just tastefully-done slideshows set to music. I think all that’s necessary for that is a good digital camera (check), good photo-manipulation software (check—mine is excellent, and not made any more, near as I can tell), and Windows Movie Maker (check--came with the operating system on the computer). I’ll have to try it. What song would be good to experiment on?

PUBLISHING: I think BMI is going to be the route to go. They do not appear to require the writer or publisher to have sold something before they’ll let you register. Registration is free for writers (Skip will like that), but $150 for publishers who are sole proprietorships. Add that, too, to the list of I’ll-do-it-when-I-can-afford-it. (The list is starting to grow.)

RECORDING: Finally broke down and recorded both “Twenty Saddles for My Chicken” and “Electronic Love.” I hadn’t done any recording in so long I was beginning to doubt my ability to do it, which is bad. (It was also misplaced. They came out fine.) Tried some experiments, too.

For “Electronic Love,” I set the voice to “duet,” to try to make it sound more electronic (we’re talking about Internet porn, after all), and the echo sounded almost female (and very sleazy, which is what I wanted). Lead (done with the acoustic—I haven’t unpacked the Strat) was set to “Acoustic Blues,” but still sounded electric. The lead got better as I went along, but I didn’t try to re-record it. All in one take, and it’s basically okay. (I do like that song.)

“Twenty Saddles for My Chicken” has two leads (with 4 channels to play with, I figured I might as well), simple dobro-ey plinks on the upper strings and fairly fast bass runs (in the background) on the lower strings. Kind of substituted for not having a bass guitar—I was having to do it all myself.

NEXT FRIDAY I head back to southern Oregon, for the big “Star of Stars” fundraiser for Rogue Community College. And hopefully get to play a lot of music for a couple of days. THIS Friday, I’ll be visiting the fambly on the Coast, and get to play for the first time in a long time with the Friday Night Group. Lot of new (for them) songs to share, if there’s time.

It’s almost Father’s Day. I was asked what I wanted for Father’s Day, and had to answer, “A job.” (And of course, the response was, “Can’t get you that. What else?”) There are things I want (reference that growing list), but I’m not sure I NEED much else, really. To all (or any) who are reading, if you’re a father, or have a father, have a happy Father’s Day.

Joe

A SIX-STEP PLAN?

Back in Cascade Locks… The job interview went pretty well—prompting the question what I’d do about music promotion way out there in John Day, Oregon. You can tell it’s very isolated; the stores are all way bigger than a town of 1900 people needs, indicating the town serves as a market center for a huge hinterland. Any place that’s bigger is several six-packs away, as they say.

So—I arrive in town, knowing absolutely nobody except the city manager, who’s going to be my boss. I’m living out of a motel room for probably a month. What DO I do?

Well, first step, if the local newspaper does a story on me being hired (and it’s a little newspaper, and a little town, so they might, even though I’m not the city manager), I make sure the story says I’m a musician and songwriter, and looking for places to play and people to play with. (One newspaper reporter I told that to asked, “Are you sure you want to say that? You’re going to hear from all sorts of people.” My answer was, “I hope so.” And I did.)

Second step, even though I hate cold-calling, is to visit every one of the taverns and restaurants (and there are a bunch), and leave ‘em a CD, and ask if they have live music. If they do, I want in, and if they don’t, I want to encourage ‘em to think about it. I may not get a lot out of this effort except getting known around town—but getting known around town is an important thing I have to do.

Third, if there’s a music store—hard to tell in a town of 1900 people—DEFINITELY go there. The music store is going to be the clearinghouse and gossip center for all the musicians in the area, because it’s where they’ll go for strings and stuff. If there are open mikes, jam sessions, or even available venues and musicians, they should know. Then again, if there is no music store, that also says something about the Local Music Scene—namely, that it doesn’t exist, and we have to start one. (There is no local music store listed on the Grant County Chamber of Commerce Website.) That, too, is doable. It just takes more time.

Fourth, county fair’s coming up (it’s in August), and every county fair in Oregon has a Talent Show. Some, like Tillamook County, do extensive and well-organized auditions; others, like Union County, just set up a stage and audition whoever shows up. Since I do well attracting attention performing live, I need to be there. I (hopefully) get to meet other musicians, and hear about other musicians, and they hear about me.

