PODCASTING HOUSE CONCERTS?

I can cross “’Manzanitaville’ lyrics” off the to-do list. Done, and it sounds like it’ll be okay. Yes, a parody, but it ended up with substantially more social commentary than I’d planned. We’ll practice it Sunday night and see how it comes off. It was scheduled to be the #2 song on The Impromptus’ setlist for the Manzanita Farmer’s Market.

Another of those Wild Ideas… Between the economy (which is in shambles) and high fuel prices (which will make the economy even more of a shambles), people are pretty much not going to be going anywhere at all for their entertainment. How can one deliver them entertainment really close to home? And make a living doing it?

Consider the House Concert. House concerts are legal in most places; they work real well for a visiting artist who has a small fan base in the area and doesn’t want to (or can’t) rent a venue for a concert. Small gate fee covers expenses; you sell some CDs.

What if it were taken one step further? Could that house concert be streamed live, perhaps, so the guy in Latvia, say (I still wonder how I managed to get fans in Latvia), who can’t make it to the concert under any conditions, can hear it, too? That technology exists—it’s in use right here in Tillamook County. I’d like to use it, in fact, to broadcast the Deathgrass CD Release Event when it happens, because I don’t think that’s been done before (it certainly hasn’t been done in this area). But streaming is free, isn’t it? Or is it?

I think it wouldn’t have to be. If one wants to listen to a podcast, one is accessing a Website; a lot of Websites are set up to restrict access to all or parts of the Website unless one is “registered” and has a password. One could take that a step further and require payment of a few bucks to get the password. Could do that from the Deathgrass Website I’ve been talking about (but haven’t done anything about yet). And of course, one wouldn’t want to do the requiring-money thing right away—initially, the podcasts would have to be free, until people were hooked on the events. (Yes, this is the business plan of the middle-school drug dealer. It works.)

Another step further? What if our fan in Latvia wanted to get together with the 28 other fans in Latvia (I have kept track) and watch the concert together on a big-screen TV at the local tavern? He could. That technology is widespread; it’d only take one “registration”—and if the tavern wanted to charge a gate fee, they could, and that would be income totally to them. One could rig the Website so concert podcasts were archived, and once you’d “registered” for a particular concert, you could watch it over and over again free if you wanted, even download it if you wanted—I’m after exposure, and I don’t care. (I have got to talk to a Website designer about this.)

I think this is one of those “have to try this” things. Current plan is to have the CD Release Event at the Bay City Arts Center (this assumes I can schedule a date that’ll work for both the Arts Center and the band); I’ll contact our local Internet radio station about the streaming. Could people log in there to hear the concert live? Or would we have to have another Website—our own, say? This would be an opportunity for the folks out of town—not just in Latvia, but other places—to “attend.” For most of them, it’d be their first “live” Deathgrass concert. With luck, they’d want more.

Joe

TONIC LOUNGE POST-MORTEM...

Comedy night at the Tonic Lounge in Portland was good. (I didn’t send out any notice to the “joelist” or to Facebook—this was just a short appearance, only three songs, and I didn’t know how it was going to go. But it was good.) Half a dozen standup comics there, plus me (and some were good, and others less so), but the good side was there was a fairly sizable and appreciative audience. And the bar owner really likes it—and that’s a major key to keeping it going. It happens every week, which is great.

The Tonic Loungs audience liked “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (I think that one’s definitely a keeper), and really liked “The Abomination Two-Step”—and of course liked “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” (audiences almost always do). Possibility of a real gig there later on? I don’t know; I didn’t do any outright promoting (I did give Whitney an advance copy of the Deathgrass CD, though). I think the bar owner liked what I did. The Tonic Lounge has a nice performance space, ideal for small acts—the stage and sound system could handle a full band easy, but there’s room for an audience of only about 50, and they’re all at tables. Ideal listening environment. (Of course, one could always move the tables out if one wanted to have a dance.)

The trip to Portland also bought Alice’s RAM and the portable DVD-rewritable drive; got the latter cheaper than I expected. No RAM for StuartLittle, though; his chips (the techie guy said, “Wow—these are real antiques”) are way too expensive. Found a CD-rewritable drive for the Hulk in a thrift store. (And I have a trick to try to see if one or more of the old hard drives from the college actually work.) I still would like to turn the Hulk into a working computer—1.2 gigabytes of RAM is nothing to sneeze at, even if Hulk is a 2001-vintage Pentium III.

The Deathgrass CDs are ordered (DiskFaktory confirmed they got all my stuff), and I should have them in hand by the middle of May. I will not schedule the CD Release Event until I have them in hand, though. The experts are right—too many things can go wrong.

