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, December 29, 2010

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

Monday, December 27, 2010

THREE WORKING DAYS LEFT...

Rain, hail, and high wind—but no snow. I’m told it was 59 degrees in Tillamook on Christmas Day. Folks down South, and overseas, were complaining about blizzards; here in northern Oregon, the only place you’ll find a Blizzard is at the local Dairy Queen. I thought this Global Warming was supposed to be, well, global?

Discovered I’d archived this week’s blog onto a CD before I’d finished writing it. What with archiving the blogs, the old newspaper columns, and all the Acrobat conversions of my PageMaker files, I did manage to free up 2GB of space on Alice’s 40-GB hard drive, though—and I’ll need it for projects.

Just three working days left of the Lafayette gig; I’ll spend two days of that getting ready for the new city manager, and one day with him. 15 pages of notes, thus far, on stuff I’ve started that I’m leaving to him to finish (or not, as the case may be—it’ll be his show from now on). I will actually miss everybody, even the folks who were my loudest critics. I didn’t expect the job to be fun, but I think I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself. (I can’t fade off into the sunset, though, because the sun sets too early this time of year. As Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”)

There is a lot to do when I get back to Garibaldi. I have work to do on the house that got put on hold last summer when I got the job; a Deathgrass album to record; a Deathgrass benefit concert for the Food Pantry; a couple of solo gigs to line up—to list a few. I have a new Skip Johnson song to musicate, and a lead guitar track to record for one of my favorite Scott Garriott songs (as soon as he e-mails it to me). A pile of job applications I’m waiting on answers to, too.

There are at least a couple of the music videos I can do right away. “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” is easiest, because it can all be done with the computer and scanner, and the music is already professionally recorded (it was on the “Santa’s Fallen” CD). Next easiest may be “The Dog’s Song”; I will want professionally-recorded music for that, but I can get it later. (One more song for Deathgrass to do in the studio.)

For the rest, I may need help. “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot” can be mostly be shot on a beach (with a little footage in front of a tavern), but it’d be nice to have a few cameo shots of me in it, lip-synching the words; it might be possible to set the camera up stationary on the tripod to do that, but it’d be easier if someone else were running the camera.

I did get invited back to Eric John Kaiser’s “Portland Songwriters’ Showcase” at the Thirsty Lion, Tuesday, 11 January; I’ll try, as usual, to give them songs they haven’t heard before (I have my previous Thirsty Lion setlists for reference). Prize—which, as usual, I don’t think I have a prayer of winning—is a session in a Portland recording studio. I’ll hope instead to sell enough CDs to pay for my gas there and back again. It’ll be an opportunity to contact the “joelist” and remind them I still exist, and am still playing music (even though most of them won’t be able to come to the gig).

And Oregon Coast magazine is sending a photographer to the Friday Night Group’s session in Garibaldi Jan. 7. I’m not sure how I ended up being the apparent Contact Person for this—especially being the one who’s been out of town for five months—but I’ll take advantage of it if (and to the extent) I can.

Joe

Sunday, December 19, 2010

THE 2011 WORKLIST...

Almost January—and time for the 2011 Worklist. Easy this year, because we didn’t accomplish that much on the 2010 Worklist—no DEATHGRASS ALBUM, no SOUTHERN PIGFISH ALBUM, no JOE WEBSITE; no TRIP TO NASHVILLE (deliberately bailed on that one because of money), and I didn’t WIN SONG CONTESTS though I entered three. I’m still not a HOUSEHOLD WORD (“toilet paper” is still a more familiar household word) , and I still don’t have any better answer to MAKING MONEY OFF THIS than “Perform a whole lot more than I’ve been doing.” Maybe there isn’t one.

On the plus side, I did manage to do a decent VIDEO or two (and learned a lot), and acquired DECENT VIDEO EQUIPMENT. Managed to EXPAND THE FAN BASE a little, playing at the coffeehouse in McMinnville. Nine new songs in 2010, five (maybe six) of them “keepers,” and three of them were in DIFFERENT GENRES; four co-writes (all musications), of which two were “keepers,” too. (I scripted a couple plays, too. That wasn’t on the list.) My productivity dropped sharply after getting the Lafayette job, but I suppose that’s to be expected. There just wasn’t a lot of free time after that.

