BAND PRACTICE (AND RECORDING)...

At band practice tonight, we recorded the base tracks (rhythm guitar, bass and drums) for the two Dylan contest songs, “No Good Songs About the War” and “For Their own Ends.” Both came out good. The war song was just about perfect; guitar, drums, bass, even the scratch vocal were all about as perfect as one could get—on just the second take, no less.

All recorded live, using only two microphones: a carefully-positioned instrument mike picking up the guitar (amplified), bass (ditto), and vocal, and my singing mike positioned overhead over the drums—picking up (because of its small, narrow “cone”) more of the treble sounds (snare, cymbals and blocks) and less of the heavy thumps of the tom-tom and bass drum. Very nice product. I think John is going to be one heck of a sound engineer.

“No Good Songs About the War” needs only the harmonica lead, really, and it’s done. I’ll try laying down a simple lead guitar track, but it may be superfluous. On “For Their Own Ends,” John would like to re-do the bass (making it simpler) and Chris the drums (making them louder), and we can do that, using just my rhythm guitar as the base for them to play along with. We will want Dick’s lead harmonica there, too (underscoring the Dylan aspect of the song), but I’ll want a guitar lead as well—a simple one, of course, since that’s all I can do. I might use the Strat just on principle, but I might get a more competent product using the acoustic guitar, since I’m more familiar with it. (It’s easier to mute mistakes on the acoustic guitar. The Strat is less forgiving.)

We also practiced “The Termite Song,” and that came out good, too. Slowed it down a little bit, which allowed me to enunciate the words better and let Chris and John put a rock rhythm to it.

Practice Monday and Thursday next week after Chris and John get off work. That gives us about two hours per session to work with, and if we can continue to perfect three songs each time, we’ll be doing fine. The Museum gig is only an hour (12 songs, and Chris is already familiar with half of them from the Failed Economy Show).

We won’t have Dick for the Museum show—he and Carol will be out of town—so I’ll have to find a lead player of some sort. Can’t do this as a trio. I’d like two leads, but would settle for one. Dick will be here for Garibaldi Days, and I made sure to get both the Talent Show (2-4 p.m.) and the band’s performance (4-6 p.m.) on Dick’s and Carol’s schedules so nothing else could get in the way.

On the job front, along with one rejection letter, I got a notice of an interview; yes, some potentially misguided jurisdiction maybe wants me for their city manager. The interview will be by phone on Tuesday, right before I leave for the Thirsty Lion gig in Portland. They had “supplemental questions” for me to answer, too, and I’ve done it, but it wasn’t easy. How do you explain why you want to move to a town you’ve never been to?

Theresa, the job coach at Goodwill Industries, had a number of good suggestions for “dumbing down” my resume to be less intimidating, so I’d have a chance at getting a non-top-dog job, and I’ll implement them. Applied for two more jobs today, one of them local (at the Tillamook Cheese Factory).

And I have a diagnosis—not a good one—on what’s been making “Alice” the ‘puter act up lately. The latest you-have-no-choice-but-to-download-this “help” file from the phone company’s DSL service was corrupt—the second time that’s happened—only this time, it damaged part of Alice’s hard drive. Unfortunately, there’s only 12% of Alice’s hard drive left empty, after five years of word processing, music, and graphic design work. It is time, I’m afraid, to install the second hard drive. (Good thing I have a spare.) Might as well do it while I’m unemployed and have the time.

Joe