NEW COMPUTER--AND VIDEO THOUGHTS...

The new computer (its name appears to be “Justin”) is up and running. Does Internet just fine, and I've recovered a few Website links—by no means all. Got a word processor (Open Office), Audacity (this time with the *.mp3 “exporter”), installed my old Acrobat, digital camera and Click 'n' Design programs and a replacement photo processor (my 1996-vintage Adobe PhotoDeluxe is too old to work); still need to do PageMaker, the business card program, and a couple others. I also have to switch sound cards, apparently—the one in “Justin” is garbage.

I have tons of files to transfer over, and it won't be that easy. ”Alice” has finally given up the ghost (her motherboard is completely dead), so I'll have to pull her hard drive, add it to a PC of equivalent vintage (I know where there is one), and dump the files to a couple of flash drives to transfer to “Justin.” Alas, change is never easy.

Computer designs changed drastically since “Alice” was built, so I can't just add her old hard drive to “Justin”—I have to re-install each and every program (and some, like my 1997 version of Lotus, won't work any more). It's why I'm not a great fan of progress. (And this version of Windows XP has something called “Windows Dancer.” When you click on it, a dancing girl appears in the corner of the screen, gyrating. Why was that necessary?)

I do want to try creating that fan-generated music video. I think I'll use “Blue Krishna” for the experiment: it's a draft recording, but a pretty good one, and the Hinduesque subject matter may encourage people to be creative. I think Michael and Sedona should have first crack at a camera, since the Krishna painting at their Rainbow Lotus tea house was the inspiration for the song, and then I'll randomly tap others. Everybody can have a CD of the song for reference as soon as I have “Justin” the new 'puter making CDs. If I use folks close to home for my videographers, I can deliver and pick up the cameras personally, making the process move a lot faster. (Still, it'd be fun to do one of these really long distance, and transfer the cameras around by mail. One could end up with some fascinating stuff.)

I can overlay credits during the instrumental break (like I've done in the last two music videos), and maybe overlay lyrics to the song, too, if the footage I get seems to lend itself to it. And I'll want to add a Rap at the beginning, explaining both the genesis of the song and the fan-generated video idea—and give credit to the videographers. (It'd be nice to do that—or part of it—live. I could do that on one of the Arts Center's Macs—but I wonder how my new 'puter would handle a Webcam? I do have one of those, a good one I think, that I never hooked up to either “Alice” or “StuartLittle.”)

And once the “Blue Krishna” video is done, then what? More such videos? A lot depends on how this one comes out. One way or another, every song of mine should be turned into video; not only is “video the new audio,” as DJ Len Amsterdam maintains, but being on video exposes the song to a whole different audience, that's not hearing the songs on CD.

Another performance opportunity: the music program at the 2nd Street Market is under new management (again), and they've asked me if I'm interested in a Friday night slot. Maybe. I appreciate the offer (and I'd said I wanted more exposure), but it'd sure be nice to have accompaniment for something like that. I think I get on people's nerves if I'm singing at them for more than an hour, and this is a 2-hour set.

Sound isn't a problem—I think I can borrow again the 4-channel amp I used for the Willamette Writers gig, and that'll work for the 2nd Street Market's stage. (And of course the gig is unpaid. The 2nd Street Market has a long way to go before they can afford to pay performers. We'd be splitting tips. I'm generally happy to play for free, but I'm uncomfortable asking anyone else to.) The Hoffman Center in Manzanita is doing another talent show (finally)--October 1, same day as the Train Set, but at a different time. Yes, I'm interested. (Have to audition first.) It's been suggested that this time they get “The Abomination Two-Step.”

Music Thursday night at the Tsunami in Wheeler, Friday night at City Hall in Garibaldi, and maybe Saturday afternoon at the Tillamook library (don't know about that one yet—it's Labor Day weekend). Perhaps Sunday night at the “Rapture Room” I can start the camera going around for the “Blue Krishna” video.

Joe

"BLUE KRISHNA"--AND MARKETING...

“Blue Krishna” is online: http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=10947098 With Sedona Marie (co-owner of the Rainbow Lotus) on flute, and “Rockin’ Dr. Tom” Tracy on sitar. Mixed in Audacity because poor about-to-be-replaced “Alice” the ‘puter couldn’t produce a decent CD to dump to the Tascam.

Fun song, and I am happy with the way it turned out. Commercial? I doubt there’s a market for that sort of thing; it’ll get played (and maybe requested) at the Rainbow Lotus, where it all started, and maybe a few other places, but it’s unlikely to be a regular inclusion on a setlist, much less ever make it to a record. The recording is an interesting experiment—yes, a sitar really can be a bluegrass instrument. (Of course, George Harrison showed it was a rock ‘n’ roll instrument, so no one should be surprised.)

That does beg the question how one does market stuff these days. Even the Nashville pundits agree the old models don’t work any more. (The big record labels appear to be the only ones still maintaining you can’t become a success without a contract from a big record label—but they’re reportedly in serious financial trouble themselves.)

There are a lot of success stories out there featuring folks who ignored or bypassed the “traditional” (record label) route, but the unanswered question in each case is “How did they get noticed?” There are a lot of good writers and musicians out there, and with times hard, more and more are performing in order to make ends meet (for some, it’s the only way they have to make ends meet).

So you do gigs (and maybe some of them will even be paying gigs), and you have music posted online, and videos on YouTube (et al.), and a commercially-recorded CD for sale online and through Retail Outlets and at gigs. None of that guarantees you success or even an income, though they’re important pieces of the “getting noticed” program. (A little like winning the lottery. Very few people win the lottery, but one thing they all have in common is they all bought tickets.)

I’m not after a guarantee, particularly (it’d be nice, of course), but I am a fan of targeted marketing—deliberately going after the people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. (That’s how I’ve done personnel recruitments as a city manager, and it’s worked out very well.) In this case, I’m not sure where or who the target is.

That shouldn’t stop me. One can broadcast—it’s inefficient, but one might see a target audience begin to be identifiable somewhere in the process. Internet “stations” abound; they can all get the CD. Venues can get cold calls with a CD (or, if I’m soliciting a solo gig, a DVD of me performing solo). Festivals can get a “You don’t know me, but…” letter—again, with a CD or DVD. And one can drop periodic (and hopefully not annoying) requests into Social Media telling them about these efforts and saying, “Hey, if you know any of these people, would you put in a good word for me?” And I can find these people the same way I find city manager jobs to apply for: keep my eyes and ears open, and when I hear a name dropped, go after it.

More videos to do; video is one place I can be really experimental, since I don’t know enough to have any preconceived notions. I saw an ad from one video production company saying that (for a price, of course) they’d send you a camera and you could shoot a bunch of footage that they’d proceed to turn into a music video. Novel idea, there. I have two old digital cameras that can “do” video. Could I tap some people I know and ask them to shoot some footage that they think would fit a particular song I gave ‘em (I wouldn’t care what it was—could be scenery, or even their band playing the song), and then mail me back the camera? If I could get several people to do this for the same song, I could blend the clips together, and it could be really interesting.