I have the script to write for the next puppet show—a retelling of the Cinderella story, I think. Necessary to do some gender-reversal, since Princess Leah is the only girl puppet in the “Pig Wars” troupe. But we can put Darth Vader in the title role, and have Luke and Hansolo as the evil stepbrothers, Leah as the Handsome Princess, and Yoda as the fairy god-Jedi. Chewy the Wookie needs a role, too; like Shakespeare, I have to make sure my plays have slots for all the “actors” in the “company.” Chewy could be the stepmother, perhaps (step-Wookie?). People have suggested it should be a musical, and that the puppet band should “perform” again. So there is music to write for it, too. And record. The Great Intergalactic Puppet Theatre has a paying gig in June.

Filming for the video class (the weather is supposed to finally be sunny this weekend). I need to re-do the lead track to Scott Garriott’s “Clown in Paradise”; he’d like it more acoustic (the tracks I did were pretty electric), and I need to record “Earwigs in the Eggplant” so The Impromptus can play with it in their spare time.

Jane did a draft setlist for The Impromptus’ gig Aug. 12, and it’s pretty good, I think; I’d like to hear all the songs together, to make sure they fit right—that’s one reason (besides ease of practice) I like to make “setlist” CDs—but that will come later. Should have intros to each of the songs, too, and ideally, songs should be introduced by the person leading them. But I can do it if they can’t. It is one of the things I can do.

Joe

"ALICE" UNCHANGED...

Well, Alice’s brain (body) transplant did not work, and I’m not sure why. I gave up after working at it for three days, and she’s back in her old (and a little worse for wear) case, with her partially non-functional motherboard. Her one remaining IDE port is running her almost-completely full 40-GB hard drive and her DVD-ROM drive, and it’s going to stay that way, I guess.

I did get a few good things out of the exercise (I should—I spent three days at it). I have a rather sturdily-built case with a motherboard with a Pentium III processor and roughly 1.2 gigabytes of its own RAM; it’s got its own video card (which is nothing special compared to Alice’s) and a 52X CD-ROM drive. This puppy could theoretically be turned into a Real Computer. It probably needs a good hard drive—I have four hard drives left from my Dr. Frankenstein efforts, ranging in size from 10GB to 40GB, but I have no idea whether any of them work and no way to tell. Needs a network card, too, or (even better) a wireless card—the college’s old network cards are like nothing else on the planet (not surprising). I will keep my eyes open for an awesome deal (the only kind I can afford).

One more piece of hardware work to do: Alice will get her CD-rewritable drive back—I really do need it. I’ve got a spare 52X CD-ROM drive I can swap with the Arts Center (Alice’s old CD-RW drive was only 24X) which will be a plus for them. I really can’t do any work on Alice except simple word processing (and not much of that) until I can archive a bunch of Important Stuff That’s Taking Up Space.

The above means that when I go shopping Wednesday, I’ll be shopping for RAM, mostly. I want (1) at least 512 MB more RAM for Alice and (2) 1 GB RAM for StuartLittle—both if I can afford it, of course—and (3) a DVD-rewritable drive with external case so it can be swapped back and forth between Alice and Stuart. That’s probably it.

The Deathgrass CDs have been ordered from DiskFaktory; I should have them in about two weeks. Some paranoia there—I have no way of knowing for sure whether I’ve done everything right. DiskFaktory wouldn’t send me “proof copies” of the CD and case unless I was willing to spend an extra $125 and wait additional weeks (I am not willing to do either).

I did sign up for their “digital distribution” service; having an additional online source where people can get the CD seemed like a good thing. “DFJams” is of course not as well-known as CDBaby, but I figure I’m going to have to be doing the marketing, anyway. What I need is a place I can send people who want either to buy the album online or buy individual songs (though I would think that anyone who’d heard one song would feel like they had to have the whole album); since I am not expecting people to mysteriously snap up this stuff out of nowhere, any digital distributor is as good as any, I guess. (I still may archive the album at CDBaby as well.)

Three gigs lined up for Concert Season thus far—June 18 with Candice in Ilwaco, August 12 with The Impromptus in Manzanita, and September 18 or 19 with Deathgrass at the Rocktoberfest. And they’re all paying gigs! (Deathgrass is probably also going to be playing Garibaldi Days, which will be a freebie like it’s been the last two years.) On the minus side, the Willamette Writers Group doesn’t want me to play their annual conference this year; last year, they at least considered me before they rejected me. I realize you can’t win ‘em all—but I want to.

Joe

DECONSTRUCTING "ALICE"...

