WELCOME...

This blog is the outgrowth of a songwriting workshop I conducted at the 2006 "Moograss" Bluegrass Festival in Tillamook, Oregon. It presumes that after 30-odd years of writing and playing music, I might have something to contribute that others might take advantage of. If not, it may be at least a record of an entertaining journey, and a list of mistakes others may be able to avoid repeating. This blog is intended to be updated weekly. In addition to discussions about WRITING, it will discuss PROMOTION--perhaps the biggest challenge for a writer today--as well as provide UPDATES on continuing PROJECTS, dates and venues for CONCERTS as they happen, how and where to get THE LATEST CD, the LINKS to sites where LATEST SONGS are posted, and a way to E-MAIL ME if you've a mind to. Not all these features will show up right away. Like songwriting itself, this is a work in progress. What isn't here now will be here eventually. Thank you for your interest and your support.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

MORE FOR THE TO-DO LIST...

No new songs of mine, but plenty to keep me busy writing music to songs by others. I am not about to get bored any time soon.

“Tampa Stan” Good’s “I Love My Truck, My Dog and I Love Jesus” has music now; second effort, a little faster with a more prominent Gospel beat befitting the subject matter. It’s a love song, actually, not a Gospel hymn—but the title makes it sound like something you would not want to have in a hymnal.

Still one more Tampa Stan tune to put to music; his “Stay-cation” (one of a number of songs people have written in response to high fuel prices and the economic collapse) has some real commercial potential with its let’s-do-it-at-home message. Beth Williams’ waltz of the lovebirds, “Lovey Dovey,” needs to get finished, too; it could use twitters and flutters along with the music—I wonder if that’s possible to do in Audacity?

And Beth’s got another serious one, about a missing kid, that’s crying out for music as soon as the lyrics are polished. It’s another instance where a serious issue can be addressed with country music—“boldly going where no man has gone before,” as it were. The old definition of country music, “pain you can dance to,” suggests country music is a perfect vehicle for exploring social issues—the more so because it’s unexpected. Country music is generally more literate and more story-driven than other genres.

(It’s not a crusade. It’s just a little envelope-pushing, using a tool for something it hasn’t been used for before. One is in the position of the guy who tried hammering a nail with the butt end of a hatchet. Yup, looked like it oughta work. And it did.)

One more project to do in the Electronic World. It is time to do the “innerview” by Danny the dog of Internet music promoter/deejay/veejay Len Amsterdam. His Whitby Shores Website appears to be getting a sudden flood of traffic—nearly all of it musicians—which should prompt the question (for Danny to ask, and Len to answer), “Where do we go from here?” Music promotion and marketing on the Internet is still in its infancy. What might its first training pants look like?

And then there’s the Real World. There, I want to play more frequently and in more places; I want more paying gigs, and generally want to get more attention. I want to put together a band to play the paying gigs (or most of them) and to be on the next album, and if the reality is that band can’t be impromptu—if it has to stay together and play regularly—well, so be it. I deal with reality as I find it, just as I did as a city manager. If I get hired away to a job elsewhere, well, that happens, too. I can’t postpone having a life just to wait for something that may never happen.

I visited the head county librarian, fired her and her staff up about the weekly music in the library idea, volunteered to lead it for a little while; our first session will be Saturday, 13 December. I’ll do a promotional poster (might as well promote myself as a graphic artist while I’m at it) for her to distribute.

There’s the monthly jam session at the Forestry Center, too, that’ll turn into something if people keep going. I still have a paid membership in the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers Association, and they do have a chapter on the Coast; I don’t know what they do, or where, and should find out.

From the gig end, there’s the Old Mill’s Saturday market starting in November, and county economic development’s “Taste of Tillamook” festival in March. The Garibaldi Maritime Museum’s been open, and they were historically closed in the winter, and again, I should stop by; the fellow who founded the place is deceased now, but it may be his kids running the place—and if so, they used to be fans. It might be an excuse for a concert. In the entertainment papers I picked up today, all the venues that have live music by soloists are at least an hour’s drive away, mostly too far in these times of sky-high fuel prices. (That is forcing more entertainment to be local, though—and that’s an opportunity.)

And I found at the music store in Tillamook (while looking at effects pedals for the electric banjo) the new portable recording studio I’d like to have. 6-channel job (instead of 4), records to a CD (instead of a digital-camera chip) so I could work on more than one song at a time; still only 2 inputs, but it looks like either one can be guitar or mike and they can be used simultaneously. The price--$325—is good, but way too spendy for my non-existent income. Santa? Are you listening?

Joe

Saturday, October 18, 2008

BAND THOUGHTS...

