AND THE WHEELER SUMMERFEST...

Time to plan for the Wheeler Summerfest. Both the bands I’m in are on the agenda—and on the same day. 1-1/2 hour sets each. Main concern I need to have is both bands are performing some of my material, and in no case should they be playing the same song. So it’s necessary to do a “who plays which” shuffling. DEATHGRASS is easier to script for, because we only need to worry about one singer—me. Not in order, I think we could do:

Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
Things Are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—fast two-step
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Crosses By the Roadside—slow two-step
Rotten Candy—fast bluegrass
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie)—country rock
No Good Songs About the War—slow march
Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass
She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly
50 Ways to Cure the Depression—folk-rock
Distraction (Diane Ewing)—slow two-step
The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
Duct Tape—mod. tempo country
Selling Off My Body Parts—fast bluegrass [NEW]
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—mod. two-step

Only one of those is new. 10 of the 18 songs are off the album (45 Degrees North will do “Armadfillo”); four are staples of the Failed Economy shows, and one—“Distraction”—we did at daughter’s wedding. One Woody Guthrie tune; might want to close with another—“Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” which is a real uptempo rocker—if so, I should take out one of the two-steps.

And for 45 DEGREES NORTH—my part, anyway—we can do:

Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow two-step
Hey, Little Chicken—quasi-blues
Welcome to Hebo Waltz—fast waltz

All of those we’ve practiced (and “Armadillo,” with the Heavenly Chorus, is one of the group’s favorites). Need to include one more—to be fair, each of us should have five songs—but I’m not sure what (yet); it should be an uptempo number—the band does enough slow stuff, and I don’t need to add to it further. The others will need to decide what they want to perform—I don’t want to make that decision (though I’ll happily mix it up into a workable arrangement, and script out the Rap). To the extent uptempo numbers are needed, I can always substitute uptempo-er ones of mine for slower ones of mine on the list.

45 Degrees North plays the Pine Grove potluck tomorrow (Tuesday) night—unplugged. Two cities are reportedly thinking of me as their interim city manager, and I might hear from one or the other (or both) in the next couple of days. And Thursday is the first get-together of the “writers’ guild” at the Bay City Arts Center. I don’t want to miss that.

Joe