A SURPRISE (&C.)...

A surprise—I’ve actually had a song written about me! It’s by Katherine Fear, one of the Coventry songwriters over in England, and it’s called “Everybody Wants to Meet Joe.” The link (on the Coventry group’s Soundclick site) is http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=9172949. They say when one of them makes it big in the music business, they’re all going to come to the U.S. and visit me. That’s sweet. I’d really like to go to England and visit them. And I could almost afford it—but I’d be arriving back in the States with no money at all, and this is not a good economy to have zero money in.

Interesting, that I appear to have little pockets of fans in various places around the globe. The operative word, though, is “little.” How do I go about making those bigger?

Can one find an odd niche and exploit it? I know of one Portland songwriter, Eric John Kaiser, who’s making a name for himself on the Portland burlesque circuit; he speaks French, and has written a number of songs in French, and I guess French just sounds sexy, y’know? Might I have a like niche in comedy?

Most of the songs I’ve written on my own are humorous (though often darkly so); co-writes aside (those, with lyrics written by others, do tend to have serious subject matter), I believe I only have five serious songs out of maybe five hours’ worth of performable material written over 30-plus years. Portland, thanks to comic Whitney Streed and a few others, is becoming kind of a hotbed of standup comedy, and I guess you could call what I do standup comedy (at least, I am usually standing up when I play)—I am just hiding behind a guitar instead of being naked-like at a microphone.

I might be able to get a foot in the door, going to a couple of the standup comedy open mikes. Hitch is, I have to go to Portland to do it—in fact, I would probably have to make a continuing investment in trips to Portland once a week; otherwise, I risk being just the proverbial flash in the pan that people will forget. I am just paranoid about spending money at all these days without an expectation of immediate return—I can’t afford it. I did answer an ad on craigslist, from a booking agent looking for a quick replacement this weekend for a standup comic who’d bailed out on him (and that gig would have more than paid for the gas)—but the dude never responded (typical for craigslist). I presume he did find someone, and it wasn’t me.

Locally, the 2nd Street Public Market in Tillamook (whose opening has been delayed again—it’s now tentatively set for early June) wants a recording of Deathgrass for their 14-member Board to review; that’s an important sales item I really need to get together. Even if we only had three or four songs “in the can,” it’d be an EP we could hand folks like that. It’d also be a freebie we could give a few copies of away at performances to build up interest in the album (which still needs to come out in September)—and to expand the “joelist.” The fan base has to get built one person at a time.

UPDATES: The Food Pantry benefit concert probably can’t take place before July, because John has too much work at City Hall; the Dance Floor at City Hall should still be available for the third Saturday in July (7/17), and maybe by then drummer Chris will have his strength back. I’m not sure—yet—about the availability of Mike and Doc. I believe the Lions Club wants Deathgrass to perform at Garibaldi Days (fourth Saturday in July, 7/24)—and the Bay City Centennial folks say they want us for the Sunday of Labor Day weekend (and it will be unpaid—they say they have no money).

Five more jobs to apply for; that’ll make 11 this week (I’m not sure where all the vacancies came from), and I’ve already received rejection e-mails back from two of them (on the one hand, the Internet makes it possible to apply for jobs quickly, but on the other, it enables rejection to be equally as fast). Music Saturday at the Library (the Civil War people apparently bailed), and next Wednesday is another jam session at the music store (and they specifically invited me, so I’ll go). One fan at a time…

Joe