PREPARING TO MOVE (AGAIN)...

Just a few thoughts, because I actually get some musical stuff accomplished, for a change. The entries have been sent to the Goodnight Kiss Music contest (their deadline was 31 July)—“Rotten Candy” by me, and “So Far” and “About Love” by Marge McKinnis (lyrics) and me (music). I think all three songs are perfect for this girl singer, but we’ll see what the publisher thinks.

Designed the program for the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn.’s first summer concert; attractive 4-pager, in black-and-white so it’s easy to print—and it’s a template that will work well for all the other summer concerts (there will be three more—I’ll be playing at the last one, Labor Day weekend). Three of the photos in the brochure are mine, too. I do miss graphic-design work.

Southern Pigfish’s songs have not gotten a lot of attention. There’s two of them “out” now, the folk-rock “For Their Own Ends” and the country love song, “Bedpans for Brains,” and I’m working on a third. And maybe it should be part of the band’s persona that they don’t care about feedback. They’re not going to promote; they’ll just Be There. Of course, I’ll announce it when I write another song for ‘em (and I’ll definitely announce it when I have their album finished—I’m going to be the publisher, after all).

Today, en route to the Coast, the Tillamook Cheese Factory is going to get one of the “Santa’s Fallen” CDs. My daughter works in the gift shop there, and tells me the biggest items in demand by the tourists are the local things—and they ask about local music. The gift shop has plenty of CDs for sale, but not one is local, and the tourists don’t buy them. Is there an opportunity there? The lady who buys the music will be there today. I can get her as many CDs as she wants, obviously, and I’ll even pay to have them shrink-wrapped. (I don’t shrink-wrap the CDs I sell at gigs, because people always seem to want ‘em autographed.)

So, as I prepare to move back to the Oregon Coast (first load of belongings goes with me today), what am I looking forward to? I’ll be not working, I’ll be a full-time college student (but taking most of my classes on line), and I will have very little money—what I have will go mostly to tuition and books. I’ll probably get a “you want fries with that?” student-type job if there are any available (jobs are really hard to come by on the Coast—the economy there has been in a shambles for 30-odd years). I will have time to play music, but probably no money to travel with.

Resources available include the Friday Night Group, a bunch of venues that still haven’t been tapped about having live music, one local recording studio (and a friend of mine, a heavy-metal bass player, is building one in his house—I may see him a lot). And a bunch of local businesses that would probably sell the next CD if I asked ‘em. I won’t have a band until I put one together or hook up with one (and I know from experience that takes time)—but being able to be a small-time music publisher might put me in touch with a lot of local musicians. So publishing is one thing I’ll definitely need to pursue in my spare time.

Still thinking about that publishing class. The ideal format, I think, would be a lecture-and-questions thing—on line, of course: I’d post a thingie, and then people could post comments or ask questions, with the comments and questions and answers all being public, so everybody in the “class” could see them. (A lot of college classes are conducted this way, these days.)

Not sure where to do it; Whitby Shores would be ideal, because so many of the people are so active monitoring each other’s stuff, but I’m not sure the technology exists there—there’s a “comments” feature, but it’s, like, one line long—not enough to ask detailed questions or give detailed answers. MySpace has the technology, but you have to deal with the whole annoying becoming-a-member and setting-up-a-page and getting-“friends” thing—it’s worse than registering for college.

We’ll see. I still have to get my thoughts organized on this.

Joe