Somebody in the audience at the Friday Night Group performance asked for “Valvoline,” an old (1980) Dodson Drifters hit (it was the first of my songs ever to get airplay). So of course we played it—a lot of folks had never heard it before, but it’s simple to follow, and we did have people up dancing. Nice to know somebody remembers it and liked it. “Valvoline” is usually the example I give people when they worry about “genre”—it was written by a country-music writer (me), recorded by a bluegrass band, first aired on a jazz station in Portland, Oregon (it was probably the dual saxophone leads that got their attention), and was last being performed on stage a couple of years ago by a rock ‘n’ roll band. So what “genre” is it?

And I tracked down—finally—the author of a song I’d “musicated” a couple of years ago. Her name is Tarra Young, and the song had been written for a friend who was dying. It was one of those where I’d tweaked the lyrics a lot in the course of setting it to music, and I’d apologized copiously when I sent her the recording. And then I never heard anything. E-mails didn’t get answered, her Website was gone, and so on. It was a pretty good song—real tear-jerker—and I still had it on the computer, and wondered a lot over those couple of years what I ought to do about it if the author had up and disappeared.

Well, she hadn’t. I finally located a Soundclick page with her name on it, and yes, she’s still writing—mostly Christian music, it seems. And one of the songs on her page, hight “Angel,” is the one I set to music. And she used my recording, exactly the way I’d sent it to her. And apparently, people have been listening to it, too. Nice validation, there. I think I done okay.

Applied for yet another city-manager job, this one in Washington; I don’t know if they’ll be interested in me, and won’t hear anything before the end of the month. I would like to get the job that’s closer to home, but have no idea (again) if I’ll even get interviewed. There are relatively few jobs out there, and a lot of competition for the few I might be qualified for.

Still, it’s an opportunity to fantasize about how I might make a name for myself in a new community. There are both opportunities and difficulties everywhere I go. I need three things, I think: places to play, opportunities to play, and people to play with. If they don’t exist, they have to be created. Here on the northern Oregon Coast, the dearth of opportunities and places seems to be greatest for solo performers—of which I, at the moment, am one. There are gigs—mostly tavern gigs—for bands, but relatively few bands; the same names keep showing up over and over.

And there is virtually no original music. (I’d forgotten what that was like.) Here on the northern Oregon Coast, I am just about the only songwriter I know. That’s not a bad thing—my material is danceable, and playable, and fits right in with everybody’s covers, and I have my Standard Mantra that I can’t perform most other people’s stuff because I don’t have the voice range. Still, it’s a distinct contrast with southern Oregon, where almost all the music you’d hear, good and bad, was original, and there were some venues that wouldn’t book anything but original music. It’s not going to affect what I do, because I do have the voice-range problem, and entertainment is entertainment—it doesn’t matter who wrote it, or even if it’s familiar, as long as it’s good and people can dance to it.

So Joe needs a band. How does he get one? Well, first Joe has got to get out more, get to know more people, and see what the market is like. The Friday Night Group is a big thing, but not enough. If there aren’t more venues to play, create (or help create) them. For instance, the head county librarian, who’s become a regular at the Friday Night Group sessions, wants to start something similar on Saturday afternoons at the Main Library in Tillamook, and I volunteered to come. There are a few folks determined to make the jam sessions at the State Forestry Center, 30 miles away, a regular thing; I’ll go with them (might have to carpool). If I get the city manager job in Wheeler, I’ll see if I can start live music at a local restaurant. (There’s only a couple.) And everywhere I run into other musicians, if they’re any good, they get the spiel, “This would sound a whole lot better with a band.”

Another good way to run into musicians is to help promote a musical event. That’s an additional advantage of helping with next year’s Harvest Festival—but I bet the “Moograss” Bluegrass Festival could use help, too.

UPDATES: There was a front-page article (a small one) about the Harvest Festival in the paper, but it didn’t mention me, and didn’t include my picture. (Not surprising—the photo was taken in the sunlight, and there was no sunlight in the pole barn where I was playing.) I’m supposed to get my free copy of the Philippine Christmas album with my song on it in a couple of weeks. And the Old Mill (an old plywood mill turned RV park in Garibaldi) is starting up their pre-Christmas Saturday crafts market, with entertainment; I didn’t get to play last year, because I was working out of town, but I want to be one of their performers this year. It pays, even—and I could use the money.

Joe

Thursday, October 16, 2008

RECORDING & PUBLISHING...

RECORDING SONGS WITH A BAND: I have a couple of ways I can go, I think. I know a number of musicians within reasonable traveling distance—a couple of bass players, couple decent lead guitarists, couple of harmonica players, a female singer—and I could record their tracks one by one in person. I might even know a drummer—the pastor of one of our local churches, who showed up at one of the Friday Night Group sessions.