As with the “Blue Krishna” song, it might be nothing more than a Fun Thing. On the other hand, how many artists enlist their fans in making videos of their songs? Why not?

Joe

SONG CONTEST(S)...

It is time, I think, to enter another song contest. I try to do a couple every year. This one is the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, put on by a songwriters’ group in Washington, D.C. I really don’t know much about them—but it was comforting that their rules said they’d only accept professionally-produced demos. Most song contests (at least those with professional judges) are like that, but most don’t say so—they’ll say “submit anything,” and not tell you the judges are going to throw out anything that’s not “radio-ready.”

What to send? I’ve got two professionally-recorded albums to work from, Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up (2005) and the Deathgrass album, Dead Things in the Shower (2011), plus five demos done with Mike Dunbar and a gaggle of Nashville session musicians at the Pineyfest songwriters’ conference in 2007. Four of the Pineyfest demos and two of the Deathgrass songs are co-writes, but co-writes are okay, according to the contest rules. I think I’d pick “Tillamook Railroad Blues” from the Deathgrass CD, and (if I feel comfortable spending the money on a second entry) “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up,” the title cut from the 2005 album.

The prizes are small, which is a hopeful sign—it indicates this contest is small, and I have a better shot at winning. I like to enter contests I think I can win. However, I think the primary thing one gets out of contests is exposure: people hear the song who otherwise wouldn’t know about it, and if they like it, they may check to see what else you’ve done. (And if the people listening and checking are Industry Professionals, there might be business out of it.) A lot of “ifs” there, obviously. And that’s why I hate to invest much money in these things.

I’ll wait to copy the CDs until I have the new (actually, “new”) computer set up and running. Yes, “Alice” is getting replaced. I found a good deal—local, even—and am taking advantage of it. It’s not that “Alice” isn’t good at what she does—after seven years, she should be; it’s that after seven years, her motherboard is going, and various other components (most recently, the CD-rewritable drive) are wearing out. I am neither really surprised or really upset—I know things wear out. However, I do still have Alice’s predecessor, “Wilma,” a 1991-vintage 486 running Windows 95 (built for me by a computer repair guy in Eastern Oregon) out in the garage, and everything on Wilma still works, after 20 years—reminding me they definitely don’t make ‘em like they used to.

There’s a contest coming up in September, too, that I want to make sure to enter; it’s being put on by Goodnight Kiss Music, a publishing company I’m on the mailing list of. They haven’t done a contest in a while, and I do want to make sure the publisher remembers me. (I’ll send something from the Deathgrass album—it’ll be an opportunity to show it off.)

Now that I have a little more free time (since people are not lining up to offer me jobs), I need to get out more. I’ve been primarily jamming at the “Rapture Room” in Nehalem on Sunday nights, the Tillamook Library on Saturday afternoons, and once again at Garibaldi City Hall on Friday nights. I’ve arranged to have next Thursday evening free from the Writers’ Guild, so I can go to the “country” jam at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler, but I should do more. A few solo gigs, perhaps, or even duets (if I could arrange for a willing accompanist). An increasing number of venues—particularly north of here—seem to be having live music, and a lot of it is solo or duo acts. I’d like to insert myself into that trend. Not because I’m any great shakes as a performer (though I can act like I know what I’m doing), but because I want exposure for the material, and about the only way I can do that is to perform it myself.

Joe

"SNOW PIGGY AND THE THE SEVEN JEDI"?

The by-now-infamous “Pig Wars” puppet troupe have done four plays now, dramatizing (in order) the legends of the three little pigs, the three billy goats gruff, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. Lest they fade into obscurity, we should do another play. But which fairy tale to fracture this time?

Snow White? There is really not a lot of plot in the Snow White story, despite Disney making a full-length movie out of it in 1939. Evil step-parent (that’d have to be Darth) has it in for beautiful (compared to Darth, anyway) Princess Leah, who escapes (to a galaxy far, far away, of course) and hooks up with The Seven Jedi (of which we see only Yoda and Luke—the rest, we’re told, are at work saving the galaxy) and hides out at their secret military base. Darth finds the princess, brings her an evil-looking present (maybe the pumpkin from the last play), knocks her out with a brick (using the Dark Side of the Force, in other words), and the princess stays unconscious until discovered by the handsome prince (Hansolo, I guess).

Of course, we have to have the magic mirror (we used the mirror in “Cinderpiggy” so that Leah would have someone to talk to, but the Snow White legend is really where the mirror comes from). We need a part for Chewy, too. Maybe Chewy should be the one who always gets asked (and answers) the “Who’s the fairest?” question—the mirror could get really annoyed at that. And Chewy has to be the one who’s supposed to dump the girl’s body off in space, and ends up shipping her off to the galaxy far, far away instead—there’s no one else to play that role. Can Chewy pull it off with a one-word vocabulary?

We can’t do the Disney chase scene through the mountains with sock puppets—and we don’t want the evil step-parent getting killed off, anyway: this is a kids’ play. Disney could be violent (especially toward stepmothers), but we won’t. Could we maybe have Darth and Chewy live happily ever after, too (eating cookies, of course)—after giving Leah and Hansolo the annoying magic mirror as a wedding present? And this time, the mirror can join in the “moral of the story is…” discussion at the end. It just might work. We can call it “Snow Piggy and the Seven Jedi.”

I wonder what we’d do for a song? (The one verse, one chorus songs performed by the sock-puppet band have become a tradition now. Have to have one. The public expects it.) And what genre? We’ve done rock (in “Sleeping Piggy”), and country (in “Cinderpiggy”). Bluegrass, perhaps? (I know a fiddle player.) A polka?

I’ve threatened to do a sock-puppet play based on the legend of the Treasure of Neahkahnie Mountain (it was actually the subject of a movie), but I probably won’t—the fairy tales work better for our Star Wars troupe. People know how the fairy tales are supposed to go, because they grew up with them—and then we can twist the tales unmercifully (and humorously) in the course of fitting our “actors” into the roles. If people didn’t already know the story, it wouldn’t work as well.

Found a few more public-domain songs that might be suitable for the Train Set: “The Last Ride,” a dying-hobo tune that may date as far back as 1890 (Hank Snow did it with a real rockabilly beat, which I’d like to imitate), “Reuben’s Train,” which dates from the Civil War (and has a grisly murder in the last verse), and Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 2 (T for Texas),” which was a Dodson Drifters standard—it plays good as rock ‘n’ roll, and there aren’t many rock ‘n’ roll train songs. Of the tunes I’ve been sent by songwriters, I think there are only three I have managed to be able to play and sing—but I’m not done yet. This week, I get to play music Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and maybe even Thursday night before the Writers’ Guild meeting—and there’s another job to apply for that I wouldn’t mind having. And is there a play to write, too?

Joe

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT...

