UPDATES...

On the radio Friday for the Bay City Arts Center… A number of people apparently heard the broadcast; response I got back was “Wow—you sure have a lot of stuff going on there.” Yes, there is. One additional event I’d like to have happening there in May is the Deathgrass CD Release Event—we should have the CDs from DiskFaktory by mid-month (and hopefully they did everything right). Both radio stations got advance copies of the CD last week, and hopefully will play them.

It would be fun to do the CD Release Event a little differently (I like pushing the envelope until the envelope pushes back), and invite a bunch of musicians to bring their instruments down and jam with the band. The Arts Center’s auditorium can hold almost 100 people, and the performance space can accommodate a fair number of musicians; the soundboard has 15 inputs, as I recall, and if some people brought their own amps, there’d be room for even more. I do seem to know rather a lot of musicians in the area. And they are familiar with a lot of my stuff, too (since if I have to sing something, it will almost always be my stuff).

Funny, then, that one of the partners in the new little guitar shop in Tillamook (which opened right after the bigger one closed its doors) was complaining there didn’t seem to be any musicians in Tillamook. (I’d heard the same complaint from a blues harp player in Tillamook—who at least now knows the guitar shop guy.) The musicians are out there, and they’re slowly but surely finding each other. A key is having places to play informally, and there’s a growing number of those: I got to play four times this week, and will do so three times this coming week, and two of the places will even be different from the week before. And I don’t doubt that when I show up, somebody’s going to know who I am and what I can do.

(Speaking of which… I noticed four new people in the audience at the library on Saturday who had been at Garibaldi City Hall the night before. And they seemed to be watching me. I don’t know if they were, really—but they did seem excited when I mentioned the album coming out. Fans? Really?)

The next step—an important one—is getting those musicians paid. We get the musicians out of hiding, and give them places to play, and (important) get the venues accustomed to live music bringing customers in the door, and then we can assemble little combos of those musicians that are able to play other nights, and other places, for pay. Because I can do that, I assume others can, too.

Music this week at the Tsunami in Wheeler (Thursday), Garibaldi City Hall (Friday), and a tavern next to the music store in Tillamook (Saturday). Saturday night is the open mike at the Arts Center, and The Impromptus will make an appearance (minus Wayne, our bass player), doing one by Candice (“Still The One”) and three of mine (“Dead Things in the Shower,” “Armadillo on the Interstate” and “Pole Dcancing for Jesus”).

I try to enter a couple of song contests every year; one for this year is the Goodnight Kiss Music contest, coming up in August (I know this, because I wrote their initial press release). First prize (like I’m really going to win first prize) is a music video, and I’ve told Janet the publisher if I win I want to have a video done of a Southern Pigfish song. It’d be a challenge for the videographer, since the band doesn’t exist…

Joe