Fifth, I’ll be only about a hundred miles (a short distance in Eastern Oregon) from Fossil, and the Wheeler County Bluegrass Festival. I wanted to go to that this year anyway. No winning song this year (though it’d be nice if people remembered “Prehistoric Roadkill” from last year, and me)—just networking.

Sixth, there’s the Blue Mountain Fiddlers, which I’m still a member of; John Day is in their “bailiwick,” and they will be putting on at least one show there. And that’s not only an opportunity to network (and there are some Grant County members of the BMF), but to re-establish contact with some folks I haven’t seen for over a year—and to play. (Yay!)

UPDATES: No, I haven’t done any of the “gotta do” stuff. I did get the van back—busted timing belt (dang Ford motors!), so I’m now $1300 poorer ($750 for the belt, $200 for the tow, $300 for new tires—the old ones were dangerously bald—and $50 for the gas to leave town). Uck. So I’m back to doing squirrel repairs. One more graduation to attend (nephew’s fiancee), and two more jobs to apply for. Life may not be fun, but it’s at least busy.

Joe

THREE SONGS?

STUCK in Garibaldi for a few more days—the van died on the way out of town, and the local mechanic has to figure out why. I haven’t a clue, and at this point, he doesn’t, either. Hopefully, it is neither time-consuming nor expensive. I will accordingly write and post the blog from here, using my wife’s computer. I do not know how long it will take for things to get back to normal (not that I have any clear idea what “normal” is).

A COUPLE MORE NEW SONGS: That makes three in the space of a week, and that’s not a bad track record for creativity. It should mean I’m doing something right. (I wonder what it is.) I already mentioned “Twenty Saddles for My Chicken,” the bouncy, surreal little romp in response to the “twenty chickens for a saddle” contest; I did another one, too.

Someone mentioned one of the few things that rhymed with “saddle” was the name of an obscure Aztec divinity, Ixticihuatl—and of course there was a song in that. “Twenty Chickens for Ixticihuatl” (I decided the name was pronounced “Itchy Twaddle”) answers the burning question, “What happens when it’s time for the volcano god’s annual sacrifice and there’s no more virgins?” It’s probably less marketable than “Twenty Saddles,” because it takes too much explanation, but it’s got a nice rock ‘n’ roll beat to it.

And with “Electronic Love,” I finally got away from the chickens. (Not chicks, though.) This one was triggered by Beth Williams’ “MySpace or Yours?”—an Internet love story with a sad ending. I really wanted one with a happy ending, but “Electronic Love” didn’t come out that way, either: instead, it turned into a dark (but tongue-in-cheek) look at Internet porn. Very burlesque-y music—the sort of thing people take clothes off to—that may be hard for a country boy to express on a guitar. I’ll have to try.

Marketable? Depends on what you mean by “marketable.” I don’t think any modern artist, country or otherwise, would touch it; everybody’s way too conscious of “image” these days. Even Britney “Oops, I Did It Again” Spears would probably consider herself too wholesome to record this. It’d take (I think) somebody of the caliber of Mae West to pull it off—somebody who’s conscious of their own sleazy sexuality and comfortable poking fun at it. I’m not sure there’s anyone like that in the music business any more.

On the other hand, I’m almost certain it’d be a hit with audiences. My next opportunity to try something out on a live audience will be Sunday, 22 June; I’ll be in southern Oregon again, to perform at the big “Star of Stars” fundraiser for Rogue Community College, and will stay over to play at the Wild Goose. They’re a great audience to try out new things on—both attentive and appreciative.

Begs again the question, “Where DOES inspiration come from?” I’ve been living completely alone the past three weeks, seeing no one, essentially camping out in the Cascade Locks house while I repair the extensive damage from the last tenants’ pet squirrel. (Never rent to people who have—or get—pet squirrels. Never.) And playing no music. And I have three new songs—two of them “keepers,” I think—in the course of a WEEK? Is it because I’m missing everybody? Or is something else going on?

SO… I now have three songs to record—solo, I guess, on the Tascam, because there isn’t anyone else around (I may be able to get some assistance on line, though). In addition, I have two artist interviews to do for the music publisher, plus the liner notes to finish for her album. Foot-in-the-door stuff rather than cash-in-the-pocket stuff. Important, in other words. And a lead guitar part to record for a Vonee Rose song, if she’s still interested.

Joe