So for 2011:

WRITING. One good song a month, and one good co-write a month—both on average, of course. Keep exploring different genres; I haven’t done jazz, or ragtime, for instance. Eastern European folk dances? Why not?

THE ALBUMS. Record the Deathgrass album; finish the Southern Pigfish album (and it’s supposed to be videos, on flash drive). I have enough material for the “12 Reasons Why Joe Is Going to Hell” album, and it’d be fun to do that, too. (Let’s be real, though—the money for that would have to come from somewhere.)

MARKETING. CDBaby (for the new album), the Joe Website (simple, with links to everything), and the publishing company. Figure out a way to use the promotional machinery to get more gigs. Get some video footage for gig solicitation of Deathgrass performing, also of me. Train one of the computers to produce DVDs. CD release parties, of course—one on the Coast, and one in southern Oregon.

VIDEO. Vid-ify the half-dozen or so songs I can do easily; line up resources to do the complicated ones. Do an experimental fan-generated video of the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends,” and if that works, do more.

MORE (AND MORE PAYING) GIGS. Besides the Concert Season stuff from this year, hit all the people I’ve hit up before (or wanted to)—the Willamette Writers’ Conference, Neskowin Harvest Festival, Whitney Streed’s comedy open mike in Portland, Garibaldi Museum, and so on. Some solo, some with the band.

STAY IN TOUCH WITH EVERYBODY. That was the hardest thing to do while I was employed; I did it, but not easily or well. Make it easier and simpler, without being remote or insensitive (or expensive). That’s a challenge a lot of independent musicians face these days—we may be breaking new ground by figuring out how to do it.

Lastly, ORGANIZE THE WORLD TOUR. (I decided there ought be one “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp” item on the list.) I know (or think I know) people in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, the Philippines, Sweden, and on the Arabian peninsula; getting there really is doable for not much money. The operative question is what I’d do after I got there. There may at least be a song in it:

“They applauded my performance back in Ulan Bator,
Though they might not have understood a lot I said;
Din’t know Barbie, or Jesus, or a thing about the war,
But they liked it that the animals were dead…”

Joe

Sunday, December 12, 2010

PRE-CHRISTMAS & ALBUM THOUGHTS...

The Christmas-present CDs are done and wrapped for the folks at work; this weekend, I baked more cookies and stuffed stockings. And made some more Christmas CDs. Six songs on those, but only five are actually Christmas songs. (Thought about including “In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You,” since I’ve been telling folks this season that it’s really a Christmas song because Santa is a stalker—sees you when you’re sleeping, and all that—but I’ve resisted the temptation.)

Might get to go to the Southern Oregon Songwriters’ Christmas party (it’s next weekend); it appears the weather will be decent for traveling—40-degree temperatures and nothing more dangerous than rain. It would be nice to see everybody—and staying in touch has been hard since I got employed. Yes, there’s e-mail, but I’m a country boy—I like and need “face time.” I haven’t been down there since the concert in August, and that was a real whirlwind visit.

I discovered I had almost forgotten the Album List (and here I was attempting to get the thing recorded in January). Here’s the last iteration. Hight “Dead Things in the Shower” (after the opening cut):

Dead Things in the Shower (with Bobbie Gallup)—fast two-step
Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
No Good Songs About the War—slow marching two-step
Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass
The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
Crosses by the Roadside—slow two-step
She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
Rotten Candy—fast Gospel
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—deliberate two-step

Two co-writes (our standard opening and closing songs for concerts, and they’ll be the opener and closer on the album, too); two that Mike harmonizes on; and half (at least) that’ll show off Doc’s harmonica playing. And a good mix of styles, too: some blues, some bluegrass, some rock ‘n’ roll. Including “Rotten Candy” lets us put the little sticker on the cover that says “Includes the Song Rejected by American Idol!” And of course, “No Good Songs About the War” won first prize in that contest over in England. We’ll dedicate the album to blues harp player Dick Ackerman, who died last year. (“Crosses by the Roadside” on there for him.)

While I’m thinking about it—and have time—I should design the album cover. I know what it (and the record label) should look like. I just need to stage the photo. I have photos of the band, too—and a good black-and-white one of Dick as well.

