BUH-BYE, FRIDAY NIGHT GROUP?

Getting ready to leave for the Willamette Writers gig in Portland; got the Arts Center’s 4-channel amp, my mike and stand; taking guitar, “joelist” notebook—and I better print out some business cards while I’m at it. These people don’t know me. Hopefully, they’ll want to when it’s all over.

One change in the setlist: I’m not going to play “Earwigs in the Eggplant,” because I haven’t practiced it on the guitar. I’ll substitute “Blue Krishna” instead. It, too, is about writing on demand, so to speak.

Not only have I had it running through my head a lot, I now have the electric sitar tracks from “Doctor Tom.” There’s actually only one track, but if I insert it twice (in Audacity), offset by a verse-and-chorus, and have one coming through the right speaker and the other from the left, it sounds like “dueling sitars.” I think I’ll keep that. Next week, I’d like to record Sedona’s flute if she’s ready, and then I think the song will be done.

I’d like to send that one off to the Coventry songwriters; they had a “shout it out” challenge a while back which I never responded to—but “Blue Krishna” does have that “Light the boy a candle, and call out his name” line in the chorus. It might qualify. I have been fairly successful in turning a number of the Coventry challenges into something sick and twisted—they want “deep river,” and I give them a song about a serial killer, and so forth.

My suggestions for my piece of the Southern Oregon Songwriters concert have been sent off to Dan, so I’m about as ready for that as I can be, too. Deathgrass has practiced for the Garibaldi Days gig, too. We are ready.

A word about the Friday Night Group, because some folks have asked. It appears to be falling apart. And no, I’m not going to do anything about it, even though I was one of the founders (so to speak), eight years ago, and kind of regard it as one of my children. I don’t control things there any more. I will just watch. And be a little sad.

What’s happened over time is the group has acquired some “musicians” who aren’t, really—they don’t know a lot, and can’t do a lot. Some are learning pretty fast, but others don’t, and that’s been frustrating, I think, for the more experienced musicians. So the best musicians have drifted off, singly or in groups (some have formed bands, and are getting gigs, which is great—one thing the Friday Night Group has always been good at is being a breeding ground for performers). I was one of the off-drifters, too: I want to hang with people better’n I am, because I want to learn from them, and there isn’t anybody left to learn from any more. So I, too, have found other things to do. One of the hosts recently went into the hospital for an operation, and is facing a very long recovery; that’s probably the death knell for the group. There hasn’t been music at City Hall for maybe a month.

I have to regard it as one of those “circle of life” things. It happens, and I can’t prevent or stop it. On the plus side, some of the folks who are determined to keep learning have begun getting together quietly, elsewhere—and I want to encourage that, and them; if something revives in the future, it may be because of them. I won’t do anything myself until after Concert Season is over. I will not have the time.

Joe