So what does one write about? I don’t usually have the “What do I write about?” problem; I’m either working on an “assignment” (from Coventry or the Writers’ Guild, say) or an idea somebody fed me just took form (or flight). I noticed the originals that the professional band performed Saturday night included a lot of love songs (their traditionals were a lot more diverse). Love, I suppose, is a safe thing to talk about: it’s pretty universal—since virtually everybody’s been there, or is there, you can talk about it and be pretty certain your audience will understand.

There may not be many other themes these days in commercial country music. There’s religion (following very conventional, Protestant forms and imagery, though), drinking, and how wonderful it is to live in the country (written and performed, one Nashville pundit noted, by people who have never been there). Maybe not much else. (I don’t listen to the radio much.) There are political songs—comedian Ray Stevens has done a bunch of them—but it’s hard to do political songs without sounding preachy (and even Ray sounds preachy in a lot of them).

And my own stuff? Well, “Earwigs in the Eggplant,” my most recent “keeper,” is a love song, but the love is more an afterthought; it’s an alphabetical (sort of) listing of plants and garden pests, twisted into a love song because it had to be about something. It was deliberately written so that 45 Degrees North would have something about vegetables for the Manzanita Farmer’s Market gig.

“Selling Off My Body Parts” is another hymn for the Failed Economy (and the idea originally came from daughter)—tongue planted firmly in cheek because I very much do not want to be preachy. “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is a religious song primarily in style—and happened because Gene Burnett passed on that clip from Fox News. And “Blue Krishna” is kind of unclassifiable; it’s really just one of those “wondering” things, answering the question (once I’d seen the Krishna painting in the Rainbow Lotus) “Why is Krishna blue?”

And then I’ve got what I think of as the Bad Guys Series, sensitive treatments of a mugger (“Last Song of the Highwayman”), a serial killer (“The Dead Sweethearts Polka”), a stalker (“In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You”), and a suicide (“Angel in Chains”). The last three of those resulted from challenges by the Coventry songwriters group over in England, and the first was a deliberate attempt to write a medieval ballad (though I ignored about half the rules for medieval ballad-writing in the process).

It almost follows the mantra I gave the Songstuff folks in my bio: “Happy, upbeat, uptempo songs about death, lost love, betrayal, religion, and dead animals.” Even my love song for my wife from last year, “Always Pet the Dogs,” still has a dead (actually, reincarnated) dog in it.

Two conclusions from the above: (1) I get nearly all my ideas from other people. And (2) I sure don’t follow the conventional pattern. I don’t know if the latter is a good thing; I suppose I could always say, “Well, there’s more to life than love.” (And religion, and drinking, and living in the country or wanting to.) Maybe the focus on love (et al.) in other people’s songs is the result of so much writing being done in a vacuum; when you have a limited frame of reference, perhaps you end up with a limited repertoire. I very much do not want that to happen to me (and I suppose I have to live with the consequences).

Final thought. If what I’m doing isn’t marketable, why do people keep requesting the songs?

Joe

"MOOKSTOCK"?

I was approached at the library by a fellow promoting a weekend of music to raise money for the music program in Tillamook schools. He’s calling it “Mookstock.” It is a good idea. That’s what the “Moograss” bluegrass festival did, in its run from 2001 to around 2005 or 2006, and it was quite successful.

Would Deathgrass like to play? Yes, but… The fellow was talking about having the thing Labor Day weekend, which is less than two weeks away (he said it had taken the Fair Board a long, long time to get around to signing a contract for use of the county fairgrounds, which doesn’t surprise me), and I told him we couldn’t do it on that short notice—we’re currently working on getting ready for the Rocktoberfest, which is Sept. 17, two whole weeks later than he was talking about. I urged him to postpone the date further (I don’t think he has any commitments yet)—say, to Sept. 24-25, a week after the Rocktoberfest. We could do that, I think. We’ll see.

Sold a CD at the library, too, but I gave one to the promoter dude, telling him he needed it; that was how the Rocktoberfest folks auditioned bands—by getting CDs. That weeds out the groups that aren’t far enough along to have CDs out.

My first reaction, on hearing that the Fair Board was going to charge for use of the fairgrounds, was “They said what?” Just my opinion, but if it’s a benefit for the kids’ music program, nobody should be charging for anything. If ‘twere me—and it is not me, of course—I would tell the Fair Board that if we didn’t get the place for free, we’d go somewhere that was free, and we’d talk about their unwillingness to help the kids.

Tillamook High School, for instance, has much the same infrastructure as the fairgrounds (not as good, true, but one takes what one can get)—there’s a football field, with bleachers, and you could pull one of those mobile stages out into the arena just like you could at the fairgrounds. (If the weather’s bad, you can play inside, too.) Lodging and food for the musicians coming from out of town would be more problematic, but emphasize “free” and “benefit for the kids” and you might get a lot of help.

And Tillamook isn’t the only school district where the music program is hurting. When money gets tight, music, art and drama are always the first things to get scrapped—as if civilizing kids isn’t a big priority. Not only is everybody’s budget slim these days, it’s going to stay that way for a while—or get worse. It’d be nice to do something similar for the schools to the north (Neah-Kah-Nie) and south (Nestucca), too. And in both those cases, the school itself might be the best place to do it. Our schools haven’t been involved near enough in the community, and this might be an opportunity to force them to “interface” a little.

Saturday night, I got to hear a professional band at the Museum (I like seeing—and critiquing—the competition). Three guitars (and a percussionist)—but one guitarist was playing lead, and one “emulating” bass, and two of the guitarists occasionally switched to blues harp (at different times, of course). Those two were also the singers, and they were both writers, so they harmonized on each other’s stuff. Not a bad arrangement. Almost all the material was original or traditional. (I’d had hopes 45 Degrees North could turn into something like this.) Nice to see someone being successful insisting on not doing covers. That’s what I want to do. I am not an entertainer except by default; I’m a writer, and what I want is the best possible exposure for the material I’ve written.

And these guys’ material wasn’t bad, either. One can’t help wondering, though, to what extent having good singing voices makes writers pay less attention to lyrics, and more to presentation. I can’t afford that luxury. Like Bob Dylan, John Prine, Leonard Cohen, Buck Owens, and the other writers I try to emulate, I don’t have a voice, and I don’t have the guitar chops; words is all I’ve got, and I have to make them as perfect as possible in order to get any attention. When (or if) those lyrics get mated up with a decent voice (think Peter, Paul and Mary doing Bob Dylan), you can really have something good.

Joe

ROCKTOBERFEST SETLIST...

The Rocktoberfest setlist looks like this:

Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow Gospel
Test Tube Baby—Elvis-style rock ‘n’ roll
Steamboat Bill (Shields & Leighton)—1910 rock ‘n’ roll
So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
No Good Songs About the War—slow march
Simple Questions (O.N. Vindstad)—rockabilly
Angel in Chains—country death metal
Writer’s Block Blues—slow & sleazy
The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
Aginst the Law (Woody Guthrie)—slow blues
Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—deliberate two-step
Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad (Woody Guthrie)—fast bluegrass

Of 18 songs, only six are classifiable as some variety of country music. We’ve got six that are rock, folk-rock, or rockabilly, plus some blues (3), ragtime (1), and country death metal (1). The one bluegrass song doesn’t sound bluegrass at all when Larry plays it on saxophone (it didn’t sound bluegrass when the Grateful Dead did it, either). There’s a mix of tempos and keys, too.

