GETTING BACK TO NORMAL (WITH A ROBOTIC ELVIS)...

Are things getting back to normal? I hope so. (Then again, one is tempted to paraphrase Bill Clinton: “Define ‘normal’.”) Lazz has only a couple more accomplishments to learn before he can be a Real Computer, I’m finally getting some work done on the house, and every single one of the job applications outstanding is to be a city manager somewhere where I’m not only qualified, but someone knows me. (Of course, the “someone knows me” isn’t necessarily a good thing.) Two—ultimately three—new ones to apply for, too, with the same conditions (or limitations).

A video thought, with respect to “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” We start with one scantily-clad pole dancer, then two, then four, and so on. Chorus is sung by a few pewsful of a “congregation,” in their Sunday-go-to-meetin’ garb, with open hymnals. At (or somewhere in) the second verse, we switch—it’s the congregants acrobatting on the poles, and the chorus being sung by the scantily-clad pole dancers, in the pews with the hymnals. I can’t take credit for the idea—‘twasn’t mine—but it sure would be fun to do. Actually, the go-to-meetin’ folks wouldn’t be hard to enlist—I think absolutely everybody likes this song. Finding the pole dancers (and the poles) might be a little problematic. I’ve got a few dance enthusiasts I can talk to locally, though.

And I have run across a videographer. He’s young, but from what I’ve seen of his work, he’s very, very good. I’d like to turn him loose on “Born Again Barbie” if he’s interested, and see what he’d do with it. I’d scripted out a sort of stop-motion video a couple of years ago, working within the limitations of my old digital camera (so everything was actually still shots, and I relied on the camera’s zoom feature to create the illusion of movement)—but I wouldn’t want him to pay any attention to it. Allowing creative people to “do their own thing” with your raw material encourages the maximum amount of creativity.

I would want to re-record the song. Co-writer Scott Rose had recorded it originally, but I never had a good copy (and he said he’d lost his), and I never had it archived on Soundclick or ReverbNation, so now that “Alice” the ‘puter is dead, the old recording of “Born Again Barbie” is probably gone forever. It’d be good to record it with a real band, too (Deathgrass would be my first choice). I am insistent on doing this for no money, though, so I’m not sure what we’d use for studio facilities. I do know a few folks with home studios, but I don’t know how good they are at what they do.

In the Pushing the Envelope Department: Having done an art project that plays music for the Women’s Resource Center, it’d be fun to do another, more ambitious one. CART’M, this region’s combination transfer station/recycling center/thrift store (I think of it as what a dump would be like if it were run by hippies who were really serious about their principles), does a “Trash Art” exhibition every year; could I make something out of thrown-away (or throw-away-able) stuff that would not only play music, but be animated? That portable CD player I was going to use for my Shoe Project art piece never would play CDs, but its little motor does spin—and little motors like that can make things move. An animated robotic Elvis, perhaps, gyrating its hips as it sings “Test Tube Baby”? That’s another song it’d be nice to re-record—I really like how Deathgrass does it—but I do have the demo that was done in Nashville in 2007 at the Pineyfest songwriters conference. In a pinch, that’d work. Even has a saxophone in the mix.

Mercenary thought. (What? Aren’t we really doing all this stuff just because it’s fun and out of the kindness of my heart? Sure.) What I may be accomplishing with some of this stuff is expanding public awareness of my existence—exposing people in a bigger variety of “venues” to the music through forms they’re used to (even if they’re not what I’m used to). So we have a piece of artwork with shoes that plays a song, and—maybe—a robotic Elvis doing the same sort of thing. In addition to the playing music in all sorts of different places, like with the rockers at the Tsunami Grill and at the Talent Show in Manzanita. Part of that trying to become a household word. (“Toilet paper” is a household word. I haven’t even got that far yet.)

Joe

MOSTLY COMPUTER UPDATES...

Oh, fun stuff… Had to cancel the Deathgrass performance for October 1, after getting word drummer Chris wasn’t going to be available either. I had substitutions for John (bass) and Doc (blues harp), but this was just getting too difficult. I’m expecting the “Golden Spike” people will be able to get along without us—they have a pretty full agenda. Should be impressive even without us—and despite the rain the National Weather Service is predicting for that day.

It is just as well; that leaves me two nights free this week and I could use them. I’ll play music Friday (didn’t do squat Tuesday). Couple of new jobs to apply for, and I still need to get the important files either extracted from or usable from Alice’s hard drive. Most of the photos for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video are there—and some of them aren’t easily replaceable. However, there’s something wrong with Alice’s old hard drive, and I may need professional help to get those files off. I’m not looking forward to it. As a fallback, I have started re-taking the photos I can, just in case.

The work-around for Lazarus’ inability to burn CDs is the other laptop (I inherited two), a much smaller (and a year newer) Hewlett-Packard. It will burn CDs—maybe DVDs, too—without problems. So I simply transfer files. The H-P still has Windows Vista (uck) but I’m not going to use it for any recording or graphic-design work at this point, so it doesn’t matter.

