MOVING AWAY...

Well, it’s time to move. I managed to postpone it for a whole couple of months, which was cool, and got to spend that time being a full-time musician, which was very cool. If I’m missed—or remembered—in this area, it’ll be as a writer, rather than anything else, and I like that.

Lot of packing and sifting and throwing away and cleaning before I go, and it’s been hard, because I really don’t want to go. The best I’ve been able to tell everybody is “I’ll be back.” I really hope I can be.

A few musical things to do before I go, too. I’ll get to say farewell at two more open mikes, Sunday and Tuesday, plus practice one more time with Screamin’ Gulch Wednesday (and I’ll find out then if I can add a few more tracks to the album in June), and a final Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. board meeting, too (also Sunday).

I’ve been asked to do an over-the-Internet guitar track for a Vonee Rose song, have a writing assignment from a music publisher, and think I might get to write the music for a Rev. Skip Johnson hymn. (Skip is an Adventist minister in the Boston area, and a prolific writer. This one just shouts “Congregations are gonna sing this.”) Those things I can finish up after I move if I can get connected to Internet promptly—but it does mean there’s a couple of things (the Tascam and computer) I won’t be packing up until the last minute.

This year’s song contest by Goodnight Kiss Music is looking for songs for a new recording artist, Cathy Kent. I know nothing about her music, but apparently GNK has a single out, with two songs, one uptempo, the other one of those ballads. (I have to buy iTunes in order to hear them.) All genres are reportedly okay (what she’ll get from me is country, anyway).

Potentially, I’ve got two songs of my own and five co-writes that might be suitable, depending on the image Ms. Kent is trying to convey to the public:

Rotten Candy (fast country—the song rejected by American Idol in 2007)
The Writer’s Block Blues (slow country blues)
Dead Things in the Shower (with Bobbie Gallup—fast country)
Born Again Barbie (with Scott Rose—Everly Brothers country-rock)
Distraction (with Diane Ewing—slow & sleazy)
So Far (with Marge McKinnis—slow, jazzy blues)
About Love (with Marge McKinnis—bluegrass, Buddy Holly style)

Quite a range, there. That’s why I asked GNK—and will get to ask Cathy Kent herself, I think, since it looks like I’ll get to interview her—how she feels about singing about abandonment, betrayal, premarital sex, dead animals, and poking fun at religion. That could rule out the first five songs on the list—but not the last two. It would be great to get Marge a cut with a real artist—she’s such a good writer.

Which prompts—don’t you love stream-of-consciousness writing?—the question of what I should be doing with my life (and whether I can do any of it in southern Oregon). I’d thought earlier about reviving my “pocket” consulting firm and making it a music-publishing company; I could still do that—I know what paperwork steps are necessary, I just haven’t done them. I know, too (I think) that the service is needed in this area; what I don’t know is whether there’s any money in it. Just being a full-time musician might pay better.

Joe