Next step: CDs for the band—and lyric sheets for Larry and Charlie for the songs they haven’t played before. (I think “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is the only one that nobody’s played before. Deathgrass never played it because 45 Degrees North was playing it—but 45 Degrees North has broken up.) I can distribute the stuff tomorrow when I go to play music at the Tillamook Library.

Music with the Friday Night Group wasn’t bad; I concentrated on old, familiar tunes I was pretty sure everybody knew, and that Elsie could or would play accordion lead on. She (accordion) and I (guitar) were the only musicians there who could play lead, and I can’t do a lead while I’m singing. At least, with new strings on the guitar, I can pull off a mostly acceptable quasi-bass (no bass player there, either). Did have a good audience, though.

One new person (another poet) at the Writers’ Guild Thursday night In Jim’s absence, and with Vaughn moved, I seem to have ended up as Team Leader of this outfit, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I’ve been trying to steer everybody toward “oral tradition” poetry—the sort of stuff that’s recited, rather than read—because that kind of poetry is susceptible to musication, and as Leonard Cohen once said, that’s how a poet gets to make a living in the modern world. It would be neat if these poets could turn into polished lyricists, whose stuff could be set to music by people like me (and hopefully many more people than just me)—we’d have a miniature Tin Pan Alley song factory here on the Coast. I’m hoping my musication of Ahna’s “airship mechanic” song (which I do think will come out good) will show them the sort of thing that’s possible, and get them excited.

I have loaded all the “new” hardware into the “Hulk” computer, and it still can’t find either hard drive, or the CD drive. Makes one wonder if the motherboard’s bad. I have no way to test it, except by switching everything to another hulk (I have two more in reserve I can use). And “Alice” the ‘puter’s hard drive is still 99.9% full, making it difficult to do anything major. (Her motherboard’s going, too. She is over 7 years old, which is longer than most computers live—though “Ben,” the PC that I resurrected for the Arts Center, is 12 years old.) Got the old laptop to do a brain-wipe on, also.

Joe

ANOTHER IDEA...

An idea, to start with: the Women’s Resource Center is having a “Walk in Their Shoes” contest, to call attention to abuse; artists are supposed to decorate shoes (either their own, or ones provided by WRC—WRC has decorating materials, too) illustrating the problem in some way, and they’ll go on display at the Bay City Arts Center. The “Walk in Their Shoes” project will be the Artist of the Month exhibit at the Arts Center for October.

I would like to do this. I would want to do it differently, of course. What about a pair of shoes that played music? I do have a song about abuse (actually, I have half of it—the lyrics were written by a lady in The Netherlands, Donna Devine, and I musicated them), and it’d be fun to use this. (Hight “Sometimes She could Scream,” and the link is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=6833581. I had wanted to show Donna that country music is a good vehicle for discussing social issues—something it’s almost never used for. No, the song isn’t about “abuse” the way it’s conventionally thought of—but that’s probably a good thing, too.)

I have the shoes; I can either use a pair of worn-out sandals of mine (worn out is good), or abandoned teenaged-daughter shoes from the garage. Paint ‘em pink (probably), and run a big, sharp nail up through the sole. The challenge is making the display play music. (The other challenge is making it do so for next to no money.) I know there are programmable e-proms—the little things they put in those musical cards and stuffed animals—but I don’t know where to get them (or what they’d cost), and I haven’t found one yet that would hold four minutes of music. I need to do something else. A cheapo *.mp3 player, perhaps, or a small battery-powered CD player, hooked up to a tiny set of speakers. (If I do that, it’d be better to use girl’s shoes. I can hide the speakers inside.) I’ve got until Sept. 23 to put it together.

And the why? Making people think is a holistic exercise; you can’t (or shouldn’t) just do it with sound. (There are studies that claim we learn best by experiencing something with as many of the senses as possible—sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.) With the Shoe Project, we get to incorporate more of the senses—sight, touch, smell (I bet the shoes from the garage are musty)—plus the music and message hits people from a direction they’re not expecting, and I do like to do that. We are overburdened with data these days, and we retain our sanity by tuning a lot of it out (unless we have ADD, and can’t, and do go a little crazy). I want my stuff to be some of the stuff that is hard to tune out, and I rely partially on unexpectedness to achieve that. It’s the same mindset that insists on exploring human relationships in terms of dead animals.

I needed (and just got) a new acronym—D.I.R.A. (“Do It Right Away”). I let too many things slide, figuring I’ll have time to do them later, and sometimes “later” never comes. I am pretty fast at doing things (when I do them), and I have been pretty good with time-and-motion studies on myself: I can usually gauge pretty accurately how long it will take me to do stuff. I could probably accomplish a lot if I didn’t wait—and now that the busiest part of Concert Season is over, I don’t have an excuse for waiting to do anything. Like the “Husband” song (which I haven’t recorded yet—I’m still not sure it’s “done”) says, “It’s been a real nice ride, but it’s over now.” I will search the garage for shoes. D.I.R.A.

Also D.I.R.A.—musicating Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song; I want to have that for her tonight, at the Writers’ Guild meeting. I’d like to point this up as an instance of how we can help each other. Tomorrow? Three more jobs to apply for (only one of them local, alas); setlist for the Rocktoberfest; and I still have a computer hulk upstairs reminding me I haven’t done squat about it, either. I can solicit gigs again, too. I haven’t approached the Neskowin Valley School about the Harvest Festival, their big annual fund-raiser; I used to play that every year. Music this Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

Joe

FOR THE RAILROAD CENTENNIAL...

Figured out, I think, how to do a music video of “Tillamook Railroad Blues,” using available technology and (mostly) available personnel. Biggest plus: we have the soundtrack. The song, professionally recorded in a commercial studio,. Is on the Deathgrass album. All we have to worry about is matching video up to it.

For the choruses (there are four), I’d like to use the “lip-dub” technique I saw in that Grand Rapids city music video: you have a crowd of people, all lip-synching to the chorus, and the camera zooms in on first one person, then another, some with props (like guitars or microphones), some not, ending up each time with bigger and bigger crowds of singers.

I’d want some of that to be train passengers, and there, I’d need their cooperation—and I’m not sure how easy that’d be to arrange. If we were doing that “locals only and they ride free or cheap” day October 2, the day after the railroad centennial celebration, I could probably do it easily; I’d know a lot of those folks personally, and they probably know the song. (And to the extent they didn’t, we’d have time to rehearse.)