Step by agonizing step, Lazz is being taught how to do all my stuff. We now have sound, and a remote mouse, and Internet, and can run the Tascam, scanner and printer, and both digital cameras; haven’t managed to hook up a remote keyboard, but I need to—that’ll take care of the problem of Lazz missing 3 keys, which really slows down the typing. Bottom line is of the four (four?) computers currently upstairs in the bedroom, I can probably safely ship two off to the garage. Finally.

And then there’s music. I have really accomplished very little lately: no new songs since “Blue Krishna,” and no musications, either (though I still need to record Ahna Ortiz’ “Nomad Man from Nowhere”), and Concert Season is basically done for this year. Two videos in progress, “Blue Krishna” (which is fan-generated) and “Twenty-Four Seven” (which will be a “French style” slide show), but neither one’s done. I entered the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, and that one for the fishermen’s magazine over in England; I’m not expecting any more results than I usually get from job applications, of course, but both were contests I felt comfortable I could win.

I still have the entries to send off to the Goodnight Kiss Music Contest (I think I’ll send them “Dead Things in the Shower” off the Deathgrass album and—since they’re also accepting videos—the video of “50 Ways to Cure the Depression,” if I can get it off Alice’s hard drive).

Jane and I auditioned for the talent show in Manzanita, and it sounds like we’re on the agenda. The show is Saturday night, and they’ll get “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” (And yes, that’s another one that would make a great music video.)

Joe

AND "ALICE" IS DEAD...

“Alice” the ‘puter is dead. I don’t know if ‘twas I that killed her, or whether her motherboard just finally reached the end of its useful life, but she finally gave up the ghost this week. I haven’t quite been ‘puterless; there is “Lazarus,” daughter’s old laptop which got resurrected from the dead and equipped with Windows XP. Lazz does have 2 gigabytes of RAM, but needs all my old software installed to be useful, and that could take a while.

His biggest “issue” is he can’t burn CDs—and that’s apparently a structural defect: user groups have apparently been complaining about that particular model of Dell laptop for years, and specifically about that particular problem. The fancy DVD/CD-rewritable drives never did work. There are work-arounds, of course—one thing I am good at is work-arounds—but it is a time-consuming pain.

Got a replacement computer that’s presently housing Alice’s old hard drive, but it’s got a few problems of its own, that might or might not be related to housing Alice’s brain along with its own (yes, it’s The Machine With Two Brains); it’s too early to tell. It is appallingly slow, and loses track of things, and it shouldn‘t do either one. I have more tests to run. If that computer can be made to work properly, it could help for a while: it’s even got a “firewire” port so I could hook up the Arts Center’s older video camera. It’s a little slim in the RAM department, but it’s not bad. And I’m not investing money in it. I am trying to avoid investing money in anything.

I was going to list the Train Set in this issue of the blog, but I’ll wait; the Lions Club, which is organizing the celebration Saturday—yes, just one week away—has an impressive, if last-minute, schedule of events that may result in Deathgrass not being able to play much at all. I’ve e-mailed them, thanking them for the schedule and asking what they’re up to, and we’ll see. Why is it the free gigs that are always the most trouble?

Of course, we’re not perfect, either: both John (bass) and Doc (blues harp) will be out of town October 1, so Jane Dunkin will be lead on fiddle and Wayne Moore, who played bass for 45 Degrees North, has agreed to do bass. I was hoping we’d get two nights’ practice in this coming week, what with two of the band (and half the material) being new.

On the plus side, I did get the Shoe Project done, and on time; I had to substitute an electric CD player for the little portable one (which didn’t work, despite the thrift store’s protestations), and that meant re-designing the whole project at the last minute, since the big CD player was not going to fit in a little flower basket. The Women’s Resource Center was excited about having a piece of artwork that played music, and I hope they like the song. It plays “Sometimes She Could Scream” (lyrics by Donna Devine, who lives in The Netherlands, music by me—and it is one of the Tascam recordings that came out decent), which is a slightly different look at “abuse.” It was also a deliberate attempt on my part to demonstrate that country music could be a good vehicle for addressing social issues—something it’s almost never used for. The Shoe Projects—they have something like 75 entries—go on display at the Arts Center October 1 but if I manage to get to their reception it won’t be for long: Jane and I are scheduled to be performing at the Talent Show in Manzanita that night. We’ll be treating the assembled multitude to “The Abomination Two-Step.”

Joe

ROCKTOBERFEST POST-MORTEM...

The Rocktoberfest—at least, our part of it—is over. Yes, it was a good show. Played a lot of people’s favorites, and still managed to concentrate mostly on rock music (with some blues and ragtime thrown in, of course). Larry (sax) was great—a saxophone is ideal for rock ‘n’ roll, and I think Larry would like to play more with us. And while Larry said he liked the rock ‘n’ roll songs best—heck, they all do—I thought some of his best leads were on the more “countrified” songs.

