PREPARING FOR THE THIRSTY LION...

Packing (it’ll take a couple of nights)… I had no idea I’d accumulated so much stuff at a temporary job, living out of a room (well, two rooms—one’s been my office) for five months. Good thing I have a truck.

The Thirsty Lion performance Tuesday, Jan. 11 will be my first solo gig in a long time, and my first one there in over half a year, I think. What to play? It’s a tavern, so one can be a little risqué and get away with it; also because it’s a tavern, one has to work a little harder to get the audience’s attention (though sometimes it’s easier to hold it once you’ve got it).

My experience at the Wild Goose in Ashland taught me that it’s best to start out with something slow and sleazy—after that, one can get more uptempo. I’m not sure the intent I’d had earlier, about not playing anything I’d done before, is necessary—it’s been a long time since I’ve appeared at the Thirsty Lion, and I doubt anybody but host Eric John Kaiser remembers me. Best to concentrate simply on being entertaining.

Either six or seven songs; since I’m playing solo, all the songs will be shorter than the standard five minutes, because there’ll be no lead breaks. How about:

Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?—slow & sleazy
I May Write You from Jupiter—fast bluegrass
Take-Out Food (Stan Good)—slow & sleazy
Song for Charity (and Faith, and Hope)—fast bluegrass
In The Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You—slow & sleazy
The Abomination Two-Step—fast bluegrass

The rapture song is a good attention-getter, so it will be first. “Charity” was a hit with the Friday Night Group (which was a surprise), and “The Abomination Two-Step” got requested twice out of the blue at the coffeehouse in McMinnville (another surprise). The “Shadows” song I just happen to like myself; it’s one of those where it’s hard to tell if I’m being serious or not (and I don’t plan to tell), and maybe that makes people listen.

There should be room for a seventh song at the end; depending on how the time works out (and I’ll have to time it), that could be either “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” (which itself is pretty short, without lead breaks) or “Meet Me at the Stairs.” The latter would let me make a pitch to buy CDs—which I will have with me. (I’ll have the Notebook, too, for signups for the “joelist.”)

Marketing? I can’t do the trick I’ve pulled in the past, of dropping off posters at Music Millenium and a couple other strategic places a week ahead of time—I can’t afford to make a special trip into Portland. I don’t have a good track record generating a crowd from the “joelist” or Facebook, though (there aren’t that many people from Portland in that database, anyway). I can e-mail a poster and notice to a handful of entertainment editors I’m aware of, and contact the Willamette Writers group (who are mostly in Portland)—I’ve been wanting to solicit a paying gig from them—and see what happens.

No music this week; the Friday Night Group won’t be playing New Year’s Eve, and the library’s closed on the Saturday holiday. Next week, though, there will be—and the magazine photographer’s supposedly coming Friday night (and we’ll be missing three of our people, including our bass player and a lead player, because they have a gig). Hope we’re still able to put on a good show.

Joe