It wouldn’t be exclusively train passengers doing the lip-synching, of course; I’d want some “on the ground” footage in Garibaldi and Rockaway with people “singing,” too. And for the last chorus, I’d like to have footage of the Lions Club dedication ceremony they’re going to have on Centennial Day, with all them Lions dressed up in their bright yellow vests—and “singing.” Again, I know most of those guys (and gals).

In the verses (four of those, too), I mostly wouldn’t have singers. Some historical (or historical-looking) photos and footage in Verse 1, highway traffic and abandoned-looking track (Verse 2), shots of the “working” diesel engines that are no longer used (Verse 3), and footage of the dedication ceremony (Verse 4). You’d see a singer just occasionally, as a transition between clips, and it’d probably be me by default—again, lip-synching to the existing soundtrack.

For the breaks (two of them on the soundtrack), I would like to have footage of the band playing—and I have some of that, from the Summerfest performance in Wheeler; I don’t know if our rendition of the song there is the same tempo as on the record, but it very well could be, because we’re very deliberate about it. I also don’t know if it’s possible in “editing mode” to zero in on individual players; if not, I’ll have to get some “zoom” footage. A clip of the cameraperson(s), too—one of the things I do with breaks in video is overlay the “special thanks to…” credits. I want a couple of dancers (and I know some good ones who’d probably be amenable).

I don’t have to use train passengers for my chorus “lip-dubbers.” I really could do it entirely with people I know, and not on the train, but with just enough moving-train footage thrown in to create the illusion (one can do that with video), and it might be easier to do it that way—I wouldn’t need to enlist as much help. Still, roping the passengers in would be fun (and, one hopes, fun for them, too). And I like enlisting as many folks as possible in these efforts.

Would I include footage of the Salmonberry Canyon part of the railroad line, that got destroyed (again) in the 2007 winter storm and was never repaired? I would, if I could get to it. I wouldn’t want to be obvious about it—this video isn’t a political statement, after all—but that destruction (and the no repairs) is a fact of life, and one can’t ignore it. I’d probably put it in Verse 2, where we talk about the “shoulda gone out to pasture…”

But wouldn’t this be a fun thing to do to memorialize the railroad’s centennial?

Joe

MORE VIDEO THOUGHTS...

When I played “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot” at the Rapture Room Sunday night (I’d been asked if I knew any political songs), it was remarked that this would make a good music video. Yes, it would. It is one of the easiest of my songs to convert to video, I think. Most, if not all, of it could be shot on a beach (got several of those nearby), with driftwood, maybe (got some of that, too). Very minimalist—recalling Porter Wagoner’s “Committed to Parkview,” which is about an asylum but was simply shot in and around an abandoned institutional-type building that might have once been an asylum. (It was even done in black and white.) That minimalism leaves nearly everything up to the listener’s imagination—which, in my opinion, is as it should be.

It would be nice to have a professionally-done recording of the “Quoth” song to work with; the recording I have is only a draft, done on the Tascam (and not one of my best products, either). Since “Quoth” is one of the Southern Pigfish songs, it’d also be nice to film it without me in it—with someone else lip-synching the lyrics (or for fun, with several different people, maybe some of them girls, lip-synching the lyrics).

Equally minimalist—and equally easy to film—is “The Dead Sweethearts Polka.” That one simply needs to be footage of a river. I had considered the Yamhill River just outside Lafayette my ideal river, because it’s wide, fast and spooky (lots of shade), but the Nehalem River at Mohler has similar character and would work just as well (and is much closer to home). Again, there is not a professional recording of the audio, and I could use one if I’m going to do a good job with this. (And since it is a polka, it’d be nice to have an accordion player on the recording. I do know a few of those.)

One video I could do right now with the tools I’ve got is “The Dog’s Song.” I have sound for that one; it’s on the Deathgrass album. Though the song is from the point of view of the dog, the star is really the kitten—all I need is about five minutes of footage of a hyperactive kitten doing hyperactive kitten things. I can’t use our kittens, Aslan and Hansolo, because they have gotten too large; they don’t look like kittens any more. (They are now larger than the miniature poodle—and the poodle is concerned.) I need either somebody with a hyperactive kitten to send me some footage, or live close enough so I can come over and film said kitten. (I believe I know a dog or two that would be willing to play the part of the dog—which consists mostly of laying around and looking disgusted.)

Others? Ideally, everything should be video-enabled; like DJ Len Amsterdam said, “Video is the new audio.” More and more music—classic and modern—is showing up on YouTube and its clones, with “listener-generated” video if nothing else. This may be the new way people share music. They watch it. And they’ll expropriate stuff they like and post it again under their own names. You can’t download most of this stuff, so I guess people consider it okay to do that. When daughter wanted the band to play some specific cover songs at her wedding (we ended up only playing one of them), she sent me YouTube links—but to actually download the music, so I could make setlist CDs for the band, I had to go to Rhapsody or iTunes and buy it.

Slow week ahead, and I suppose I should be grateful. 45 Degrees North has indeed broken up, and that’s sad; I hope everybody continues to play and perform—and I’ll have some work for the individuals down the road, I think. The Friday Night Group has started playing again in Garibaldi, and I’ll sit in with them, and see if anything’s improved; music Saturday at the Tillamook Library, too, for the first time in a long time. Writers’ Guild Thursday night. I’ve got Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song to musicate, too, and setlists to organize (and record) for the Rocktoberfest and railroad centennial. Maybe it’s not that slow.

Joe

JEWS HARP FESTIVAL (AND VIDEO)...

Yes, the Jews Harp Festival was good, too. (Is this one of those “everything is good” years? Or am I finally learning how to do what I’m doing?) When they sorted out the impromptu combos for the Band Scramble, I ended up being front man for ours (rest of the “band” was three Jews harps and a harmonica, so I had to be the one to sing), so we did “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?”, “Wreck of the Old 97” (traditional), and Leon Payne’s “Lost Highway” (which everybody knows—they just don’t know Hank Williams didn’t write it).

When they put me on stage later, to play solo in their evening concert (I was the first “act” not playing some exotic instrument), the audience got “Pole Dancing for Jesus,” “Selling Off My Body Parts,” and “Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues.” (There’s video of that, too, I think. The Arts Center tries to film all performances.) And I did sell a CD (besides donating one to the Jews Harp Guild for their raffle).

More importantly, it looks like the Jews Harp Festival may continue to be held in Bay City, at the Arts Center—at least, after this year’s event there’s increased sentiment for continuing to do it that way instead of moving the festival somewhere else or cancelling it altogether (their Board will decide this later today). The Arts Center does do festival infrastructure well, and that’s a good reason not to change; the Jews Harp Guild’s Director (also a volunteer) and I got to talk marketing a little, too. Mostly, though, I was just around yesterday, trying to help in odd places and acting like I knew what I was doing. Got another Deathgrass concert video processed in my spare time—“Dead Things in the Shower,” again from the Summerfest. Link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpyTFPwzrRA

There’s a video up on YouTube that was done by a bunch of local folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after their town was selected for some “America’s Dying Cities” list. In the video (which has gotten over 4 million “hits”), the camera just travels through downtown—this was apparently shot live, and in one take—and everywhere, people are lip-synching to Don McLean’s “American Pie” (in this case, not performed by McLean—I think a local Grand Rapids boy did it).

