PREPARING FOR SOUTHERN OREGON...

I think I’ve been writing an issue of the blog just about every day lately. To those who have been reading it, in Latvia and elsewhere: don’t worry—it’s just a temporary thing. I have been frightfully busy, and I have to write things down or I will forget them. I regularly refer to back issues of the blog to remind myself of what I was supposed to be doing.

I was worrying about what to play in the Southern Oregon Songwriters concert Aug. 6—just a week and a half away—and realized I don’t have to worry. It’s been almost a year since I was last in southern Oregon (well, 11 months and a week, but who’s counting?), and I’ve written plenty of new stuff. I can play the new stuff. I can do:

Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy two-step
The Dead Sweethearts Polka—fast bluegrass
In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You—slow & sleazy
Selling Off My Body Parts—fast bluegrass

One more short one, to fill out my 20 minutes. (Dan Doshier and I are splitting 40 minutes.) “Crosses by the Roadside,” I think—I need to do one off the album, since I’ll be trying to sell CDs while I’m down there. That does put three two-steps on the setlist, but two of them are songs I don’t think anyone’s heard before (and I can try to make them a little different—maybe with Dan playing different instruments on the lead). They are all predictable progressions (all in the same key, even), so they should be easy to follow. Next step: Mix it up with Dan’s stuff, so we’re not too compartmentalized. I may have to wait until I get to southern Oregon to do that. I haven’t heard what Dan wants to play yet.

I suppose I ought to apologize to the audience for not including any dead-animal songs (I have a reputation to maintain, after all); instead, what folks will get is the pole dancers, a serial killer, a stalker, and another of those tongue-firmly-in-cheek anthems about the Failed Economy. There is one song about a dead person, though (“Crosses”). Maybe that’ll be enough.

The above list doesn’t include “Last Song of the Highwayman,” “Song for Charity (and Faith, and Hope),” “Take Me Back to the Sixties,” “Earwigs in the Eggplant,” “Blue Krishna” or “Angel in Chains,” all of which were also written since I last went to southern Oregon. Based on crowd reactions, those are all “keepers,” too. I think the ones I put on the setlist are the best attention-getters, however.

The gig will be outside, I believe, at the Community Center in Talent, Oregon, just down the road from Phoenix, where I was briefly city manager, and the audience will probably be mostly other writers, their families and friends. And it will be hot. The Medford area has a climate akin to the Los Angeles area (only with more trees and fewer cars).

I’ve been told it might be possible to play a couple more performances while I’m down there, one of which might even be paid; that’d be nice. I’ll have the Ugly Orange Bucket (with its “Tipping Is Not A City In China” message) with me, and CDs to sell, too. To the extent possible, I’ll be prepared like a good ex-Boy Scout ought to be.

Practice with Deathgrass Wednesday night this week, the Willamette Writers gig Thursday, Deathgrass performance at Garibaldi Days Saturday. The following week I can devote to 45 Degrees North—at least the first part of it. Besides practicing a whole new hour of material (the Manzanita Farmer’s Market show is three hours), I’ve got a sound system to fix: we’ll be playing outdoors, and we need to be loud and sound good—two things that don’t appear to be possible at the same time with the sound system we’ve got, and I still don’t know why.

Joe