HOW'D WE DO THIS YEAR?

Time, as we get close to December, to review the 2010 Workslist and see what got accomplished. This year, not much. I suppose I could blame a lot of it on having had a job since the end of July, but I won’t—the idea was to be able to do both. I managed to fit Concert Season into the schedule, but not a lot else.

What have I accomplished in 2010? I did manage to WRITE IN SOME DIFFERENT GENRES—a medieval ballad (“Last Song of the Highwayman”), a country death metal anthem (“Angel in Chains”), and another polka (“The Dead Sweethearts Polka”). I managed to EXPAND USE OF VIDEO, too: the Hong-Kong-via-eBay video camera turned out to be quite good, I can do video with my digital camera, too, I’ve got a good tripod, and I’ve acquired Skype.

On the other hand, the JOE ALBUM is precisely where it was a year ago; the SOUTHERN PIGFISH ALBUM now has an album’s worth of songs, but is no closer to getting produced. No WEEK IN NASHVILLE, no JOE WEBSITE, and while I did enter three SONG CONTESTS this year, I didn’t win any of them. And I’m no closer to FIGURING OUT HOW TO MAKE A LIVING OFF THIS STUFF.

I suppose I’m a little closer to BECOMING A HOUSEHOLD WORD. (Still not as good a household word as “toilet paper,” though. People spend money on toilet paper.) I did expand a little into the New Market made available by the temporary job; there’s a new (albeit small) fan base that’s gotten used to me being around, and I might yet manage to get a concert out of it before my time here is over. Did a fair amount of work with the Coventry songwriters group in England, too, though my writing volume declined as the job got busier. I’ve done rather a lot of graphic-design work this year, too, for quite a few new people—all of it for free—and I hope that’s gotten some attention.

PLAY WITH MORE PEOPLE? The rock band in Astoria didn’t work out, but “Deathgrass” is a going concern—people definitely know who we are, and we’ve got fans (and I’m continually surprised how many of those fans are young). The eclectic ensembles that I play with at the Tillamook Library, the Forestry Center, Garibaldi City Hall, and (before I had a job) the Garibaldi Pub probably don’t qualify, since they’re usually the same people. I don’t know if there are MORE PEOPLE PLAYING MY STUFF (that probably means there aren’t).

So the 2011 Worklist is going to look pretty much like the 2010 one. MORE VIDEO, to be sure—deejay Len Amsterdam’s mantra, “Video is the new audio,” seems more apparent every day. With a good video camera now, I might be able to do a lot of experimentation. The WEBSITE; the ALBUMS. I expect I have to postpone travel for a while, but that’s okay—I’m not famous enough to be able to get any real advantage out of it. PUBLISHING I really will try to take care of when we record the albums. I probably do not have enough contacts to do a good job of publishing anyone but myself, but I can definitely publish myself.

About six weeks remain until the end of the year, and there are still things I want to (and think I can) do. Chief is another Failed Economy Christmas Show with the band, benefiting the Garibaldi Food Pantry. This time, it’d be nice to get it filmed and re-broadcast on cable TV. I’d like to put a similar concert together in Lafayette, too, to benefit the local food bank here—and it’d be fun to snag one of the “featured” Friday night gigs at the coffeehouse in McMinnville (I can talk to the organizers when I go there to play music Wednesday night).

And there’s a Christmas song to work on, too; I’ve managed to do one every year for several years running—some better than others, of course. Re-reading old files (which I have to do now and then), I ran across a comment on last year’s Christmas song, “I Want a Man for Christmas”: someone had said, “There’s got to be a dead reindeer in here somewhere.” And that’s a line that really needs a song to go with it…

Joe