BAND PRACTICE AND THE PLAY...

“The Tempest” is now history. Final night played to a packed house, I was told (couldn’t see ‘em with my glasses off), and most of the seats were pre-sold. I understand it was good financially for the Tillamook Assn. for the Performing Arts (TAPA), too. Would I do another play? Sure. Not right away, but sure. (The play TAPA is doing for Christmas has an Evil Uncle in it, and I expect being Evil Uncle would not be much of a stretch.)

Friday night’s performance of the play was videotaped, and there will be DVDs made ($10 each); I’ll get one, plus I’ve ordered DVDs for a couple of folks who weren’t able to get to any of the performances during our three-weekend run. I suggested donating a copy to the library, too—apparently, that’s never been done before.

Band practice was pretty good. Doug, the replacement drummer, is both good and a perfectionist (yay!). We only made it through one set Saturday afternoon; we’ll need to do the whole thing next Sunday, which will be our only remaining practice. The song we did best was—not surprising—Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street,” which just falls together comfortably every time (it usually gets people out of their chairs dancing, too, when we perform it); second best was “Test Tube Baby,” which we do as pretty fast rock ‘n’ roll, and third, “Tillamook Railroad Blues.” John and I had a chance to play around a little with “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails” before Doug got there; John would like to do it as heavy metal, which I agree would be interesting.

There really isn’t anything I’d cut from the first set on the grounds that we don’t do it very well; we did everything pretty good, even the “Welcome to Hebo Waltz” (which I’d like to keep anyway, because it’s our only waltz). If we do the second set as good as the first, I’ll just have to pick things at random to cut. Our 2-hour set (actually, 1-3/4 hours, with a 15-minute break) has to get cut to 1-1/2 hours.

And I need to play more: thanks in part to the play schedule, the only time this past week I got to play was Wednesday afternoon at the tavern, and the lack of practice was apparent (to me, anyway)—plus my fingers got sore really fast. This coming week, I will get to play on Wednesday (at the tavern), Friday (at City Hall), and Saturday (at the library), all 2-hour sessions, and all that should help. I should take time to record Skip Johnson’s “I Wish You Were Here to Hate My Boyfriends” this week as well. .

Drummer Chris is out of intensive care, and I’ll go see him Monday at the hospital in Portland; no word yet when he’ll be released, or be back to normal, and what (if anything) will be done about his liver, which is reportedly what landed him in the hospital in the first place.

Finally, an e-mail from the music publisher in Nashville, looking for material for a Carrie Underwood Christmas album and new songs for somebody named Jake Owen. I doubt any of my Christmas songs would be Carrie Underwood material (dead animals and injured Santas don’t seem to be her style), but I thought this Owen dude might be worth a shot.

He appears to be decent long-hair-and-beard-and-plays-country-music eye candy, with nearly all female fans (his material is mostly love songs). It does appear he wrote all 10 songs on his last CD, though, and people like that aren’t usually interested in outside material. I wonder what the publisher is up to. I can send them “Duct Tape”; it’s a lost-love song rather than a love song, but the music is probably the closest I have to what the kid plays. And it doesn’t cost anything to respond to the call.

Joe