THE BAND IS GOOD...

The band is really good. I think the folks who come to the Arts Center are going to get a heck of a show for their five bucks. I hope we pack the place. I want people telling the Arts Center they want us back, and people from other places wanting to hire us to play in their communities or for their events. I have made sure some key people (like the manager of the Recreation District) knew about it, and got invited to attend; I don’t know if they will—I have endured a lot of times when things don’t turn out the way I expect them to, so I have no illusions—but if those folks don’t come, I hope someone will tell them what they missed.

Most of the paying gigs I’ve gotten have been the result not of being seen by the person who ends up hiring me, but being seen by someone else who tells them about it. It’s an okay way to go.

Today is Last-Minute Preparations Day. Package CDs; get a spare set of strings for the guitar; check out the sound system with Jeff (who knows what he’s doing—I do not); and find out if the Arts Center’s furnace has been fixed so we can play upstairs on their dance floor (otherwise, we’ll be downstairs, where they have a pellet stove for heat but can only accommodate a crowd half the size).

Tomorrow—Friday, the day before the Big Concert—I don’t want to do anything. I’ll play music with the Friday Night Group (opportunity to solicit more attendance at the concert), but that’s it.

Somebody online—I don’t know what state they’re in, or even what planet they’re on—suggested a name: “The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.” That does have a nice ring to it. Professional and pedestrian at the same time. (I did google it. There is a movie by that name—a documentary about pro bowling—and also a bloggers’ group of seven guys who aren’t letting any new members in. No band is using the name—and accordingly, it is probably fair game.)

Over an hour’s worth of material has been submitted thus far for the Failed Economy Concert; we’re still a couple days from the deadline, and I’m continuing to solicit more. In addition to the material from outside, we’ll have three songs of mine (“Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues,” “Free-Range Person,” and “50 Ways to Cure the Depression”) and two Woody Guthrie tunes (“Worried Man Blues” and “Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad”). Four of the submissions came with invitations to write the music—one from Modern Relics, two from “Tampa Stan” Good, and one from a fellow hight Michael Zaneski whose material I’d never run across before. I guess I’m getting a reputation for being able to do an acceptable job as composer. (Now all I have to do is deliver. I haven’t sat down with the recording equipment in a while.)

There’s two of the submissions I’d like to re-do, too, if the authors are willing—in one case, changing the chords slightly (so they’re majors instead of minors), in the other just speeding it up so it’s a Gospel-style rocker instead of a folk song. In both cases, the lyrics are pretty downbeat, so the music needs to be uptempoed to make up for it. Our audience may be “goin’ down the road feelin’ bad,” but I want ‘em to do it with a spring in their step, as it were. Ganesha’s Rule: “Dance. You’ll feel better.”

UPDATES: I haven’t done much except prepare for the Bay City concert and try to memorize the 50 ways of curing the Depression. I did run across a really attractive city-manager job to apply for—a little town on an island offshore from Alaska. That could be interesting…

Joe