13 DAYS...

5:30 a.m. and it’s already way too hot—summer has hit the Oregon Coast with a vengeance, much like it used to do back East when I was a kid. It’s little comfort that I predicted that would happen (especially since I managed to be completely unprepared for it). Probably little comfort, too, that if my predictions are right, summer will be short as well as brutal. It’ll still be brutal.

13 days, now, until 45 Degrees North’s Big Gig in Ilwaco. The time for planning is over; all energy from here on out needs to go into rehearsal. We should consider the setlist frozen—no more changes, additions or deletions. What we got is what we got, and we concentrate on making what we got come out as perfect as possible. We should know by now—though it’s taken a while to get there—what key each of the songs is in; we should know, too, when lead breaks are, and how long and what progressions (verse or chorus) they follow—though I’m not sure we know that as well as we should.

There are some of the songs that are not long enough, and they’ll need to be “padded,” with repetition or additional lead breaks. Key there is to get everybody used to doing the song “our way,” not how it is on somebody else’s record, so it’s automatic when we’re on stage. Part of my insistence on leaving absolutely nothing to chance. (I want to hear—and critique—everybody’s Raps, too.)

Got to insist on that now, because I am going to run out of time myself. In the 13 days between now and the Big Gig, I also have to fit in practice for the puppet show (which is June 17), my own solo gig in Portland (June 14), the video class (June 7), filming for the video class, and one or two news stories to cover for the paper, too. If I get called for a job interview during that time, it’ll eat up what little time I have left. .

One piece of prep work I didn’t do, and miss having done, and will do for the future as time permits, is the CDs For The Band, with the setlist in order, with each song arranged in draft form exactly the way we’re going to do it on stage. It’s a big time-saver, and probably would have been a big frustration-saver, too. That’s actually easy to do for Deathgrass, because I’m (for better or worse) the lead singer, and we’re doing mostly my stuff, and I can pop out a quick and dirty recording of a song the way it’s going to be sung, because I’m singing it.

It gets a bit more complicated when there’s three other lead singers (I consider the fiddle a “singer”). I can’t sing their stuff—they have to sing it. That means recording them in situ, and dealing with the Tascam’s one-song-at-a-time and guitar-and-vocal-separate limitations (I have figured out work-arounds for both, I think). And then merging those recordings, roughly mastered, into a Setlist CD. I didn’t do any of that, and at this point there is probably not the time to do it. I will do it, though, for next time. We have a couple of Next Times coming up: the Pine Grove Potluck June 21 (for an hour), and the Rainbow Lotus June 24 (2 hours). As noted earlier, spending an afternoon apiece with each of the performers would probably be sufficient. We don’t need perfection. We need a “this is how it goes.”

I would like over time to get us away from doing covers. Originals, traditionals and songs by other unknowns are actually easier to deal with if one is doing the Setlist CDs; one doesn’t get confused by an Already-Famous Person’s rendition of a song (which would be in the wrong key anyway), because there isn’t one. I already have in The Catalog some co-writes (musications) that I’d love to have 45 Degrees North perform; they’d do a fine job, and the writing is better than anything on the commercial market these days. And I think if I put out a call to people I know, saying “Hey, we’ve got this pool of talent here—have you anything you’d like us to perform?” I’d get stuff. Lots of it, probably.

Joe