“The Dog’s Song” and “Angel in Chains” are still the hardest songs for me to sing; I’m hitting the very bottom of my voice register on both. (Of course, that doesn’t matter much with “Angel,” because that’s country death metal; it’s okay for the lyrics to be delivered in a flat monotone. It’d be nice, though, to have a lot of reverb on the voice mike when I do that—for ambience.) And some folks told me afterwards “The Dog’s Song” was their favorite of the ones we did, so I do need to be able to sing it better. Perhaps doing it in a different key would help.

For the rest, I could tell people liked Odd Vindstad’s “Simple Questions” (I could see their toes tapping) and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (that one has been popular absolutely everywhere it’s been played)—and of course the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends,” which is a consistent hit. Stan Good’s “Un-Easy Street” makes ‘em think even while their toes are tapping, which is neat. Sold a CD at the concert, too.

Did I mention it rained? (In fact, as this is written, on Day Two of the Rocktoberfest, it is still raining.) It rained pretty good (though the weather was nice and dry while we were setting up). I think this year, every outdoor gig we’ve had has had rain (we’ve been under cover, though, so it didn’t matter that much); when the weather’s been nice, we’ve been playing indoors. Go figure. The plus side of the rain—which started back up midway through our performance—is it drove the folks who’d been walking around outside into the performance tent, where it was dry, and increased our audience substantially. (Some people did brave the rain to come see us, which was real nice. And some folks said they’d even gotten up early to come, which I think may be the height of dedication.)

I had hoped we would be a hard act to follow, and we might have been. The band on after us—a quintet of older blues musicians—were tight, and quite good on their instruments, but I think we were more entertaining. Yes, those guys could play really, really loud, and had really long (and interesting) lead breaks, but we had lyrics. People act surprised that all our stuff is original; I know we’re a little odd in that regard, but I see no reason to want to play covers. And as the writer of original music, I’d like to see more performers doing my stuff, and stuff by other unknowns, rather than already-famous stuff by already-famous people. I’m just not sure how to arrange that. Deathgrass is proof, I think, that one can do original material and still have an audience and fans.

Next, the Train Set. There’s quite a bit to do for that one (October 1), and it’s occurred to me (finally) that two weeks is not a lot of time. I think we’d better be prepared for bad weather, too. I have been predicting an early fall all year, and I think it’s here. So much for that global warming. At least, I’ll have excuses to play “The Termite Song” and “Love Trails of the Zombie Snails,” both of which talk about the causes of global warming, as audiences huddle and shiver in their winter clothing.

Music at the “Rapture Room” tonight; shares of our Rocktoberfest pay to distribute to the band—and the Writers’ Guild is amenable to meeting on a different night (freeing me up Thursday nights to go play music at the Tsunami Grill in Wheeler).

Joe

OBSESSING ABOUT THE VIDEO...

I have over 150 photos taken with the “Twenty-Four Seven” video in mind, but I won’t use all of them. I continue to run into “photo opps” that are better than ones I’d taken before—having a camera on hand constantly, and keeping one’s eyes open, is a great habit to get into. With very few exceptions, I have my illustrations for most of the lines in the verses. The chorus is more problematic. The chorus happens four times, and I wanted the photos to be different each time.

“Twenty-four seven,” the opening line of the chorus, is one of the hardest to “picturate.” There’s only one 24-hour restaurant in Tillamook, and it doesn’t advertise the fact. (I did find one sign for it, though.) There are other things that are open all night, though: the hospital, the Sheriff’s Office… I’ll go there.

“You boggle my mind…” There is a kids’ game called “Boggle,” and I did find a copy in a store. The other three iterations of this line need to be something different, though. Are there signs that boggle the observer, for instance?

For “Any which way you slice it,” I have a couple of sales racks of knives and saw blades. A couple of deli signs should fill that out. I know an outfit that sells pizza by the slice, too.

No luck at all with “You’re my bottom line.” I wanted to get photos of some accountants’ front doors, but I haven’t found any. (I know they’re around. Probably hiding—accountants aren’t very popular in These Troubled Times.) May have to illustrate this with some outrageous sale signs instead.

“The cream in my coffee…” A coffee shop sign. Creamer. And a fridge magnet of a cat drinking coffee. One more, and we’re good.

“My moment of truth…” I’d wanted to use entertaining church readerboards, but there aren’t many churches with readerboards around here (and the ones there are aren’t particularly entertaining). Truth may have to take a different (and non-religious) form.

“If wishes were horses…” No horses, alas. I can substitute elk, though. And cows. There are lots of cows in Tillamook County. (In fact, one could do a whole video just of cows. I’ll have to try that. I wonder which song I should use?)

For “I’d marshal my forces,” I’d originally thought of chess sets—and I might still find one. Got a photograph of a group with shovels posing for a groundbreaking, though, and a painting of a convoy of warships at sea. And there are always cows-in-formation.