No, I wasn’t proposing doing the same thing. (Though I could. If I were going to script out a local-folks video, I’d use a more upbeat, hopeful soundtrack, however. My pick would be Gene Burnett’s “Things Are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse.”) I was thinking of the video I want to make of the Southern Pigfish song, “For Their Own Ends.” That one’s a challenge to turn into video, because one can’t show the band—Southern Pigfish can’t be photographed, because they don’t exist.

But what if I sent the song off to a bunch of people (several dozen would be nice, but I’d settle for less), along with the lyrics, asking them to film themselves lip-synching to the song? Tempting to say “people with video capability,” but I think a lot of folks have that, these days, even though they may not be using it; anyone with a new computer has a built-in webcam, and then there are people like me, who don’t have webcams but have figured out work-arounds (I have at least three, myself). I’d clip pieces from everybody’s films and assemble them, synched to the Deathgrass sound track; could use the breaks for the thank-yous (I’ve done that before). It’d be some work, but I think I have the technology (or access thereto) and expertise to do it now.

That’s not the only Southern Pigfish song I want to convert to video—their whole album is intended to be video, issued on flash drive rather than CD—but it’s the first one I have professionally-recorded sound for. Deathgrass will be performing a few other Southern Pigfish songs at the Rocktoberfest, I think, and if we can get the performance filmed (and the sound comes out decent), I may be able to extract the audio file off the video and use that. Failing that, we just have to wait until I can afford to go into a studio again. For this one, I am not in a hurry. But I want to plug away at it as time permits.

Joe

FARMERS MARKET POST-MORTEM...

I think we did good at the Manzanita Farmers Market. We had a pretty attentive audience (we tested—with a few of my songs, and one collaboration—the claim we’d heard that nobody really listens to the music, and indeed, they do listen), and an appreciative one, too. I’m sure it was a factor that Jane, Kathryn and Candice are all well-known in the community (I don’t know how much that was true of the other groups that have played there)—but we were good, too. The mix of four completely different styles—to the point where the audience doesn’t know what they’re going to get next—definitely keeps people’s attention.

The show included eight of my songs, including “Earwigs in the Eggplant,” which had been written with the Farmers Market in mind. The audience appeared to like them all.

Nice that we were able to do a 3-hour show and not be playing everything we knew. We could do our best, instead (yes, 3 hours of “best”—we had come rather a long way since we started this, this past spring). We got tips; as soon as I set up the Ugly Orange Bucket with its “Tipping Is Not A City In China” sign, folks began putting money in it. And we got paid, too.

We may have made history of a sort, as well: we are, I believe, the first group ever to play the Farmers Market that was asked by the Powers That Be to turn UP our volume (“too loud” has repeatedly been an issue here)—and I got to tell them we couldn’t, because we had deliberately brought our smallest speakers, knowing how concerned they were about loudness and all. Before we’d finished packing up after the show, I was approached by one of the Powers, asking if we could play there next year. If the band is still together then, sure.

Is that an issue? ‘Fraid so—but we’ll have a meeting about it, before the afterglow of the gig has completely faded, and talk about it. The band’s got both the “too busy” and the “personality conflicts” problems, which are the two main reasons bands break up; on the other hand, there’s sentiment for keeping things together, because we are good together, and have come a long way in a very short period of time. We’ll see what happens.

We could use a better, more professional PA system. Good speakers, for sure—I think the little speakers I have on “Alice” the ‘puter at home are better than the ones we’ve performed through. I’d envision the kind of speakers it takes a hand truck to haul around (and I know a musician who’s got a set he’s going to sell). I worry about the mixer, too—that thing has got to be 40 years old, and early Japanese audio equipment was primitive—and the amp, which is only a 2-channel, forcing all control to be run through the mixer. My druthers, if I had druthers, would be a complete 8-channel PA amp. I don’t know what one would have to pay for one of those.

I have figured out a gizmo to prevent singers from getting too close to the microphones (when they get too close, those uber-professional mikes that everybody but me has tend to distort). In the studio, they use the pantyhose-over-a-coathanger barrier (pantyhose over a coathanger is the poor man’s version—studios pay lots of money for something that looks nicer), but one doesn’t want to use that in performance situations because it blocks the singer’s face. But just the wire frame—without the pantyhose holder, even—attached to the microphone should work as a keep-your-distance thing. I’d like to try it.

For now, more work to do: two Deathgrass performances to organize, the Rocktoberfest Sept. 17 and the railroad centennial Oct. 1—and in both cases, I’ve got some stuff to record to assemble the setlist CDs. More video from Deathgrass’ performance at the Wheeler Summerfest to process, too. And jobs to apply for—I still have hopes of being employed again.

Joe

FRIDAY SHOW; ROCKTOBERFEST SETLIST...

It’d be nice if 45 Degrees North got to practice a little bit tonight. We won’t have Jane—she’s manning a booth at the county fair (like half the people in the county, I think)—but what I’m after is just some basic refresher on some of the material, before we go on stage Friday. One of the frustrating things about not having any recordings of the group is I can’t just boot up an *.mp3 file if I encounter one of those “Wait—I don’t remember how this goes” moments. (I do have one, though—there’s video of “The Road to Lisdoonvarna” from the last time we played at the Arts Center’s open mike, and that’s one of the tunes I need refreshing on.)

Failing practice—or maybe even if we do practice—I want to go play lead guitar at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler. I’ve only played music once this week, and I just need to feel better about myself as a musician, again before I get up on stage. Everything is really done: the setlists are done, the Rap is done, and the band is as practiced as they’re going to be.

Deathgrass won’t have Doc for either the Rocktoberfest (Sept. 17) or the railroad centennial (Oct. 1), but we have substitutes: Larry Christiansen is willing to join us on sax for the Rocktoberfest, and Jane Dunkin on fiddle for the Train Set. New material (with luck) for the Train Set—I’d like that to be all train songs—and a bunch of unfamiliar material for the Rocktoberfest, that not everybody has played or that we haven’t played in a long time.

With a saxophone in the band, we can really rock out (and the band really like to play rock ‘n’ roll, anyway). We could have a set that includes:

For Their own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Test Tube Baby—Elvis-style rock ‘n’ roll
The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
Angel in Chains—country death metal
Love Trails of the Zombie Snails—folk-rock
Simple Questions (O.N. Vindstad)—rockabilly
Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly
She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
So 20th Century (Coleman & Lazzerini)—ragtime
Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad (Woody Guthrie)—fast bluegrass

That’s 11 right there, and most of them are pretty fast. I think Larry’s played seven of those with us before, the Woody Guthrie song at the Val Folkema benefit concert in April 2010 and the other six at our last Failed Economy Show; Charlie hasn’t played “Test Tube Baby” or “Zombie Snails.”