I’ve about decided “Alice” the ‘puter needs a new body. I would get a new motherboard if I could, but I can’t. However, I’ve got four computer hulks out in the garage, three of them purchased from the community college when they moved and a fourth bought from Sharma Kay, dear departed friend and former bass player in our short-lived Portland band. The college’s are Pentium IIIs, and it appears from the techie Websites that I can make those work with my stuff. They were all supposedly working when they “graduated” (one was working in the college office). Sharma’s is a Pentium II, and useful primarily for parts (but it has a lot of nifty parts—Sharma was a first-class computer geek). I even have a gigantic flatbed scanner.

So I’ll transfer Alice’s hard drive, RAM and DVD drive into the New Unit; might add Sharma’s CD drive (which, knowing her, might have been a rewritable one—I don’t think the college’s were) and the card for the big scanner. I’ll cram as much RAM into the New Unit as I can—I’ve got extra chips I’ve never used. If it works, that may change what I buy when I go computer parts shopping next Wednesday; what I’ll be after is a DVD-rewritable drive, and an external case so I can switch it back and forth between the New Unit and “StuartLittle,” who is going to become the Studio Machine.

Good work for a sunny day. I do get paranoid about taking a screwdriver to a computer—software, not hardware, is my expertise as an Educated Computer Programmer (one, be it noted, who has never actually had a job as a computer programmer). However, these troubled times necessitate pushing the envelope rather a lot. If I screw up, I still have StuartLittle set up and working, even though he’s a little slow.

Noticed while visiting the studio (which hasn’t been habitable through the winter, because of the cold) that I could easily expand the 5x7 room to approximately 5x12 with (I think) just one sheet of plywood. That would be exciting. Right now, the studio has room for pretty much just me—not even room for the computer, really. Expanded, I could have people over (one at a time, of course). I would like to keep to my doing-it-for-no-money routine, though—I built the studio for under $10 (and most of that was for screws). And I will need to clean out the garage first.

I may have found a lot of the garden-pest mug shots I need for the “Earwigs” video; I got from the library What’s Wrong With My Plant? (And How Do I Fix It?), which has a lot of color photos I think I can scan. For the plants, I’ll stop by Foodroots’ Edible Plant Show on Easter Saturday and see what I can photograph. Could save buying a lot of seed packets.

Alice’s hard drive is almost full—again—only this time, I’ve got limited options for archiving stuff, since I still don’t have a rewritable CD or DVD drive. Another argument for building the New Unit—I can add one of the college’s 30-gigabyte hard drives. I have a flash drive but didn’t really want to use it for storage—it was going to be my experiment for the Southern Pigfish album, which will be all music videos.

The Impromptus’ setlist has 38 songs, which should be enough for our 160-minute performance (3 hours with two 10-minute breaks), roughly split between Candice, Jane, Kathryn and myself. Next step is to mix ‘em up. With four lead voices to play with (Jane’s “voice” is the fiddle), and a bunch of different keys, there are a lot of variables to play with. Should be easy to ensure no two songs sound alike. Jane’s Celtic “rigs and jeels” tend to be fast; Kathryn’s originals are slower and folkier; I can do both slow and fast, and so can Candice (but she can sing, and I can’t). Since we don’t (and won’t) have a bass player, I think that means I default to “emulating” bass on the guitar, like I used to do with the Malheur Miners, years ago. Doable, but it means I can’t do as much conventional lead work as I’d like. I’ll have to figure out bass runs to most of the songs.

And they want to do “Electronic Love,” my Internet porn song. (And they can do it with 3-part harmony. That’s scary.) I’ve been told that most of the music at the Manzanita Farmer’s Market never gets listened to; it’s just background noise for people passing by. We might change that…

Joe

THE "12 REASONS WHY JOE IS GOING TO HELL" ALBUM...

I’m slowly slipping back into my new/old role as newspaper reporter. It’s not a real job—I’m just a fill-in, while the real reporter is having a baby. I have covered three news stories in the past 24 hours (still have two of the stories to write, though), and have a fourth to do tomorrow afternoon. It was a distinct pleasure to be able to go to a meeting and do the write-up in an hour after I got back home, and know it was right. If I could keep that up, it’d be worthwhile. And people are starting to not ask, “Do you still write for the paper?” when they call. They just call.

I have, I believe, all the songs for the “12 Reasons Why Joe is Going to Hell” album. (I am limited to 12 unless I change the title.) They are, not in order:

Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy
Song for Charity (and Faith, and Hope)—fast bluegrass
Born-Again Barbie (co-wrote with Scott Rose)—Everly Brothers-style rockabilly
Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?—slow & sleazy
Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus—trad. Gospel
The Abomination Two-Step—fast bluegrass
In the Shadows, I’ll Be Watching You—slow & sleazy
Dirty Deeds We Done to Sheep—Johnny Cash-style rock ‘n’ roll
Dead Sweethearts Polka—polka
Angel in Chains—country death metal
Electronic Love—slow & sleazy
I Want a Man for Christmas—rock & roll

First six on the list are religious songs (using the term loosely, of course). The rest are about a stalker (“Shadows”), bestiality (“Sheep”), a serial killer (“Sweethearts”), suicide (“Angel”), Internet porn (“Electronic Love”), and, well, Christmas. A good mix—some rock ‘n’ roll, some bluegrass, a polka, one Gospel, one country death metal (possibly the only country death metal song ever written), and a bunch that can’t be described as anything but “sleazy.”