“And have a field day with you.” No shortage of fields around here (some even without cows), but that wasn’t really what I was after. I want signs. Golf courses, yard sales, perhaps; maybe some of those impromptu anniversary or birthday parties that seem to be rife on the Coast. And I suppose one could always use a field with cows for this.

It’s raining, which I hope is a good thing; the weatherpeople were predicting rain in Portland on Saturday, and we’re usually a day ahead of them on the Coast. With luck, the rain will be over for us by the weekend, and we’ll have nice weather for the Deathgrass Rocktoberfest concert.

The Mid-Atlantic Song Contest got their entry today—“Dead Things in the Shower.” So I did accomplish something. (Applied for a job, too.) I’ll go play music tonight at the Tsunami in Wheeler—I am still obsessed with strengthening my fingers for the gig. It’ll be a chance to practice some of the rock ‘n’ roll numbers on ‘em—to date, they haven’t heard any of those, and they are all rock musicians, after all.

Joe

UPDATES...

FIVE DAYS till the Rocktoberfest, and there’s lots to do. The Rap is written (though not practiced), and notices sent out; won’t get to practice until at least Thursday night—just two days before the gig (and it might even be Friday instead). Before then, I must play, play, play. Need strong fingers.

Answered a couple of ads on Craigslist (I still check Craigslist), one from a self-described songwriter in Tillamook (I’d like to meet him), and one from a film student in Portland interested in making a music video (I gave him some suggestions—and told him yes, of course he could practice on my stuff). I don’t know if I’ll hear back from either one—people who advertise on Craigslist don’t seem to respond very well.

Music at the “Rapture Room” was nice. About four out-of-towners there, I think, and I hope it impressed ‘em when the whole room sang along with “Pole Dancing for Jesus” and “Armadillo on the Interstate.” I think that’s how writers used to get started, back in the days when you didn’t have to be related to somebody famous to get noticed by The Industry. People liked your songs—ideally, bigger and bigger groups of people. Other people performed the songs (I understand that’s happened a couple of times with “Armadillo”). Eventually, a local DJ got the song on the radio, because they were sure people would listen to their show if they did that. (That’s happened to me at least once. And I hope the DJ was right.)

All that stuff still happens—it just never gets past the “local DJ” point, in part because everything past that point is controlled by the club that doesn’t want any new members. (One Nashville insider told me my attitude was “curmudgeonly.” However, he also didn’t dispute what I was saying.) There is still the Internet—though the Internet, because it is anarchic, is primarily useful as a promotional medium, not a money-making one. Making money off music, as Madonna once said, is a matter of “butts in seats.” And I still don’t have a lot of those.

Transferred Sedona’s pieces of the “Blue Krishna” video to the laptop (yes, it worked), and passed the camera to Kathryn to work with. At this point, the laptop won’t run Windows Movie Maker, though—it says it doesn’t have a sound card (I think it does, and with the new/old operating system, it just doesn’t know it). The laptop also won’t do Internet—though I don’t really care about that, and have a wireless card I can plug in if I want to fix that. “Lazarus” (what else would one call a computer that was brought back from the dead?) does have 1.8 gigabytes of RAM, which is nice, and can burn both CDs and DVDs; it would be good for video work, if I can get the sound working. At this point, if I have to transfer the film footage to “Alice” to work with, I can—but “Alice” still has only 2 gigabytes of free space on her hard drive, even with all my archiving.

Photographs are what fills up the hard drive, because of my insistence on having the highest resolution possible—and “Alice” just got loaded with 65 photographs for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video. And I’m nowhere near done. A lot of those were duplicates, as I tried to find the best camera angles, and I won’t use all of the photos I shot, anyway. (I’ll delete the unused ones later, though I hate to.) Among the hardest shots to find: the horses (or rather signs advertising horses), the “moment of truth” (I wanted to use church readerboards, but I’d like to find entertaining ones), and the “24/7” (there’s only one restaurant in Tillamook that’s open all night, and they apparently don’t advertise it).

It’s possible “Justin” the new computer’s no-workee problem may be just a failed on/off switch (“It is a Dell, after all,” I was told). It still may cost a couple of hundred dollars to find out. Elsewhere, I have the Linda Adams interview to do—I think I’ll discuss the inspirational aspects of roadkill.

And I got Scott Garriott’s album in the mail. Yay!

Joe

SIGNS, 9/11, &C....

It’s the tenth anniversary of September 11, and the airwaves and cyberspace are full of 9/11 songs. I don’t have one. I tend to leave the serious stuff up to others, and this is no exception. I wasn’t directly involved, and don’t know anyone who was. As a city manager, I noticed our firefighters were the most affected: these are folks who lay their lives on the line regularly, and 9/11 was and is a reminder you don’t always get that life back. And the terrorist attacks? It’s a little like losing a leg, I think: no, your life is not over, but you are going to do things a little differently from now on (though hopefully not a lot differently). Politically, I saw the terrorist attacks used as an excuse to limit people’s freedom by people who were primarily interested in restricting people’s freedom, and I like to think if I had been directly involved, I’d still feel the same way.