Most of the slow songs I have written are two-steps, but I have to have a few slow songs in the mix to break things up (and also give me and the band a chance to catch breath). There are a few that for one reason or another sound a little bit different:

The Writer’s Block Blues—slow & sleazy
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow Gospel (of course)

Need five more to fill an hour and a half. We could do “No Good Songs About the War” (the excuse being that it won a prize), “Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues” (which people have told me they think is well-written), Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” (makes ‘em think), and maybe Diane Ewing’s “Distraction” (the sax could definitely add a rockier sound). More? How about “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” Would that be too over-the-top?

I get to process video today at the Arts Center from the Deathgrass performance in Wheeler at the Summerfest July 16. Was filmed with the Arts Center’s new camera, which I haven’t worked with before, so I don’t know what the sound is going to be like. With luck, there’s some good concert footage. Couple new jobs to apply for, too.

Joe

JUST A WILD IDEA...

More innovation… There’s a trio of folks in Portland who have created a mobile recording studio, with which they’re going to travel the country for a year or so, recording completely unknown independent writer-musicians and submitting the results to the Library of Congress. The goal of this “American Music Preservation Project,” I understand, is to give these writers something that’ll live on after they’re gone. So many never get that. When Jeff Tanzer, lead guitarist for the Dodson Drifters, died, almost all of his music died with him; nothing had ever been recorded, and his widow destroyed all his papers. I had acquired—earlier—the lyrics to just one of Jeff’s dozens of songs, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the song that prompted “Leavin’ It to Beaver.” I wish I’d collected more.

Would I—or could I—be part of the American Music Preservation Project? Oh, I don’t think so: as this is written, the mobile studio has already left, headed somewhere back East; I doubt I’ll ever see it, or it me. Besides, I have already done a little legacy-building myself. I have two albums out, and I perform—I even went “on tour,” after a fashion, down in southern Oregon last weekend. I know a bit about how the music business works, and have tried a few things, a lot of independents don’t and haven’t (not that knowing or trying does any good—but that’s a subject for another rant).

It’d be nice to take this, or something like it, one step further. It’s good to preserve these guys’ material, but why should it stay locked up in a vault somewhere? Wouldn’t it be nice to give it airplay? I doubt most independents were writing in or for a vacuum; we had something to communicate, and it follows that it should be communicated to as large an audience as possible. Most of us were just never able to reach much of an audience.

I wasn’t thinking of commercial radio—most commercial radio stations won’t play anything except the Top 20 or Top 40 they’re ordered to (another rant, like I said)—but what about that plethora of Internet “stations”? Most of them are hungry for material, and a lot of them were set up deliberately to play stuff the commercial radio stations wouldn’t. In addition, an increasing number of commercial radio stations have gone back to live DJs (there’s more money in it, I’ve heard), who have control over their own playlists; get a record into their hands, and they’ll play it if they think it’s any good, just like in the good old days.

I wonder if one could take it a step further, and have those writers actually get paid for their songs getting played? (That would be a surprise to a lot of those writers—but the Bible does say the laborer is worth his hire.) It might be too much to ask, but I could see how it could be done. One would have to create a performing rights organization along the same lines as ASCAP and BMI, but one that dealt exclusively with the Ignored People. Internet and other stations could pay a fee (a small one, since we’re not talking about outlets that reach a huge market), and each station’s fee would get split up based on what that station played, and how frequently. Complicated? Of course; in fact, the big PROs say it’s too complicated, and that’s why they don’t split up their fees that way (yes, that’s in that rant, too). I could make a computer do it—and if I could, lots of people can.

Just getting songs into the hands of people who’d play them would be challenge enough. As a country boy, I feel it necessary to know the parties—both the station owner/operators and the writers—personally. Just my opinion, but I think the personal connection is important (and lacking in so much business dealings these days). A CD that came blindly in the mail might be nothing more than a new drink coaster, but if it came from Joe—and you know who ”Joe” is—it might be worth a listen.

So… Somebody should do this. Should that somebody be me? Doubtful—I don’t think I know enough people. Yet. I’m working on it.

Joe

SOSA SUMMER CONCERT POST-MORTEM...

It was good. Dan on standup bass, Jef (one “f”) on mandolin, and myself. We played:

Pole Dancing for Jesus
Selling Off My Body Parts
Crosses by the Roadside
Free-Range Person
Writer’s Block Blues
The Termite Song

Two new songs, two songs off the album, two older ones; some of the audience had heard “Termite” and “Free-Range Person” before, but nobody’d ever heard the others. Small crowd, but a bunch of unfamiliar faces (the concert had been announced in the Medford paper); with luck, those folks will come to future events.

Our trio (Dan, Jef, and myself) was perfect, despite our not having had any time at all to practice (the three of us had gotten to play “Pole Dancing for Jesus” just once, at Dan’s shop, and nothing else); I think it came off well because (1) these guys are very good musicians and (2) my material is deliberately predictable musically. (Not lyrically. I am unpredictable lyrically—also deliberately.) I do try to signal obviously when chord changes are going to happen—that’s one of the things a competent rhythm guitarist is supposed to do, and I am determined to be a competent rhythm guitarist.

Some folks said we were the best part of the show. That was nice, though I’d dispute that. I think the best—and also the most innovative—was the blend of music and poetry performed by Gene Burnett and T-Poe. The mix of one of T-Poe’s Vietnam poems with Gene’s “If There Was a Wall” was absolutely heart-rending.

Sold one CD there, and two more later, in Jacksonville, where I went to hear Dan play fiddle with the band Stereotyped. They’re not bad, but Dan is definitely their lead instrument (they’re not exactly a bluegrass band—more like punk rock with two guitars, banjo, standup bass, harmonica, fiddle, and no drums). Dan and I got to play during the band’s break—some of his stuff, some of mine, just like at the SOSA concert. What sold the CDs, though, was the Deathgrass T-shirt I was wearing—the guys wanted to buy the CD before they’d ever heard me play. (Dan telling the bar audience earlier that I was in the crowd, like I was some out-of-town celebrity, helped, too.)

I think what we pulled off in Talent is a low-key, homegrown version of what some of the Big Entertainers do. Many of them don’t travel with a band; when they show up out of town for a performance, they expect to have a band waiting for them, familiar with the material, and ready to go on stage and rock. The difference is I know the musicians personally, and we’ve played together. Could this be done in other places? I think so. The key is knowing similar pools of musicians in those other places. (And that means getting out more.)

We will be sans Doc for the Rocktoberfest, too—he will definitely be out of town all day the day we are supposed to perform. Our choices are to play the gig as a 4-piece band, or to substitute another “whiny lead” for the harmonica. My preference would be the latter, and to have the substitute be a fiddle, provided everyone (including the fiddle player) were agreeable. A fiddle as a rock ‘n’ roll instrument? Sure. (A good half of what we’ll be doing at the Rocktoberfest is country music, anyway.)