Polly Hager wants her band to do a couple of these, and if I could get and use recordings of them, we could call the album “12 Reasons Why Polly and Joe Are Going to Hell.” It’d be nice to have Polly’s voice on other songs, too.

It’s going to be a while before I can afford to record anything commercially again; I will simply have to assemble things on a catch-as-catch-can basis over time, as opportunities present themselves, and then master the entire product when I have all the pieces together. That is an opportunity to experiment with instrumentation; some of the songs (the rockers, say) need a full band, but there are some that could be done well with minimal instrumentation. (Or odd instrumentation—I could really use an accordion on “The Dead Sweethearts Polka,” for instance.)

And there may well be more songs before I’m done—I do expect to keep writing, and every now and then, one will pop out that’s going to be a candidate for the “Going to Hell” album.

Album cover for this needs to be simple—just a plain brown wrapper. (There are even companies that make CD cases out of recycled cardboard—cheap and appropriately gross.) Simple lettering—the photos and other fancy stuff will all be inside.

So that’s the next step. Bunch of work to do before that happens, though.

Joe

ABOUT THAT SUICIDE (&C.)...

Heard from a friend on the other side of the globe about the musician in Bend, Oregon, who committed suicide at an open mike; reportedly, the guy introduced a song entitled “Sorry for the Mess,” and at the end, stabbed himself to death. He was 19… I was asked whether one should say anything. I’m not sure one can. Without knowing more—specifically, why it happened—any comment I could offer would be pure speculation. I think I’d like to hear the song. It might offer some clues. I am perennially curious what makes people tick (or in this case, stop ticking).

Thought about it myself? Hey, I even wrote about it—“Angel in Chains,” the country death metal anthem, is about a suicide. And because I wrote about it, I don’t have to do it. Music for me has always been an outlet: if as a consequence I am a quieter, less assuming person, I am also a less bloody one.

My “Irish period” is not over yet, I guess. The Irish songs I’ve been exposed to, whether they be jigs, reels or hornpipes, all seem to have ridiculous titles, like “Dance of the Honeybee” and “The Dusty Windowsill”—prompting the idea of writing an Irish-style instrumental with a thoroughly outrageous title. “What Seamus McMenamin Did to the Sheep the Night He Died,” say. And en route home from playing music at the Rainbow Lotus, a “sheepish” melody did occur to me—compelling enough so I will have to do something about it to get it out of my head. Unfortunately, it’s also growing words…

It will still be performable in public, because I will deliberately avoid saying what it was Seamus actually did to the sheep; instead, as it’s turning out, the song describes the revenge the other barnyard animals wreak upon Seamus. So yes, it could even be a kid’s song. With a moral, of course.

Deathgrass is in for the Rocktoberfest (like last year, it’ll be in mid-September, when the weather’s presumably better); first commitment of Concert Season—and it’s a paying one (though it doesn’t pay much). I was asked to be on the committee reviewing the bands this year; they currently have seven bands booked, and want 12. They want to keep it local to the extent possible (one band from Portland has already asked to be in)—there’s plenty of talent in this area that’s just being ignored. Deathgrass isn’t rock ‘n’ roll exactly—I’m not sure what we are, really—but we will deliberately be doing our “rockier” numbers for this concert.

And exciting news: “Rock Candy,” the all-girl rock band in Cincinnati Polly Hager sings (and plays bass) with, is interested in performing a couple of my songs—“Pole Dancing with Jesus” and “I Want a Man for Christmas.” I’d love to hear that recorded, if they ever have the chance. Performance, of course, is the key to exposure, not recording, but I’m unlikely to make it back to Cincinnati to hear them play any time soon. There is just not the money.

The play’s over now, and now I can start making up all the stuff I haven’t done while I was being the local equivalent of a Broadway star. I think I get to play music four times this coming week—Thursday with The Impromptus, Friday in Garibaldi, Saturday at the library, and Sunday at the Rainbow Lotus. Stuff to record, stuff to film, stuff to write for the paper, and jobs to apply for—and I want to hear Noam Chomsky speak in Portland Wednesday (and pick up Alice’s computer part while I’m in the Big City). There is also sunshine predicted, and I have a bunch of things to do outside—humming the “Seamus” tune the while, I expect.

Joe

PAYING TAXES, PLAYING MUSIC, AND STUFF...

