THE E-MAIL LIST BEGINS...

HERE WE GO…

Signed up for gmail (owned by Google). It appears it will do the mailing list thing (Yahoo will not). Right now, there’s one big list, with over 130 people on it (I’ll add more), and I don’t know how best to break it down. I could have (1) one list for people who know me through music (like SOSA members), and (2) one for people who do not—or I could separate ‘em geographically (southern Oregon/Other or even Northwest/Other), or maybe just between (1) people who would go to live performances and (2) people who would just buy CDs. Maybe there will have to be more than two lists.

The MySpace “friends” (87 at last count) will constitute another “list.” I don’t have e-mail addresses for most of them, but I don’t need them: MySpace “bulletins” will reach them all simultaneously. (Both a blessing and a curse, that. I must get a dozen of those “bulletins” a day.)

I have written the first message, which is a Welcome, alerting everybody to what I’m doing and telling them how to get off the mailing list if they want to. I asked those for whom I have only work edresses whether they’d rather get these notices at home, and for those for whom I have multiple edresses, I asked which they’d rather have me use.

I assume they detest junk mail as much as I do, so I won’t be bothering them a lot. Purpose of the “Joe List” is to let them know when and where Joe Gigs are, and when CDs are coming out; otherwise, they may not hear from me.

And there’s some housekeeping stuff—the URLs of where the songs are (on Soundclick and MySpace), and where “The Writer’s Blog” is posted (on MySpace, Blogspot, and Songstuff over in Britain). I may move around some, because of the Job Thing, but people will be able to get hold of me wherever I am.

I guess it can go out right away. I don’t know where and when the Big Joe Gig (or Gigs) is (or are), but I’ll probably find out this week, and I said I’d be telling ‘em.

For adding to the “Joe List,” I think I’ll adopt a trick from Dandelion Jo, the band Dan Doshier plays with. They just have a notebook for edresses, that travels to every gig; as fast as they get names, they’re added to the list, and they, too, get notified of gigs. I can do that, too. I’m just not getting as many gigs as they are.

UPDATES: All of the performances have been good. No feedback from the owner of the Siskiyou Pub about a gig there, though, and we didn’t record Screamin’ Gulch Wednesday night because Wayne wasn’t there. Do have a gig, though—a small one, at a coffee shop in Ashland called The Beanery. Fellow writer Scott Garriott and I will play an unplugged set there Saturday, April 5. We’ll see if we can’t use the intervening time to practice some things together.

Joe