I didn’t manage to finish the train song on the trip; it got displaced by another tune, which did get finished, I think—a sleazy little blues about (what else?) death. I think I can title it “Husband” (opening line is “When my husband’s dead…”) and send it off to the Coventries (their challenge this month was for songs with one-word titles). It would be really nice to record this with a girl singing it; the subject matter isn’t really appropriate for a guy singer (though I have done gender-inappropriate material in the past—I am slowly assembling an entire set’s worth of songs that are best performed in a gay bar).

Joe

MORE FOR THE TRAIN SET...

16 suggestions for the Deathgrass Train Set (actually, 13 received, and three more on the way—one being written for the occasion). Some statistics: The songs came from as close as Nehalem (15 miles away) and as far away as Rumania. Eight were from writers I know at Just Plain Folks, four from Facebook or people connected to Facebook (three from the Actors & Musicians group), three from the Seniors Group at Soundclick, and one from the Coventry songwriters over in England. I have only ever met one of the 15 writers personally.

Thanks to Christopher Smith, Katherine Fear, Charles Holman, Jerry Miller, Damien Blakely, Skip Johnson, Peggy Mack, Stan Good, Dave Rice, Ray Strode, Kevin Emmrich, Jim Jett, Ben Willis, Ray Wyatt, and John Lawrence Schick. I do not know at this point which stuff I am going to be able to use, because I have not tried to play and sing all of it. (I haven’t received all of it yet, either.)

My ability to play and sing it is going to be the main determinant, because I am, for better or worse, the lead singer for Deathgrass, and I do not have much of a voice range. That means I may have to pass on something I’d really like to do simply because it’s outside my voice range in both directions. In the same vein, I have to record these for the band’s setlist CDs, with me playing it and singing it in the key I’m going to have to sing it in. If the music’s too complicated, I can’t do that, either.

I would like to get 6 to 8 songs we can use, to add to the two we can already do, “Tillamook Railroad Blues” and Shields & Leighton’s 1910 hit “Steamboat Bill,” plus two traditionals I know I can sing, “Wreck of the Old 97” (with the verse Johnny Cash added and the one I changed) and “The Lightning Express” (which was a Dodson Drifters standard). In reserve, in case I need ‘em, are two more traditionals, “The Wabash Cannonball” and “Life’s Railway to Heaven” (the Dodson Drifters version, with the extra verse I added). All the traditionals are fast bluegrass songs, so the other stuff can be slower if need be. And different genres, too—the band is quite versatile.

I might end up with another train song of my own, too. I just have snippets at present (and music, of course), but I’m taking another long trip in The Truck With No Radio, to southern Oregon (I’m performing with Dan Doshier Saturday, Aug. 6 at the Southern Oregon Songwriters Summer Concert in Talent) and long trips are usually good for writing. We’ll see what happens.

I am looking forward to the trip. Nice to do a Monty Python—“Now, For Something Completely Different”—even if it’s only for a couple of days. I know it’s not Progress—it’s only Motion—but I hate the feeling of being stuck in a rut. It’ll feel like a two-day vacation. I’ll have plenty to do when I get back, starting with the Manzanita Farmer’s Market gig Aug. 12. (The Jews’ Harp Festival is that weekend, too; I’ll be able to go one day—Saturday, Aug. 13.) And I’ve still got to fix the PA system so it puts out decent sound.

On the job front, I have pretty much given up on the local jobs; I didn’t get hired for the one I really wanted (city manager in little Wheeler, 13 miles from here), and I’m not expecting the other two potential employers will even interview me. So I’ve applied for another out-of-town interim city-manager gig; I’ll probably know in a week and a half if they’re interested in me. I’ve done the out-of-town thing three times now, so that, too, has become a set piece; it’s no longer unfamiliar. It’s not that different from an out-of-town musical performance, except that it’ll last six months instead of a few hours. And one of these days, there’ll be a song in it…

Joe

MORE TRAIN SONGS...

More potential material for the Train Set: A Dodson Drifters hit that might be fun to do is “The Lightning Express,” by J. Fred Helt and E.P. Moran (1898). It’s supposed to be a waltz, but the Dodson Drifters never played it as a waltz—we always did it in 4/4 time, starting slow and gradually speeding up (just like a train). Happiest song about death I know (and I’ve written a few). There was a real “Lightning Express,” I found (the Internet is a wonderful place)—a promotional train run in 1876 to see how fast one could get from the East Coast to the West (the answer is 83 hours, a record that’s rarely been broken). But that’s not what the song is about. The song is, as I noted, about death.

Another traditional one we could do is the Gospel song “Life’s Railway to Heaven.” That was copyrighted in 1918 by Charlie D. Tillman, a reported patent-medicine salesman turned revival preacher who had a habit of publishing other people’s hymns as his own. “Life’s Railway” was reportedly ripped off from a Mormon girl poet. Other people have added to the song over the years, including the Dodson Drifters; the version we played had five verses, making it a pretty long song. I know I can sing it because Brother Bill and I used to sing it with the Drifters.

Got lyrics from Rev. Skip Johnson and from “Tampa Stan” Good I can musicate, and I know I can sing those because I’ll write the music so I can sing it. Skip’s is religious (of course), but it rocks—I like that. I’ve received a number of complete songs from people, with more promised—thanks, everybody. My next task is to go through them all and see which ones I can sing. There are at least a few I know are going to be outside my voice range.

And I might end up with another one of my own, too. Dylanesque folk-rock, with a very “train-ey” beat. At this point, I have pieces of a few verses, and don’t know if the thing will get (or need) a chorus; it’s got a good tag line, repeated at the end of every verse (and chorus, if the song gets a chorus): “My baby’s on that train, and I’m gonna let her go.” I worry if the song ends up just verses and no chorus, it might come across as too much like the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends.” The train song, though, will be more of a blues, and in a different key (I hope). Maybe that’s enough difference. Great to feel productive again. I haven’t written a song since, well, last month.

We’ll be sans a blues harp player for October 1—Doc will be out of town. I wonder if we could substitute a fiddle? (I like having both a “whiny lead” and a “non-whiny lead.”) I know a really good fiddle player… Practice is easy, because I do the CD trick—and I’d want to have setlists, CDs and lyrics (&c.) to everybody a good 3-4 weeks ahead of time. I’ll have to ask—both the band and the fiddle player.

Advice from Performing Songwriters United Worldwide (who just revived their Facebook page, and started a blog, too, on Wordpress): “Do one small thing every day, and one big thing every month.” As I hunker down at the house for an anticipated two days without the truck (which is in the shop with alternator troubles), I wonder if I’ve managed to do that.

I’ve done a lot of little things lately—more than one a day sometimes, mostly because it’s Concert Season. (That’s one reason there’s been an issue of the blog almost every day.) Big things? I might consider the Willamette Writers gig one of those, because it may (I hope) have long-term impacts that I can’t see right away. The Writers’ Guild might be another. In both cases, it is too early to tell if I’ve done something big. I know only that I’ve done something different.

Joe