Music at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler was good; not too much progressive-rock stuff (I like Aaron, but I cannot follow his rock instrumentals), so I pretty much got to play all evening. No bass player, so I “emulated” bass on the acoustic guitar (doable with that little amp, if one gets the knobs set right); compliments from several people on my playing—maybe they’re starting to know who I am. I sang a few things, too: “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is a definite hit with this crowd, even though they don’t go in for country music, and “She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself” goes over well, too (it should, since it’s a blues with a lot of lead breaks).

So now I feel re-energized, and ready to go do a bunch of stuff. That’s good, because I have a bunch of stuff to do. Hope it lasts through paying the taxes (which this year is NOT enjoyable—I feel like a mugging victim).

It may be difficult to get the garden-pest photos for the “Earwigs in the Eggplant” video. The OSU Extension Office doesn’t have anything; the local master gardeners have a number of books with good critter photos, but I don’t have any way to scan them (and neither do they).

I explained what I was doing: that The Impromptus had a gig at the Manzanita Farmer’s Market (they were excited about that), we wanted to do a song about vegetables (excited nods), so I wrote one (that got ‘em curious), found there was a vegetable, fruit or flower for nearly every letter of the alphabet (nods—they know this), and also that there was a garden pest for nearly every letter of the alphabet, too (raised eyebrows), so I put ‘em together and it’s a love song (really raised eyebrows).

I think the master gardeners are interested in helping if they can; I e-mailed them a list of the plants and pests I needed mug shots of, and told ‘em I’d send them the song, too, once we had it recorded. The audio of the song is not dependent on the video at all, so we can go ahead and record that—I’d like to do it quickly, so we have something to practice with (and promote our gig with). The video (which was just a Wild Idea, that has taken on a life of its own) can be done when I have all the requisite pieces.

I think “Earwigs in the Eggplant” is going to be a “keeper,” even though it has only been played once in public (and not very well). So I’ve done 3 new songs in 3 months (I wasn’t counting the theme song for the “Sleeping Piggy” play), but they all actually happened in the last two weeks. Why? What’s going on?

Still have the lead track to do for Scott Garriott’s “Clown in Paradise” (another of my favorite songs of his). The song’s in F#, which entails planning on my part; since I can’t hear whether the notes are right, I have to make sure I’m fingering and plucking in the right places. Setlists to help organize for The Impromptus; it’d be nice if we had all that together Sunday at practice. I want to record a couple of Candice’s songs, too, for promotion of that previously-mentioned concert up in Washington. I don’t know if there’s any commercial potential in it, but I intend to get good at that stuff.

Ordering copies of the album’s been on hold until taxes were done, so I could see how much (if any) money I had left; I can do it now. And Alice’s new DVD drive doesn’t fit, and I’m sending it back (I don’t know what kind of computer it was designed for, but it sure wasn’t mine)—I’m going to stop ordering this stuff online. I will be going to Portland in a week to hear Noam Chomsky speak, and I’ll get one then. A few more jobs to apply for, too. Filming for the video class. News to cover for the paper. Yeah, plenty to do.

The Play Friday and Saturday nights; music Saturday and Sunday. After that? I’d like to say things will get back to normal, but I no longer have a clear idea what “normal” is.

Joe

THOUGHTS ON AN "EARWIGS" VIDEO...

A music video of “Earwigs in the Eggplant”? Why not?

I am good at assembling resources (one of my city-manager skills), and I can script (three plays now, with the sock-puppet cast, and a couple decent music videos); I have the equipment and (I think) the expertise to do both video and still photography. So how would I do this one?

Photos, maybe, of all the plants—and pests—mentioned in the song. Getting real-life photos of all the plants listed in the song is probably not possible—nectarines, for instance, are not a naturally-occurring life form on the North Oregon Coast. I bet I can get seed packets for nearly all the plants, though, and scan those. The local Extension Service might have a poster with photos of the pests that I can similarly crop and title. I wonder if they have photos of the damage these pests do? That could be fun to include—maybe even better than the pests themselves. I have seen all this stuff online, but I can’t use photos from the Internet; the resolution just isn’t good enough—they come out “pixillated.”

The veggies and pests aren’t all we’ve got to deal with in the song, though: there are a couple of lines in the second verse that don’t mention veggies or pests at all, there’s the instrumental break, and there’s the “earwigs in the eggplant” line at the end of every “A” and “B” part. Those all have to be accommodated, too.

Could I use an actor? There’s Dale, our master gardener at the Arts Center; if the weather’s good (and even if it’s not), he’ll be out toiling in the half-block community garden, and I could get footage and photos of him doing stuff, both in the field and at the greenhouse. Since some of the field hasn’t been planted yet, shots of those parts would work for the “they ate everything” lines in the song.