Alternatively, I can use people on line—probably different people, because the folks I’d record personally mostly don’t “do” Internet. (One of them doesn’t even own a computer.) If we were doing it on line, I’d send (or post somewhere) a “base” track, and have them e-mail me their contributions. That could be interesting, because I know some online musicians who play some really strange instruments.

And those aren’t mutually exclusive options, either. I could do a blend of both.

In both cases, I’d need to be mixing multiple tracks, and that probably means using the computer to do it—and that means learning to use Audacity, which thus far I’ve avoided doing. I did use Audacity experimentally to record the tracks for Beth Williams’ Hallowe’en song, “The Well in the Glade,” but I actually got better results just mixing it on the Tascam. (The one sound effect—called a “gloop”—I added in Audacity.)

PUBLISHING: Kristi Lee Cook, the Selma (OR) girl who became a several-weeks’ wonder in southern Oregon by becoming an American Idol finalist, has an album out; that sort of thing happens a lot with failed A.I. contestants. And the album is being pretty roundly panned by the critics—not because of Kristi’s singing (she is good), but because of the material (“it’s not her” and “standard Nashville drivel” were among the comments). It’s probably not surprising; the Really Famous People get to pluck the best of the output from the Music Machine, and the leavings just aren’t very good. (The “best” wasn’t very good to begin with.)

That underscores the need—expressed here earlier—for some sort of mechanism to connect regionally famous artists with material that isn’t part of the Music Machine. There is a market that is in need of good material, and there is good material (I heard a lot of it in southern Oregon) that isn’t getting to market. Why couldn’t (for example) Kristi, a very popular southern Oregon girl, put out an album of songs entirely written by people from southern Oregon? Songs that would not only fit her style, and convey the image she wants to project, and showcase her voice, but also would be better written songs than anything the Big Boys are offering? Wouldn’t an album like that sell?

One of the things a publisher does, I think, is contact the artist, and say, “Hey, I think I’ve got something; if you like it, have your record label call me and we can do a deal.” The publisher acts as the filter on the writer end, making sure the artist only gets material that has a good chance of being suitable; presumably, the artist also has a filter, in the form of an agent or manager—most regionally famous performers do, I think (the Dodson Drifters had an agent—he didn’t handle material, but if you wanted to talk to us, you had to go through the agent).

The point—reiterated before—is that the regionally famous folks may be easier to reach (if one can only figure out how), because their filters have less of an agenda of their own.

MARKETABILITY: Looking realistically, it’s the co-writes I’ve done with other folks, not the songs that are exclusively mine, that have the greatest potential for commercial success. These are the ones an outside artist—somebody who’s already sorta famous—would be likely to want to record.

Beth Williams’ “The Well in the Glade” is a bona fide new Hallowe’en song idea (and those are hard to come by); Donna Devine’s “Sometimes She Could Scream” tackles a serious social issue (in country music, of all things), Marge Mckinnis’ “So Far” and “About Love” are classic love songs (and “So Far” did make #28 in Goodnight Kiss’s contest this year—not high enough to get on the album, but hopefully high enough to get noticed). Rev. Skip Johnson’s hymn, “Tune the Striings of My Soul,” may appeal mostly to a Christian market, but the Christian music market is a big one. There are more. What can we do with those?

Joe

Monday, October 13, 2008

THE HARVEST FESTIVAL...

The Harvest Festival gig went well, I think. It recalled Mick Jagger’s famous proverb: “You can’t always get what you want—but if you try, sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”

I didn’t get what I wanted—hundreds of adoring fans hanging on every word, selling all my remaining CDs (all 8 of them), and getting a fat check from the school at the end of the show—and I probably shouldn’t have bothered wanting it. I’ve played the Harvest Festival before. The entertainment is virtually background music; you’re competing with food and crafts vendors, and if anybody did listen to you, they may tell you afterwards, and they may not. The big old pole barn where the music (and everything else) is may be dry, but it’s cold because it’s October, and it has no sides, so if there’s a wind (which there was), it can get mighty uncomfortable (which it did).

On the other hand, I did get precisely what I needed. There was an announcement in the local paper, and the paper did have a reporter there, and he did take my picture, and all that was because I’d contacted someone I knew at the paper. I got to buttonhole the fellow who booked the entertainment afterwards, and plant the idea (also planted with the newspaper editor) that the Harvest Festival had the potential to become the Big Event of the fall, because nothing else was happening. I also volunteered to help with promotion next time.