Music Wednesday at the coffeehouse in McMinnville; unless something changes at the last minute (and I’m not expecting it to), this will be my last performance there. Since it’s before Christmas (Dec. 15), I should do them the one Christmas song I haven’t performed yet—“Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire.” I’ll have to figure out the tablature again—it appears I never wrote it down when I recorded it. For the serious song, “Hank’s Song,” I think—I haven’t done that there yet. Not sure about the rest.

Never did hear back from the church soup kitchen I’d contacted (on the advice of a lady in Lafayette) about doing a Christmas show. I won’t press; I get enough rejections from potential employers—I don’t need to deliberately solicit them. It’s quite possible the soup kitchen operators listened to the music and decided it was too dark or too funny for their venue. It’s okay. Out in the remains of the garden, I have the tomatoes that never did ripen rotting on their trees to remind me things don’t always work out the way you want.

Joe

Saturday, December 4, 2010

A FAN-BASED VIDEO IDEA...

A music video idea, courtesy of Lorelei Loveridge, who describes herself as “chief rabble-rouser” of the Performing Songwriters—United Worldwide group that coalesced in the wake of Performing Songwriter magazine’s demise a couple years ago. (Good group, by the way. Full of neat ideas—and innovation, in my opinion, is what is going to allow independent writers and musicians to make a living in the Modern World.)

There are apparently some artists and groups out there that have done “fan-based” music videos—the video consisting of clips contributed by fans, sometimes footage of them singing, sometimes photos… There’s one Johnny Cash tribute song that consists of line drawings of the Man in Black contributed by fans, and strung together along with the music.

Could I do this? I think so: I’ve wrestled with scripting out video for my songs for a while, and only have four where I could create something that’s both (1) innovative and (2) easy and cheap. (I have a couple that would take production and expertise I simply don’t have and can’t afford.) And I do want to do video; as DJ Len Amsterdam says, “Video is the new audio.” For a lot of the songs, though, I default to “well, maybe we ought to just film a live performance.” I wouldn’t want to do that for everything—in fact, I’d rather do it for very few things. I am insistent that every song has to be different.

My candidate for a fan-based video would be the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends.” The imagery is strange—Dylanesque obscurantism, after all—but one doesn’t want footage of the band performing it, because Southern Pigfish (as I remind folks every concert) doesn’t exist. On the other hand, the song is popular; we play it every show. (It can be argued that Deathgrass’ performances are why the song is popular—but we wouldn’t be performing it if people didn’t like it.) So it’s a song people might want to contribute something to because they like it.

Here’d be The Call, I think. I’d ask people to both film and record themselves singing along with the song. If they play an instrument (the “joelist” is chock full of other musicians, after all), feel free to play along, too. I’ll take the footage and “soundage” and mix and match things together to where I think it looks and sounds best. (I may need assistance with that. I’m not sure either “Alice” or “StuartLittle” has the brainpower to handle mixing on that scale.) The basic soundtrack on the video, though, would be Deathgrass, recorded in the studio—and I have to do that first, before issuing The Call. That soundtrack is what I’d need to send out to everybody.

And then we’ll see what we got. I have a feeling it might be great. If it is, I might try to do some more, using slightly different parameters (because every song has to be different—see above). I know some painters, some photographers, some mechanics (now, that would be interesting), some actors—there’s a lot of ignored talent out there

Timing? January, perhaps—it’s pretty certain my job in Lafayette ends the end of December, and then I’ll be both schedule-free and income-free until I can garner another temporary or permanent job (which, more than likely, would be out of town again). January, accordingly, would be the time to do all this work, as long as I can do it for very little cost. Another item for the 2011 worklist.

The fan-based video idea is one way to accommodate the need for people (I don’t want to call them “fans,” really) to be connected to “their” artists and writers. They need to feel not only that they know the artist personally, but the artist knows them personally, too. That’s something I and other small-scale independents like me can do, and the Big Boys can’t (especially with the Big Boys’ focus on not letting “non-members” inside their closed circle). The question has always been how to involve “our” people in what we do—just being listeners and audience isn’t really enough. Maybe this is a way.

Joe