In the instrumental break, I want footage of the fiddle player; I can manage this by recording the fiddle player separately, and filming her as she plays. I could film parts of a guitar solo, too, done either by me (with someone else doing the shooting) or someone else (in which case I could film them). Might have the opportunity to do that sometime during the next couple of weeks. First step, though, is to record a “base” track of the song—rhythm guitar, vocal, and maybe bass—for everybody to listen to and work from.

I could mix the footage of the soloist(s) with “B-roll” of (say) crop damage. The video could use still shots, too, of (1) someone’s vineyard, (2) a big plot of dahlias, and (3) a big plot of tulips. I wonder if anyone around here raises those things?

Is this video a commercially viable thing? Doubtful; I don’t have access to any commercial sources. It’s just a learning experience, I think—striving to master video so I can do it as quickly and competently as I can audio. (However, if done competently enough, it might be a good come-on for The Impromptus’ gig at the Farmer’s Market in August.)

More video thoughts: Bay City Arts Center has another open mike coming up May 7, and it will be filmed; I’ve urged blues-singer Candice to come, and suggested we might do something together. I have figured out how to extract pieces out of video footage, so I could make a “live performance” DVD of her (or us)—with good equipment, and a good camera operator (not me).

And with the Deathgrass rendition of “The Dog’s Song” in hand, I am ready—finally—to do the video of that song. I need about five minutes’ footage of a hyperactive kitten doing Hyperactive Kitten Things. Most of the people I talked to months ago about this no longer have kittens—they now have cats. Maybe I need to advertise.

Music Thursday (Wheeler), Saturday (Library), and Sunday (Nehalem). Last weekend of the play coming up—it’s been a big time-consumer, but definitely worth it. We’ve been playing to mostly packed houses.

Joe

"EARWIGS IN THE EGGPLANT"--AND SETLISTS...

New song. It’s a love song about vegetables—and garden pests—tentatively hight “Earwigs in the Eggplant” (after the most-repeated line). Essayed it at the Lotus in Nehalem, and even though rough, folks appeared to like it. I still have the music to finalize.

It was the result of a suggestion: since The Impromptus are doing a gig at the Farmer’s Market, shouldn’t we do a song about vegetables? And rather than search for songs about vegetables, I decided I’d rather write one. I did discover that there was a vegetable, fruit or flower for every letter of the alphabet (except U)—and almost as many different garden pests. The question was whether one could assemble an alphabetical list of plants, couple it with garden pests, and make it come out making sense. The answer is yes. It’s a love song because it had to be about something—a “garden-variety” love song, I guess. And I had time to think about it, because there’s a lot of dead time in the play—my bit part isn’t until the very end, but I’m on hand for the whole performance.

The song came out very Irish—I’ve been hearing a lot of Celtic fiddle music (courtesy of our fiddle player, who knows a lot of it), and I really needed to get the stuff out of my head. I had wanted to write in new genres, anyway—and this is one genre I hadn’t tried. I don’t know whether it’s a reel or a hornpipe (I know it’s not a jig, because those are 6/8 time—I checked—and “Earwigs” is 2/4). It should make a decent addition to The Impromptus’ setlist.

I was asked to help another musician with her setlist (I probably need to help organize The Impromptus’ setlist, too). I think there are a few simple rules:

Start with something that’s both comfortable to play and attention-getting. Comfortable because it’ll set the tone for the whole show, and you-the-artist (or band) need to feel confident about what you’re doing. Attention-getting is the old Pete Seeger mantra; if you can get their attention with the first song, and hold it through the second, you’ve got ‘em, and you can do what you want.

Finish with a crescendo—something that will leave the audience wishing there was more, even if they’ve been there for hours.

In between, mix it up—follow fast songs with slow ones, change keys, change styles, &c. No two songs next to each other should sound alike. If you can tie everything into a theme, great (sometimes that’s not possible, especially if it’s a long show).

I’m fond of Raps between songs, myself: short, pithy, often humorous, and always related to the song that’s about to be played. The Rap prevents dead space—one should never give the audience a chance to become bored by silence. It’s an opportunity to work in unobtrusive pitches for the mailing list, the CD, the next concert, and so on. I script out and rehearse the Raps as carefully as I do the songs—never leaving anything to chance. And people expect it from me now—it’s become sort of traditional. (And I even have some imitators.)

Tailor the set to the audience. I always want to find out what the venue’s like, and what kind of crowd goes there; if there are a lot of families, for instance, or religious folks, I’ll be playing different material than I would in (say) a gay bar. And I want to know way before I get there—I want to make sure I’m giving the audience songs they’re going to like.