Only one person showed up from the Friday Night Group audience, but she did come (and hopefully she’ll tell others how good it was). A few people openly liked the stuff; one was a vendor, and another was the sound engineer. And the 13 songs came in at precisely one hour, to the minute. The fellow who was on after me was good, but played for longer than an hour and started to get boring. I’m glad I didn’t volunteer to play longer.

What went over best? “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” of course—it always does. (That’s why I usually have it as the closing song.) “Doing Battle with the Lawn” got some attention, too, mostly (I think) from guys. And “Armadillo on the Interstate,” maybe mostly from girls, because it’s a love story.

We’ll see what the paper says, but I probably have enough from this gig to follow up with. The first big festival coming up is the “Taste of Tillamook” in mid-March, put on by county economic development. I’m sure they don’t book their entertainment five months ahead of time—but it’s worthwhile telling them they should. And I’ll have more impact showing up at their doorstep right after something about me appears in the paper.

Time to record “The Well in the Glade,” Beth Williams’ Hallowe’en waltz. (Actually, it was my idea to have it be a waltz—and it’ll only be a waltz in the verses. The chorus will be a fast two-step in a minor key. Reminiscent of Hank Williams’ “Kaw-liga,” only with demons instead of wooden Indians.) First time I recorded it, the chorus (the two-step part) didn’t sound creepy enough.

This was my opportunity to experiment with the Audacity program, which I’ve had on my computer for months but never used except for generating click tracks. All I did this time around was record tracks separately on the Tascam, mix them on the Tascam (matching each up to a basic rhythm guitar track to control the volume), and then dump them into Audacity and do what the program calls a “quick mix”—just merging the files together without making any other changes. Added one Hallowe’en sound effect from my “library.”

Lining up the various tracks so they all started at the right time was actually a snap, because Audacity is very visual—I didn’t even have to have the sound on to do it, because I could see where sounds started and ended. Didn’t come out bad, in my opinion—but that’s my opinion; the opinion that counts here is Beth’s, because she’s the author. And I don’t know that yet.

Joe

Thursday, October 9, 2008

THREE DAYS WITHOUT THE INTERNET...

THREE DAYS WITH NO INTERNET… That’s what Embarq-nee-Sprint-the-phone-company said when I told them their DSL modem gave up the ghost. (Giving up the ghost is probably an appropriate Hallowe’en activity.) That’s how long it’ll take Embarq to get a new modem here from wherever it is they come from. The speed and equanimity with which they accepted the idea their equipment had broken down suggests it’s a rather frequent occurrence.

(Obviously, this was written while the Internet was gone, and posted after I got it back.)

I have in fact plenty to do, none of it requiring Internet, and almost no tasks pending that do require Internet. I have one more part to record for Rose’s Halllowe’en radio play (a Canadian mountie), and I can’t even read the part to record it until I have Internet back; it will just have to wait. The newspaper reporter I’d e-mailed about the Harvest Festival gig I can call on the phone.

Otherwise, I’ve got clothes and belongings to unpack, and furniture to move around and find a place for; I’ve been living away from my fambly for my last two jobs—the past three years--just visiting whenever the price of gas permitted. I’ll finally get my glasses fixed, and help the next-door neighbor replace a section of fence on the one day it’s not supposed to rain. I’ve got one more job to apply for (it’s out of town), and Saturday’s gig to get ready for.

MORE PUBLISHING THOUGHTS: The publisher’s biggest function, I think, is marketing. The publisher has a song, to which he’s acquired the publishing rights, and wants to license that song to somebody who will make a whole bunch of records with that song on it. It needs to be a whole bunch of records, because the copyright royalties will only amount to pennies per record. The author will get half free and clear, and the publisher will get half—and hopefully make a profit after recouping all his expenses. There are additional—smaller—revenues from radio airplay (provided the artist is big enough to get noticed by the statistics machines) and Internet downloads from outfits like iTunes and Rhapsody.

Now, I’m creating my publishing company primarily to take care of a couple of legal hassles; I want to ensure my songs can be played on the radio, and I have to make sure the co-authors of a couple of songs on the upcoming CD get paid their rightful shares, because those records, like the last ones, are going to be sold. It of course won’t amount to a lot of money.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to use the existence of a publishing company to market some of my stuff to somebody who could produce more records than I can. Having identified a “target market”—the regionally famous artists and bands—and having determined that there is a need among those folks for good original material to perform and record, how do I meet that need? Or can I?

