UPDATES...

Last night at the Ghost Hole was just Jeff and me, no John, but it went okay. We had (surprise!) fans—people who actually came to hear us, and dropped money in the tip jar. Made me want to stay and play longer, even though it was literally a dark and stormy night. Gave Jeff a ride home to his new trailer, 15 miles away (guess I have to stop saying the entire band lives in Garibaldi), got to meet his new landlord (also a musician—plays piano and guitar)—and while we were talking, heard him mention the magic word “studio.” I didn’t press, but will find out. New Landlord is going to come with Jeff to band practice Sunday, and may come to the Friday Night Group session, too.

FAILED ECONOMY SHOW: We have confirmation of the 2 May date. Talked to the Food Bank’s head honcho; they’ll help collect food at the concert, and will promote the concert, too, sticking a flyer in every box of food they give out this month and putting up posters in every business in town. (I need more ink cartridges for the printer.) We’ll solicit donations for the city’s Sewer Discount Program at the concert, too—John’s getting an old toilet we can turn into a huge piggy bank, and I’ll make the slotted lid for it.

16 songs for the show thus far (assuming we’re able to pull off Zmulls’ “The Emperor” and Lazz’s “So 20th Century”—I don’t know that yet); there are two more songs we haven’t considered yet, but that I’d like to. Poster’s done, and I’m working on the Rap—but we still need to decide on eight more songs. Then, I can decide what order they ought to be in.

In a pinch, I suppose, we can do more of mine, if the band don’t find any other of the submissions they want to tackle (learning two hours of new music in one month is a difficult job). Since we’re talking about donations for the food bank, I do have some songs that are food-related—about chickens, armadillos, dead cats, dogs, termites, and of course cookies. All are considered delicacies in certain cultures. I also found three more fairly obscure Woody Guthrie songs that might be worth a gander—“Airline to Heaven” (obviously a Gospel song), “Aginst the Law” (a blues), and “Dance a Little Longer” (country).

PORTLAND BAND practices 11 April, a week from Saturday; I’ll go into town early and distribute posters in the Usual And Accustomed Places (at least part of our packed house last time came from those poster placements), and try some new ones, too. Notice of the gig has already gone out (with poster) to the “joelist.”

Both bands need to create RECORDINGS. They need to be good-quality stuff, but we can do it with the equipment we have. Venues are going to want CDs of what we sound like (an EP with three songs on it is probably sufficient); I think the DVD of a live performance is going to be a good marketing tool, but I can’t get that in either case until we do our live performances—and that’s not going to be until the end of the month.

On the Coast, we’re going to miss out on summer business unless we go after it now, and I think the same is true in Portland. Since we were planning on recording both performances, and feeding the recording to the camera to go along with the video, we should do it at practice to make sure we have levels right in advance. For the Coast band, I’ve got two more venues identified—but I have to get them CDs. I probably need to do the same for Garibaldi Days—the organizing committee is meeting 14 April, and I’ve volunteered to help. I have warned them I’m interested in our band being the Star Performers this year.

Joe