PLAYING IN THE "RAPTURE ROOM"...

Sunday’s jam session in Nehalem was next door to the Rainbow Lotus, in a former upstairs apartment that’s been remodeled into a performance space. It’s being officially called “the Center for Creative Consciousness” or some such north Tillamook County moniker; I think of it as “the Rapture Room,” because people coming for the music saw everybody’s vehicles parked on the street and couldn’t figure out where everybody had gone to (and one person did comment, “I didn’t think when the Rapture came, y’all would just end up on the second floor”).

It’s a pretty big space, and has tremendous acoustics. That’s where 45 Degrees North will be performing July 23, a week after the Wheeler Summerfest. (It’ll be the first “christening” of the performance space.) The “Rapture Room” comes across as very informal, since there’s an adjacent room through a big arch that looks like a living room (with included kitchen). I think this’ll be ideal for what we do. The Lotus will provide tea for our concert, and I’ve volunteered to bake cookies.

Michael and Sedona, proprietors of the Lotus, did like the “Blue Krishna” song, so it’s time to record it. I really would like to have a sitar lead on the song (considering the subject matter), and am trying to contact through a mutual friend a musician I know (or know of, rather) back East who built a sitar (and can therefore presumably play one). Failing that, I think I can make the Electric Banjo “emulate” a sitar with one of the effects settings on the Tascam. Perhaps Sedona could play flute, too.

They said they wanted to use the “Rapture Room” for recording, too, and it’d be interesting to see how well it works. I could use it—but my setup allows me to record anywhere, even on a street corner (and I have done that). With my singing mike, which has a small, narrow “cone” within which it’ll pick up sound, and the ability to plug instruments in directly, I don’t need a padded room like most folks do—I didn’t bother to insulate the studio in the garage, for instance. But the “Rapture Room” is a reflective space—that’s what makes it ideal for performing. Conventional recording might end up very echo-ey.

I do think 45 Degrees North is ready for the Summerfest. (I also realize not all of them think so, and practice is good. I just don’t have a lot of time myself to practice in, this week.)

With the idea of being able to create “reference” CDs for 45 Degrees North, like I do for Deathgrass, I’d really like to film our performance at the Summerfest. There’s a trick I know of (and think I can do) with the Final Cut program on the Arts Center’s Macs—extracting the sound from a video file and exporting it as a *.wav file, at which point it can be broken up into pieces and dumped to a CD as individual “songs.” What I don’t know is whether I could get a decent recording out of the video camera. There may be no way to know for sure without trying it.

If the recording comes out good, we might also have a “live” album on our hands. If that’s the case, I’d like to film the Deathgrass performance, too, with the same goal in mind.

And why we need the reference CDs? Because there’s no time any more: Wheeler Summerfest (Deathgrass and 45 Degrees North) July 16; 2nd Street Market (45 Degrees North) July 22; the “Rapture Room” in Nehalem (45 Degrees North) July 23; Willamette Writers Group (solo) July 28; Garibaldi Days (Deathgrass) July 30; Southern Oregon Songwriters Summer Concert in Talent (with Dan Doshier) August 6; Manzanita Farmers Market (45 Degrees North) August 12. Eating and sleeping? Should’ve done that last winter…

Joe