Show off available talent, too (if applicable). With The Impromptus, this could be fun—we’ve got individuals who are from completely different backgrounds who are quite good at what they do (and what they do is all different). That’s a tremendous mix-it-up opportunity. The “Earwigs” song is a case in point: I’ll sing it (I wrote it), but it’s an Irish-style tune that’s ideal for the fiddler.

Joe

RECORDING INVENTORY (AND A MIXER!)...

I might have the I-have-only-4-channels-on-the-Tascam problem taken care of. I have a mixer! It’s the ancient Sony I bought on eBay some years ago—so old it’s got gauges and incandescent lights. And it does (or did) work. It’s wired backwards (I was told early Japanese audio equipment was like that)—but I had a power supply made special for me way back then at Radio Shack to take care of that; that way, I don’t have to pack the thing with a fortune in D-cells (not C-cells—this thing is old) to make it run.

6 inputs, each able to do either microphone or guitar—and it’s got its own headphone jack, so one can monitor the mix that’s coming out of the unit. That may take care at least temporarily of the I-need-more-headphone-jacks problem; that gives me two (the other headphone jack is on the Tascam itself). It is possible to record to two tracks on the Tascam simultaneously, and then add two more things later. It’d still be nice to be able to run two headphones off the Tascam, but I can mess with that later; this will work for right now.

I think this thing would work for performances, too; I can test it out with my little amp, and see if both guitar and vocal can be mixed effectively. If so, I’ve got the basis for The Impromptus’ sound system—it can plug into any amp.

A quick inventory. For recording, I’ve got:

The Tascam (and its power adapter)
The 6-channel mixer (and its special power adapter)
2 microphones (one of them really good)
2 mike stands (one of them ancient but functional, the other new)
2 microphone cords with ¼-inch ends (the mixer requires that)
2 good sets of headphones (plus the cheap ones for the Tascam)
¼-inch-to-mini adapter so good headphones will work on the Tascam
Lots of ¼-inch guitar cords (they’re in the studio—I better pack ‘em up)
A splitter cable (which needs re-soldering before it’ll work)
USB cable to connect the Tascam to a computer
Surge protector to plug all the stuff into
25-foot power cord for the surge protector
--and good old StuartLittle (and his Rubbermaid storage containers).

Stuart needs the software to recognize and download from the Tascam, and I’ll have to get that online (if it’s still available somewhere). I broke down and ordered a new DVD-rewritable drive for Alice (I found one for cheap), and it should be here in a week. Stuart will not be able to make CDs or DVDs unless I get another one of those “external” cases (and if I do, I’ll want a better-built one, that won’t fall apart while I’m assembling it). In the interim, Stuart can get by with a flash drive—I have one of those (somewhere).

Tentatively, we’ll try out the recording stuff with The Impromptus Thursday night. I’ve got video stuff, too, but I don’t know (yet) how much of it works. I’ll tackle that part later.

I’ve been tapped to do a set at the Tonic Lounge in Portland, Wed. April 27; it’s part of a weekly “humor night” hosted by veteran standup comic Whitney Streed. Audience are adults, and reportedly fairly literate free-thinkers, and it’s a comedy show. What to play? Tentatively, I’d give ‘em “Dead Things in the Shower” (an excuse to promote the CD), “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?”, “The Abomination Two-Step” (really testing their free-thinking limits), and “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas.” All work okay solo. Unpaid gig—but it’d be nice to sell enough CDs to recover the cost of the gas.

Joe

MAKING TOOLS FOR THE STREET TEAM...

Let’s say—because it actually might happen—I get asked to do an out-of-town concert, for pay, with another musician. Other musician isn’t well-known in the area where we’re going (and I’m not known at all), but the people putting on the concert (who don’t know me, but do know the other musician) constitute a decent “street team” that can theoretically do promotional legwork.

I’m told I’m being invited because (1) I’m a better guitarist (at least I’m not afraid of jumping in and playing lead when needed), and (2) I am not afraid of performing before large groups of people. Basically, I act like I know what I’m doing--though (1) is kind of a surprise, and makes me want to go practice the guitar more.

So what do we do to maximize this opportunity? I have suggested we record a couple of things—things we might do in the show—and get those into the hands of the “street team” and sent to anybody the “street team” tells us to. One of those recordings ought to include video—simple stuff of us performing, to give the potential viewers a “this is what it’s like” idea. The rest—one or two, I’d think—can be just audio; they’d go to radio stations, be played on Websites, for friends, &c.—whatever the “street teamers” want to do. It’s their market, after all. We would just be supplying tools for them to work the market with.

Do I have the wherewithal to do this? Perhaps. The little 4-channel Tascam is capable, on occasion, of putting out “radio-ready” product; it would have to in this case. (And I would have to re-record and re-record until we had “radio-ready” product.) Video I know I could do on the Webcam of one of the Arts Center’s computers, but it’d be nice to use my camera instead, because my “system” is portable. I just haven’t done it with either of my cameras yet.

