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