Saw a few videos of the old rock ‘n’ roll song “Signs,” with slide shows of (what else?) signs—at times illustrative, at others just funny. A lot of the photos were obviously off the Internet: online photos tend to be poor quality, very fuzzy and “pixillated” if you try to change the resolution. I think that’s because those photos had to be slimmed down to very small file sizes in order to get posted in the first place. I decided some time back not to use any photos from the Internet in any music video. I either take the photos myself, or have someone e-mail me directly photos they took—and in the latter case, I tell them to make sure they’re high resolution (my camera is always set to maximum resolution). I figure that’s one of the trade-offs for high quality.

Took a bunch more photos for the “Twenty-Four Seven” video. I expect I can get most of what I need in the immediate local area, but there are a few shots I need that may entail my traveling as far afield as Lincoln City or Seaside (about an hour north and south).

Found a new contest to enter: Angler’s Mail, a British fishing magazine, was soliciting fishing songs, and one of the themes they were looking for was conservation. So they got “Dead Fishes,” the Elizabethan bluegrass song about a child’s view of pollution. I’m not expecting to win, though it is the sort of contest I like—small market, not much in prizes (they’re giving away a guitar), one judge (who, importantly, does not appear to be from the recording industry). I’m primarily interested in getting a little attention for my stuff, and also for the Coventry Songwriters (I mentioned they were the people who’d told me about the contest). That, the Goodnight Kiss Music contest, and the Songwriters Association of Washington (D.C.) contest, will take care of my contest-entering for the year, I think.

I didn’t search any of these contests out randomly; the D.C. and Angler’s Mail contests I heard about from other writers, and I knew about the Goodnight Kiss contest because I’m on the publisher’s mailing list (and I actually wrote one of the press releases for the thing). I doubt any of that gives me an edge as a contestant, but it does make me more comfortable about entering.

The Rocktoberfest is just one week away, and I need to strengthen my fingers, again. I should play music every chance I can during the next week. Sunday is the jam session at the “Rapture Room” in Nehalem; Monday’s out because of the Arts Center board meeting, but there’s music up north on both Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and I should go. Thursday and maybe Friday the band will practice—it’ll be our only chance before the gig.

I still have the posters to make for the Rocktoberfest gig, and notices to send out to the “joelist.” I have all the pieces, too, for the Shoes Project. I found a good pair of women’s dress shoes at a thrift store, a CD player at another, and I have the headphones to cut apart for the speakers that I’ll bury in the soles of the shoes. I need to outfit “Alice” with her new CD-rewritable drive (I’ve been avoiding doing that)—I need that to make entry CDs for the other contests, and Train Set CDs for the band.

Joe

THOUGHTS ON TRAIN SONGS (AND A VIDEO)...

10 songs definite for the Train Set, thus far (and I haven’t gone through everything yet). They fall into the following categories:

GOSPEL:
Life’s Railway to Heaven (trad.)—fast Gospel (starts slow)
Glory Train (Katherine Fear)—fast Gospel
NOSTALGIA:
Tillamook RaIlroad Blues—deliberate blues
HISTORICAL:
Wreck of the Old 97 (trad.)—fast bluegrass
Steamboat Bill (Shields & Leighton)—1910 rock ‘n’ roll
ODDITIES:
Underground (Scott Garriott)—mod. fast folk, with railroad beat
California Zephyr (Christopher Smith)—fast ragtime
The Lightning Express (trad.)—fast bluegrass (starts slow)
The Last Saskatchewan Pirate (trad.)—fast folk
Blue Yodel No. 2 (Jimmie Rodgers)—rock ‘n’ roll

It’s exciting to have permission to do a Scott Garriott song. I really like his music—compelling melodies with very strange lyrics. (And “Underground” has a nice train rhythm. The recording on YouTube has a fiddle lead, too.) I was told Scott’s new album, Dragon in the Doorway, has me playing lead guitar on one of the songs (“Mattress and the Snake Pit”). I remember recording the lead, but I never have heard the final product. I’m getting a copy of the album.

I may well already have the couple more train songs I need to make up an hour’s set. Nonetheless, I assigned the Writers’ Guild “homework” to come up with train songs (actually train lyrics, that I can musicate—it’s mostly poets that have been coming to the meetings), with two caveats in mind: (1) With “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” in mind, ask what you can say about trains that’s different. Or (2) if you’re going to be nostalgic, answer the question why we’re nostalgic about trains.

I’ll e-mail the “homework” assignment to those who weren’t there, and we’ll see what develops. Bottom line for them all is if they come up with something that’s good, and we can use it, it’s going to get performed by a very good (and quite popular) band, and the writers will be able to be there and hear it. And that, if it happens, will encourage the writers to do more. “Hey, they’re playing my song!” is a powerful incentive.

