TO DO: DVDS & A WEBSITE...

One way to keep warm while it’s bitterly cold outside is to clean; got daughter, cousin and daughter’s boyfriend coming this weekend, and wanted to be partway presentable. So I verified the upstairs does have a floor, and it is now clean, and things are organized and put away. Job interview this afternoon, music at City Hall tonight, band practice Saturday, and practice again on Sunday with Chris (drums), John (bass), and Bruce (keyboard)—we’ve been invited to play at the City-Port Christmas potluck Dec. 16, three days before the big Christmas concert, and none of us have ever played with Bruce before.

Turns out our newest Port Commissioner is a personal friend of Jane Scott (the video lady), which I found out when I covered the Port Commission meeting for the paper—so Port Commissioner Sarah got a Christmas concert flyer to pass on to Jane, who hasn’t been returning phone calls. Still a couple more newspapers I can e-mail flyers and press releases to, though time is getting short; as this is written, the concert is only eight days away.

I found (while doing some housecleaning of my own) complete copies—printed both sides—of the old “Joe is Great!” brochure. The back side, which I was missing before, has a panel of cogent quotes from reviewers, which I’ll probably keep, the famous “Wanted in 6 states for playing bad country music” poster-turned-logo designed by my daughter, and a photo of me with the impromptu band that won a band scramble contest at one of the “Moograss” bluegrass festivals (we were paid in cheese). I’d probably substitute a photo of “Deathgrass”—I’ve got a good one—but the layout of the brochure is good, and doesn’t need to be changed. I hate re-inventing things, anyway.

I don’t have an immediate need for the “Joe is Great!” brochure, but Getting Heard, my 1970s “operating manual” for working bands, says I should have one. It’s just one of the tools I need to have in my toolbox, along with CDs (check), 8x10 glossy promotional photo (check), letterhead (check) and business cards (check). I’d add one more tool, that hadn’t yet been invented when the manual was written, and that’s DVDs. If you’re soliciting gigs, what better way to tell somebody what a live performance by you or your band is like than to say, “Watch this”?

I have DVDs of the two public-television shows of my stuff the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. arranged in Ashland, but I don’t have a way to copy them (yet—I do have a DVD-R drive for “Alice,” that I haven’t installed). What would be ideal, though, would be a couple of video clips (one song, if necessary), filmed before a live audience, one clip with me playing solo, and one with the band. A couple of solo performances by me have been videotaped in the past, at the Bay City Arts Center, but I’ve never seen the tapes (though I’ve asked). And if Jane would videotape the Christmas concert, I’d have video of the band.

That’s something that needs to be on the 2010 work list—VIDEO. I want the performance videos above, and also music videos done of some of my songs. I am anxious to try out the technique I think I puzzled out—recording the song first, and then having the band lip-synch (and finger-synch) to it. A few of my songs lend themselves really well to videography; for the rest, filming a performance by the band probably works well enough. One can be tastefully restrained—Porter Wagoner’s “Committed to Parkview” was just shot in what looked like an abandoned nursing home, with no special effects at all. (It was even in black and white.)

Oh, and a Joe Website—that’s another 21st-century item that wasn’t in the 1970s operating manual. I already have most of the pieces: the “joelist” of e-mail addresses, a couple of OMDs where songs are archived, and the blog. I need to create a “clearinghouse” with links to all those things, plus some photos and a “push here to play a song” button. I saw one musician’s Website that had a “love board” (I don’t think they called it that) where people could leave nice comments; I’d like one of those, too. The Website may be my biggest task of the new year.

Joe