To complete the package, we take a couple of professional-looking promotional photos (my little digital camera will do that), and write up a press release suitable for local media (I can do that). “Street team” gets all this in electronic form, plus a pile of pre-assembled envelopes with (1) CD of the songs we recorded, (2) DVD of the one-song live performance, and (3) press release and photos (also on CD, just in case).

And posters (well, flyers—I can’t print anything bigger’n 8x11 unless I pay for it). Yes, I can do an eye-catching concert flyer (one of my specialties, after all), and send the “street team” some copies, and a CD from which they can print more. If they want to have it blown up to double or poster size, they can. Flyer should probably go in those envelopes, too.

A couple of prerequisites: I have got to get the new DVD-rewritable drive I put in “Alice” to work right (it plays, but I haven’t been able to record DVDs or CDs yet); I assume that’s a driver problem, but don’t know. I’d hate to have to invest in a new unit. I will need to invest in those little mixers I’ve talked about—one for instruments, one for headphones—I haven’t found them used anywhere. And of course, a laptop (loaded with the drivers and software to “read” the Tascam) would be ideal—but that’s simply not in the cards. I will have to make do with “StuartLittle” instead—a little kludgier than a laptop, but “fits in two Rubbermaid storage containers” is about as portable as I can afford right now.

Music Saturday at the Library, and Thursday and Sunday nights with “the impromptus” (last person I saw call us that capitalized it—I wonder if that means the name is catching on?). And still a lot of other things to do.

Joe

MORE WITH THE PUPPETS...

Z“Selling Off My Body Parts” is up. Link is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=10473026. Two songs in a week is a little out of the ordinary, but I was already working on this one when the “pole dancing for Jesus” news clip was brought to my attention, and I just had to say something about that.

The Garibaldi Library wants to book another performance by the Great Intergalactic Puppet Show—for mid-June, to kick off their summer reading program. Noonish, on the Dance Floor at City Hall (which is next to the Library). They’d really like a fairy tale that has something to do with reading, and I’m not sure there is one: fairy tales are an oral tradition, after all. And the fans—the puppets have fans?—have requested the puppet band play again. So I have not only a script to write, but a song as well.

I have not managed to get a video out of the “Sleeping Piggy” puppet show footage yet; footage from both cameras is on the Arts Center’s computer now, and I’ve lightened up the film that was too dark, but I haven’t managed to merge them. And I want to use all of the soundtrack from one, but not all the film. (I need to spend more time with this.)

The Arts Center’s new Macintosh computers have very good built-in Webcams, and it would be possible to record a quick-and-dirty music video of me playing something solo. I’d like to do more than that, though; me and solo guitar isn’t a very entertaining experience—which is why I always fill out my “draft” recordings on the Tascam with lead and bass (even though I’m not very good at either). I might be able to do better on the PC—either “Alice” or “StuartLittle.” I inherited a Webcam (not hooked up yet), and that little $40 camcorder I got from Hong Kong can do double duty as a Webcam (and I’ve used it that way). I could theoretically record a soundtrack on the Tascam, and then videotape myself (on the PC) playing along with it. Have to try that.

The puppet band performed as “Southern Pigfish” in the “Sleeping Piggy” puppet show (easy to do, since the band Southern Pigfish doesn’t really exist), and it is tempting to use them to perform other Southern Pigfish songs. The one that comes to mind that really needs actors, that the puppets just might be able to pull off, is “Bedpans for Brains.”

That was a song about lost love (Southern Pigfish songs tend to have rather obscure titles) explored from six different perspectives—namely, those of the main characters in the Wizard of Oz. Each verse (of 6) is sung by a different Oz character—the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion, the Witch, Dorothy, and the Wizard. (And the whole band does the choruses.) We could have Luke as the Scarecrow (since he’s been the brainless one in the plays), Darth Vader as the Tin Man (since he has a bucket on his head), and Chewy as the Lion; Princess Leah has to be Dorothy, of course, Yoda, the Witch (he’s green, after all), and Hansolo, who is full of himself generally, could be the Wizard. Could work.

At one point, I’d hoped to tap the cast from the “Life’s SubtleTease” burlesque troupe I performed with, since they’re very good with costumes, and acting, and at least one of them does film work—but it hasn’t gelled, and they’ve all gone on to other things. I probably have to do something different. If the Southern Pigfish songs don’t get turned into videos, they’ll languish; except for the classic “For Their Own Ends,” which Deathgrass performs every concert (it’s on the Deathgrass album, too), these songs don’t get performed.

Music at the Library, then the play—and music Sunday with “the impromptus.”

Joe