A bunch of the Train Set songs need to be recorded. I have “Tillamook Railroad Blues” (off the album), and a draft cut of “Steamboat Bill” done for last year’s Bay City centennial, and there might be a video of our “band scramble” band performing “Wreck of the Old 97” at the Jews Harp Festival that I can maybe extract the audio from. The rest I’ll have to record. I did get recordings of everybody’s submissions, but I’ll have to transpose the ones I can sing into a key I can sing them in.

I figured out I can do the music video of “Twenty-Four Seven” with (mostly) photos of SIGNS. It’ll be reminiscent of Dylan’s early music video of “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” except that mine will be photos, not film, and they’ll be snapshots of real signs. (Mine will be in color, too.) The cliches (I prefer to think of them as “cultural shorthand”) are everywhere. I began snapping photos for the video yesterday; might take several days to get ‘em all. I think I need around 65 photos. A few may be hard to get—like finding a “High Water” sign to photograph in the middle of Drought Season. (I do know a public works superintendent, though. Wonder if he has one of those signs stashed away somewhere?)

Supposed to be some passing-through bluegrass musicians coming to the “Rapture Room” jam session Sunday night. Could be fun.

Joe

SOME TRAIN SONGS...

Still going through train songs… Thoughts below are not complete (and neither is the list—I haven’t digested or tried to play everything yet).

There seems to be a paucity of themes running through train songs, and I’m not sure why. There are a lot of Gospel songs, of the “bound for glory” genre, and most of them are quite good. Trains are a good religious metaphor: a train almost defines “straight and narrow,” has a definite destination, and is rather unstoppable once it gets going. I probably wouldn’t want to do more’n two or three, though, because I don’t want our Train Set to sound like it was all Gospel songs.

Katherine Fear’s “Glory Train” is an ideal example of the genre—and neat because the verses have an unexpected chord progression. One of the best-written Gospel train songs I know is actually public domain—“Life’s Railway to Heaven.” (It was copyrighted by the patent-medicine-salesman-turned-revivalist-preacher who stole the song from a black church, but he did that in 1918, and the copyright’s run out.) It’s a long song, though; five verses (counting the one I wrote for the Dodson Drifters) of 8 lines each, and five choruses (and you have to have one or two lead breaks). But I can sing it.

There are the “history” songs, mostly about train wrecks (and most of those are old songs, because train wrecks don’t happen much any more); we’ll do one, “Wreck of the Old 97” (with the verse Johnny Cash added, and the one I changed)—and we’ll also do the 1910 song that prompted it, “Steamboat Bill” (in which, after Bill’s boat explodes, his widow tells the kids, “Next time, we’re marryin’ a railroad man”).

My “Tillamook Railroad Blues” is nostalgia—a quasi-sad snapshot of the “train on life support.” There is some nostalgia these days about the end of railroading, but it doesn’t seem to take a lot of different forms. There are perhaps opportunities there that aren’t being taken advantage of: yes, we’re sad to see it all go—but why? I’m not sure even “Tillamook Railroad Blues” answers that question. Something (or someone) should.

There are the “oddities.” (I like oddities.) Christopher Smith’s “California Zephyr” is about a baby being born on a train (supposedly a true story), delivered in a nice ragtime style. ”The Lightning Express” (an old bluegrass traditional), about a kid traveling to see his dying mother—and getting kicked off the train because he doesn’t have the fare—was a Dodson Drifters staple; delivered Grateful Dead style, it’s one of the happiest-sounding songs about death I’ve ever run across. Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 2 (T for Texas)” is a lost-love blues, with some great punch lines; it works real well as rock ‘n’ roll.

A real odd one I ran across—it’s British, and apparently public domain—is something called (I think) “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate.” Yes, if you’re going to embark on a career as a pirate in the board-flat wheat fields of Saskatchewan, you’re going to be “sailing” a train, not a boat, and the “gold” you’re going to be stealing is going to be some of those “amber waves of grain.” It’s cute. The moral—never expressed outright, of course—is that yes, you can follow your dreams, but be prepared to make compromises. I haven’t found sheet music (or a recording) for this one; I might have to invent something myself.

What else can you do with trains? “The Last Saskatchewan Pirate” suggests the field is really wide open—but I don’t see many people out in the field. Stan Good sent me lyrics (which I’m not sure I can musicate) about a relationship “headed for a train wreck”; the economy, or what’s left of it, appears headed for one, too. A lot of people are upset about the “gravy train,” also—though there’s a lot of disagreement about who’s on it. And there was that old urban legend, popularized by Huddie Ledbetter, that if you stood in the light of an oncoming train at midnight, you could get out of jail. Is that why so many people are stuck in prison? The train doesn’t come by any more?

Writers’ Guild Thursday night; might practice Friday with Larry and Charlie for the Rocktoberfest gig—can’t get the whole band together until just a couple of nights before the gig. And the Train Set to figure out.

Joe

ITALIAN RAGTIME?

