THE "12 REASONS WHY JOE IS GOING TO HELL" ALBUM...

I’m slowly slipping back into my new/old role as newspaper reporter. It’s not a real job—I’m just a fill-in, while the real reporter is having a baby. I have covered three news stories in the past 24 hours (still have two of the stories to write, though), and have a fourth to do tomorrow afternoon. It was a distinct pleasure to be able to go to a meeting and do the write-up in an hour after I got back home, and know it was right. If I could keep that up, it’d be worthwhile. And people are starting to not ask, “Do you still write for the paper?” when they call. They just call.

I have, I believe, all the songs for the “12 Reasons Why Joe is Going to Hell” album. (I am limited to 12 unless I change the title.) They are, not in order:

Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy
Song for Charity (and Faith, and Hope)—fast bluegrass
Born-Again Barbie (co-wrote with Scott Rose)—Everly Brothers-style rockabilly
Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?—slow & sleazy
Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus—trad. Gospel
The Abomination Two-Step—fast bluegrass
In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You—slow & sleazy
Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep—Johnny Cash-style rock ‘n’ roll
Dead Sweethearts Polka—polka
Angel in Chains—country death metal
Electronic Love—slow & sleazy
I Want a Man for Christmas—rock & roll

First six on the list are religious songs (using the term loosely, of course). The rest are about a stalker (“Shadows”), bestiality (“Sheep”), a serial killer (“Sweethearts”), suicide (“Angel”), Internet porn (“Electronic Love”), and, well, Christmas. A good mix—some rock ‘n’ roll, some bluegrass, a polka, one Gospel, one country death metal (possibly the only country death metal song ever written), and a bunch that can’t be described as anything but “sleazy.”

Polly Hager wants her band to do a couple of these, and if I could get and use recordings of them, we could call the album “12 Reasons Why Polly and Joe Are Going to Hell.” It’d be nice to have Polly’s voice on other songs, too.

It’s going to be a while before I can afford to record anything commercially again; I will simply have to assemble things on a catch-as-catch-can basis over time, as opportunities present themselves, and then master the entire product when I have all the pieces together. That is an opportunity to experiment with instrumentation; some of the songs (the rockers, say) need a full band, but there are some that could be done well with minimal instrumentation. (Or odd instrumentation—I could really use an accordion on “The Dead Sweethearts Polka,” for instance.)

And there may well be more songs before I’m done—I do expect to keep writing, and every now and then, one will pop out that’s going to be a candidate for the “Going to Hell” album.

Album cover for this needs to be simple—just a plain brown wrapper. (There are even companies that make CD cases out of recycled cardboard—cheap and appropriately gross.) Simple lettering—the photos and other fancy stuff will all be inside.

So that’s the next step. Bunch of work to do before that happens, though.

Joe