THE MAKING OF EPISODE TWO...

This just in—another job interview! This one’s in Gold Hill, down in southern Oregon again, and it’s to be their first-ever city manager. Next Monday night; I’ll tentatively go down early and play music while I’m there. (Good time to get new strings again for the guitar. I’ve been playing a lot.)

Episode Two of the “Joe Show” is uploaded to YouTube, with links at Facebook and Just Plain Folks. (Still have to add MySpace. There may be other places I can do this, too.) URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rMp8CQ9LUU. I still don’t know how well I’m doing with these. There hasn’t been much feedback.

Song for this one was “Leavin’ It to Beaver,” which I wrote back when I played with the Dodson Drifters, 30 years and more ago. It doesn’t get played a lot (making the song a good candidate for the show), though people do occasionally request it (and that still surprises me). I don’t encourage it, because the song is long—a lot of words, there—and moves pretty fast, so it entails some pretty strategic breathing. It is a song that works well in “French video,” because all you need is title frames from the umpty-gazillion old TV shows referenced in the song—usually one per line, so it moves pretty fast.

The discussion part—just 2-1/2 minutes out of the 8-minute show—was about inspiration. The “Hubris Gone Wild” attempt to compare myself to Shakespeare aside, there’s really not much I can say about inspiration; it’s there, and anybody can take advantage of it, really. I could probably devote another episode or two of the “Joe Show” to it, anyway, even though I’d be repeating myself. If one talks about something from a number of different directions, one can usually get one’s point across.

And having finished Episode Two, I am already thinking about Episode Three. I used to do this as a newspaper editor, too; as soon as an issue of the paper was put “to bed,” my assistant editor and I would be sketching out the next one—deciding what were going to be the major stories and where in the paper they’d go, which events we’d assign reporters to and which we’d cover ourselves, and even what regular features like the publisher’s column were going to say.

I’d like the next “Joe Show” to be with Rufus, librarian Sara’s English bulldog. I can shoot short bursts of video with the digital camera (I’m just not sure how short—I might have to do it in several increments), and use that as the backdrop for “Me and Rufus, and Burnin’ Down the House,” the song I did about Sara’s house fire. About five minutes of Rufus doing Dog Things would be plenty to work with. Nice thing about using my photo material is I can make mine come out clearer—I have good photo-manipulation software, stuff that isn’t made any more (my program is 13 years old).

The burlesque show is finally taking shape (I was getting worried). We have a role for me, that incorporates the music; I’ll function as the Dear Abby type who, when asked for advice, will dispense—in song—something completely unrelated. For which I’ll be thanked profusely, of course, by my supplicants, as if what I’d said were actually meaningful. Rather like the Oracle at Delphi (who also spoke cryptically and in verse), only in overalls and with a severe case of Alzheimer’s. I have a couple of songs that’d probably work for this. They need to be short; burlesque is pretty fast-paced.

The upcoming week is shaping up to be pretty fast-paced itself. Gig at the Hawthorne Blvd. Burgerville (solo and unplugged) Tuesday night; trip to Warrenton Wednesday night; I’ll record the lead guitar part (and maybe re-do the vocal) on “No Good Songs About the War” for the Dylan-wannabe contest Thursday night (gotta get that off to England); music Friday night—and I leave for southern Oregon and the job interview Sunday, returning Tuesday. My chance to record Rufus is going to be Saturday after Sara gets off work, I think.

Joe