One of the things I like about playing music with diverse groups of people is you get interesting ideas. Take “Italian ragtime.” I don’t know who at the Rapture Room suggested it, but somebody did. Turns out there is such a thing. (Thanks, Google.) Not much of one, because ragtime was a very short-lived genre, and very specifically American (and black American to boot), though ragtime did enjoy a momentary worldwide popularity—there’s some Czech ragtime, even Indonesian ragtime. And yes, Italian ragtime. I ran across two Italian ragtime tunes, one by an American composer, Rev. Gary Davis, and one by an Italian composer.

It’s actually fairly simple stuff, and I could play it on the guitar with a little practice. Ragtime isn’t about what you play so much as how it’s played. My favorite definition, among those I found, said that ragtime was an attempt to play African-American banjo music on the piano. (That one makes sense—to me, anyway.) Ragtime music doesn’t generally have words, of course—but anything I write has to have words. Words is what I do. I suppose for Italian ragtime, they’d have to be in Italian (“Alice” the ‘puter does have a translator program). Could make it a cowboy song (of the “spaghetti Western” variety, of course).

Add that to the list of things to do. The first thing I am going to finish is cleaning out the garage. After that I will worry about other things.

Michael and Sedona have the old digital camera, with a freshly-scrubbed brain and new batteries; they’ll call or e-mail when they’re done with it, and I’ll download their footage, wipe the brain again, and pass the camera on to someone else. The final product of this experiment—a music video of “Blue Krishna”—should be interesting.

Sent out a few politically charged Labor Day messages; to paraphrase Woody Guthrie, this Labor Day a lot of people didn’t have anything to labor at. The song that got the most attention? “50 Ways to Cure the Depression”—I think because it was on video, and the others weren’t. Like Len Amsterdam said, “Video is the new audio.” That’s a reminder that I should turn all of my music that I can into video—not because there’s any money in it (I have not seen any for me, at least), but because it’s an attention-getting tactic. If I want people to notice my stuff, I have to reach them through the medium they’re noticing in.

I have the video of “Blue Krishna” underway; I’ll see what I can do about “The Dog’s Song” this coming week (I do have a good recording of that, off the Deathgrass album). One that can be done “French style” (fast-moving slide show with text overlays) is “Twenty-Four Seven,” the all-cliches waltz. The soundtrack for that one isn’t bad, even though it was done on the Tascam. As with the “50 Ways” video, I’ll script out what photos I need, and snap them as the opportunities present themselves. Despite being the same “French style,” it will be different—I am insistent on each video being different, just like I want each song to be different.

Other stuff to do: the laptop to set up for video work; Ahna’s song to record; footage to film for the video class (I am really behind); the Train Set to organize; the garage studio to expand; the “My Baby’s On That Train” song to work on; more of Alice’s hard drive to free up (she’s only 95% full now). And the contests to enter. Don’t know about that local bluegrass band—I haven’t heard anything more. I did respond to ads on Craigslist from a couple of country vocalists (one in Texas, and one about 60 miles from where I live) looking for material—and they’ve responded back. Might be an opportunity there.

Joe

STUFF TO DO...

http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=11015399 “Free-Range Person,” off the Deathgrass album. It’s Labor Day weekend, and (to paraphrase Woody Guthrie) a lot of folks don’t got no jobs to labor at. I suppose at the Library (today) and the “Rapture Room” (tomorrow), I should concentrate on Failed Economy songs, in honor of Labor Day. I do know rather a lot of them.

That rumored bluegrass band will reportedly have banjo, fiddle, mandolin, bass, and guitar (I’d be the guitar, they tell me—and I can play bluegrass guitar). I don’t know what they have in mind to perform; a lot of my stuff lends itself easily to bluegrass, but bluegrass musicians tend to be thoroughgoing traditionalists. (And traditionals—public-domain songs, in other words—are okay, too. I just think it’s important to avoid covers when you’re being paid. There are copyright issues, even if no one else pays attention to them—and as a writer, I’m kinda insistent on paying attention on principle.) As far as my availability for practice, I reminded them that when you’re unemployed, every day is Friday. Just call. As with the job front, I will not hold my breath. What happens, happens. In the meantime, I have stuff to do.

“Alice” needs that replacement CD-rewritable drive installed; after that, I can make the CDs to send to the Goodnight Kiss Music and Mid-Atlantic song contests. I need to burn a CD of “The Dog’s Song” for a local librarian who’s reportedly got a hyperactive kitten that could star in that music video. (Got to catch them kittens while they’re young. Aslan and Hansolo at home are constant reminders that kittens get big real fast.) And I’ve got a ton of files to archive to free up hard drive space on “Alice.”

I have “Nomad Man from Nowhere” (Ahna Ortiz’ song) to record; I’ll dump the product to the refurbished laptop, to see if my vision of mobile recording is really going to be as simple as I thought. (The way things have gone, I no longer expect anything to be simple.) A thought: the laptop is only four years old. Does that mean it can burn CDs, too?