A realistic assessment of the material, first. There are probably a lot of my songs nobody’s likely to want to touch, either because they’re just too strange or because they don’t fit the image the artist or band is trying to project of themselves. That may be a shortsighted view on their part—people want to hear my songs, but not because it’s me that’s performing them—but that attitude exists, and I have to deal with it. That said, my more serious-sounding songs are probably fair game. So are the ones—“Bluebird on My Windshield,” “Hank’s Song,” and “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas,” for instance—that already are being performed Out There by other people.

How to find those people? Deliberate Random Chance, I think—which is a fancy way of saying “I don’t know.” Catching a record review of southern Oregon’s American Idol escapee was pure chance—but it’s something to follow up on. One can attend performances by regionally important bands and artists, and just ask them (they’re more approachable than famous people), “You guys ever do anything by somebody who isn’t already famous? I might have something that’d work for you, if you’re interested.” And I expect it works like the real estate business, in that over 90% of the time the answer will be “No.”

It’s important, too, to stay in touch with the recording studios—the ones that do professional work, anyway—to find out who’s recording, and where they’re getting their material, and what’s it like, and how do you talk to them. A lot of hunting and not many contacts, probably, because I’m dealing with a very small inventory (just my songs) and a small market, too (those who do country music).

And then what happens when I run into a situation where I know my stuff isn’t going to work, but that of somebody else I know probably will? This is where publishers end up “handling” other authors besides themselves, even if they didn’t intend to. What do I do with those? I don’t know.

Joe

Friday, October 3, 2008

HARVEST FESTIVAL PREPARATIONS...

Here’s the draft setlist for the Harvest Festival concert:

Dead Things in the Shower
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues
Bluebird on My Windshield
Armadillo on the Interstate
Doing Battle with the Lawn
Tillamook Railroad Blues
Dead Fishes
Welcome to Hebo Waltz
When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies
Hey, Little Chicken
Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus
No Good Songs About the War
I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas

And if I get asked to do an encore, it’ll be (I think) “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up.” I’ll take the rest of my CDs (there aren’t many left from the last pressing, which was the fourth) and offer to donate half the proceeds to the school (which could use the money).

13 songs, roughly half of them fast (and alternating with blues, waltzes, and really sleazy-sounding slow country). Eight are about dead animals—we’ve got dead cats, dead dogs, dead birds, dead fish, dead armadillos, and miscellaneous dead things in the cookies. Plus, while the chicken doesn’t die in the song, its fate is clear. Two serious songs, one about pollution (“Dead Fishes”) and one about the war. It’s going to be a fairly liberal audience, so that should be okay. If I run short of time, I’ll take the war song out.

I haven’t seen any advertising of the Festival, and have offered my services in that capacity. Posters should be up now, press releases to the newspapers (two of them, both weeklies), radio stations alerted, and so forth. The Festival is only a week and half away. From my end, I’ll do posters of me, notify the “joelist,” send bulletins to the “friends” on MySpace, and announce it the next two times the Friday Night Group gets together. I’ll also e-mail the one reporter I know at the Tillamook paper (he’s a news reporter, not a social reporter—but he used to be the editor). No stone unturned, as they say.

“Vampire Roumanian Babies” is recorded. I set up the “studio” equipment in the computer room on the second floor of the house—it’s warmer there, and winter is definitely on its way. Set in a different key from normal, so it’d be easier to use a Dylan voice (it’s hard to say “vampire Roumanian babies” without sounding like Dylan).

Judging from the comments I’ve received, I probably hit some folks’ hot buttons with that song, so it may not be a “keeper.” However, I think I’ll still try it out on the Friday Night Group and see how it goes over. The Friday before Hallowe’en, the group tries to play only Hallowe’en songs, and that usually limits me to just a couple of covers I can sing—“Another Man Done Gone,” Shel Silverstein’s ode to voodoo queen Marie Laveau (made famous by Bobby Bare), and Merle Haggard’s “Miner’s Silver Ghost” (which was a hit for The Dodson Drifters, but not, mysteriously, for Merle). There aren’t many good Hallowe’en songs, and it would be nice to have contributed one to the genre—but I don’t know whether I have.

Going through The List again, I have managed to write, on average, one good song a month. Four of them, I think, are probably inclusions for the next album: “Doing Battle with the Lawn,” “Dead Fishes,” “Electronic Love,” and “When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies. “Dead Fishes” can be the serious song on the album (I try to have only one).

Who will—or can—be “the band” for the next album? Most likely prospects are the Friday Night Group, if I’m still in Garibaldi (and right now, it looks like that will be the case). They’d have to be recorded “live and in concert”—they don’t “do” studio work that well—and that means I’d be looking at the one sound engineer in the area who says he has experience recording live concerts. The alternative is probably putting together a band, which I may want to do anyway. I like playing with a band.

Joe