SQUARE DANCE CALLING? (&C.)

Trip to Portland next Friday; bunch of “next time I’m in town” stuff to do. The big Dell desktop still needs to go to a Dell repair place (if they want to charge too much money, though, I’ll either postpone doing something or do it myself). There’s an employment consultant I promised to visit, and I’ve got to go by a music store. I’ll be in Portland because the next day (Saturday) is a big Relay for Life meeting there (and as the local entertainment chairman I need to be at the meeting). I’ll have the guitar with me because y’never know—and I feel naked without it, anyway. I had wanted to swing by the Occupy Portland encampment, to get some footage for “The Occupation Song” video, but I understand the encampment is going to be forcibly dispersed about a week before I get there. (I won’t be able to get footage of the dispersal, either. Too bad.)

That Friday night I will visit a square dance caller in Portland as he’s setting up his equipment, and pick his brain about what he uses and how. “Calling” is something else I want to do; I may already have some of the necessary equipment, and I’m partway there experience-wise—I can perform (been on the band side, I have), and can square dance pretty well myself. Most square dance callers have a really good line of “patter,” and that’s something I do with the Raps when I’m on stage. The best callers seem to be good standup comedians—and I’ve done that, too.

No, it’s not something anyone makes a living at; it’s just something else I can add to the “pin money” repertoire along with musician, playwright, actor, concert promoter and so on. None of those things make money either. I like filling holes—that’s something I do as a lead guitarist—and there’s a definite hole here crying to be filled. There are virtually no callers on the Coast; square dance clubs (like the one I belong to) have to import callers from Portland, a 2-or-more-hour drive on regularly dangerous roads, and it costs money. A caller resident on the Coast might end up being in demand. And there’s some sentiment among some of our local square dancers to help me in this effort somehow (I’m not sure what form that “somehow” might take).

Over the past year I’ve acquired a few new “jobs” (have to use the term loosely because they’re all unpaid): I’m now secretary of the square dance club (right after they voted to disband a couple of months from now—of course that could change) and I’m the entertainment chairman/recruiter for both the Tillamook County Relay for Life Campaign and for Garibaldi Days. All stuff I can do—and all part of becoming a household word, which was one of the 2011 Worklist items (it was on the 2010 Worklist, too). The goal, I think, is to reach the household-word status of, say, toilet paper: that’s a household word people actually pay money for. I have a ways to go before I hit that point.

Organizing the setlist for the Leftovers Day gig (Friday Nov. 25, the day after Thanksgiving); I do have a partner—Jane Dunkin on fiddle (yay!). Since it will finally be Christmas Season I can play the Christmas songs—all five of them:

I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas (the classic)—slow & sleazy
Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up—fast bluegrass
Christmas Roadkill—slow two-step
I Want a Man for Christmas—rock ‘n’ roll
Another Crappy Christmas (Don Varnell)—sleazy pop

That’s only 20 minutes of a 2-hour show, though. It would be fun (not to mention unexpected) to do a whole set of Yuletide material, all (or most) of it in the “dead dog” or “Santa’s Fallen” vein. All either original, traditional, or by other unknowns, of course, pursuant to the Usual Rules. I wonder if that’s possible? I didn’t have a lot of luck assembling material for that aborted Train Set; I did get a lot of stuff, but I couldn’t sing and/or play most of it. I am seeing Christmasy lyrics show up on the various writers’ sites, however, and some of them may bear musicating. I’d better get my recording capability down, so it doesn’t take much time to produce something. Still need to record “The Occupation Song,” and also the theme song for the “Jedi Pigs of Oz” puppet show.

Joe