I’ll approach folks Sunday night at the “Rapture Room” about shooting footage for the video of “Blue Krishna.” Potentially, I’ve got three digital cameras to work with, but I might just use one for simplicity’s sake. If everybody’s local, I can pick up and dump video and transfer the camera fairly easily. In fact, if I can connect the camera to the laptop (I have the software), I could do camera transfers on a while-you-wait basis.

It is time to start assembling the Train Set. I’m waiting on songs from one more writer, but he’s been having trouble sending them—I don’t know if I’ll get them. Don’t know if I have enough usable material, that I can both play and sing, to fill an hour’s gig. Have to see. (And following that, I have all those songs to record, so they’re in the key and arrangement we’ll use for the gig.)

For the Musical Shoes, I’ve got a set of headphones to dismantle, and a pair of shoes to tear into, too (the ear speakers will go in the soles), and a memory card to find for the 50-cent *.mp3 player (which I hope works—I don’t know that yet). Can I use the laptop to program the card? If not, maybe one of the Macs at the Arts Center can do it. There are work-arounds for almost everything—some of them just aren’t easy.

In the course of cleaning the garage (which job is not finished), I have figured out how to about double the size of the 5x7 studio—and still (maybe) leave room to park a car (not that anyone would ever use a garage for that). My excuse for doing the expansion would be that I need to move my old watermaster’s desk (vintage 1906, rescued from the City of Vale) out to the garage, and I need somewhere to put it, and it might as well be used as a desk. And it won’t fit in the studio as presently constituted. Expanding the studio is a tad ambitious project, but I do have the materials on hand. Have to finish cleaning the garage first, though, so I have room to move things around.

Joe

"ALICE" IS BACK...

Well, “Justin” the new computer may not have been such a good deal after all. I believe his power supply has quit now, and that’s a fairly spendy item to replace (and I can’t just swap out one from another computer, because everything in “Justin” is New And Different). I did isolate the keyboard-don’t-work problem: it appears to be a defect in the BIOS (though how it happened, I have no idea). They have fixes for that (which suggests the problem occurs frequently with Dell computers), and I downloaded them—for what it’s worth. Not much I can do with it now.

So “Alice” is back. (Say hi to everybody, Alice.) I will install a replacement CD-rewritable drive, archive a whole bunch of files off the 99.9% full hard drive, and keep her alive a little longer. And “Justin”? He’ll sit in a corner until I can afford to take him to an out-of-town tech—which could be a while. I’ll need a job first. Biggest frustration is I feel I’ve wasted my time (not to mention a little money) these past several days—and I consider wasting my time an unforgivable sin. It’s especially unforgivable when I do it to myself.

On the positive side, the laptop has had its brain wiped and Windows XP installed (no more Windows Vista) so we can start with a clean (and usable) slate. (And no, I didn’t do that myself—I had it done by someone else.) I want to use the laptop for (among other things) mobile recording; it doesn’t need to do anything fancy, just recognize the Tascam as a portable hard drive. (Doesn’t even have to do Internet.)

This will overcome the Tascam’s biggest limitation—the digital-camera chip “brain” that can hold only one song at a time. I can record remotely on the Tascam, mix the product on the Tascam, and then dump it immediately to the laptop—and then wipe the Tascam’s little chip-brain and do it again immediately, instead of waiting until I get back home. Next time I go to southern Oregon, I could accomplish a lot of stuff.

No gigs this weekend (and it’s Labor Day weekend—I shouldn’t let that happen again). I got to go to the Tsunami jam Thursday night and play lead, and I’ll play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, too, and wear my Deathgrass T-shirt and remind people that I am in a band, and both I (solo) and we (band) are interested in gigs. There are rumors that a local bluegrass band might be starting up, and I’ve encouraged that; I don’t know if they’re interested in me being part of that, but it’d be nice.

I sent a couple more promotional CDs off (one to a concert organizer, one to a radio station in southern Oregon). I’ve still got Ahna Ortiz’ “airship mechanic” song to record, and it’s time to move “StuartLittle” out to the garage studio, too (and clean the studio), and see if he can do wireless Internet from there. I keep coming up with snippets for the new train song (tentative title “My Baby’s On That Train”), and we’ll see if something jells in time to be used in the Train Set. I’ve got The Shoes That Play Music (specifically, Donna Devine’s “Sometimes She Could Scream”) to build for the Women’s Resource Center’s art show, too. I did find an *.mp3 player at a thrift store (50 cents); it needs a digital-camera chip (one of the older, larger ones, it appears), and if I can’t get that locally, it’ll have to wait for the next trip to Portland, whenever that is. For the speakers, I have a broken set of headphones I can cannibalize. And the shoes themselves I’ll get from the garage (another reason to clean the garage).

Entry forms have been posted for the Goodnight Kiss Music contest, so I’ve downloaded mine. I think I’ll send “Dead Things in the Shower” if co-writer Bobbie Gallup okays it. I’ll need the new CD-rewritable drive installed to copy it.

For now, though, it’s off to the garage to work. Say goodnight, Alice.

Joe