UPDATES...

Helped teach Beach Art to pre-teens at the Arts Center for two days. Incredibly tiring work, but tons of fun—and these are extremely creative kids. I accomplished very little beyond that. The third (and last) city that’s looking at me as an interim city manager won’t be making a decision for another week, and I can’t stay on pins and needles that long; I will just not worry about it, and keep busy. There’s plenty to do. Concert Season presently looks like this:

July 16 (Saturday): Both Deathgrass and 45 Degrees North, at the Wheeler Summerfest. 90-minute sets, each.
July 23 (Saturday): 45 degrees North at the Rainbow Lotus in downtown Nehalem. 2-hour set.
July 28 (Thursday): Solo, at Bridgeport Whole Foods in Tigard for the Willamette Writers Conference. A little over an hour.
July 30 (Saturday): Deathgrass at Garibaldi Days, at the Old Mill Clubhouse in Garibaldi. 1-hour set.
August 6 (Saturday): With Dan Doshier at the Southern Oregon Songwriters Summer Concert, in Talent. Dan and I will be splitting 40 minutes.
Sept. 18 or 19 (exact date & time still TBA): Deathgrass at the Rocktoberfest in Rockaway Beach. 90-minute set.

The ringleaders behind the “Rails 100” celebration October 1-2—commemorating the 100th anniversary of completion of the railroad to the Coast—were talking about wanting “period” music. Hits from 1911, in other words. Turns out “Steamboat Bill,” which Deathgrass performed at the Bay City Centennial last year (it was one of the top songs of 1910), was also one of the top songs of 1911. Probably need to make sure it’s on all our local setlists (local setlists is actually the only kind we have).

I’ve been approached by the 2nd Street Market (finally); we—and I think that means either Deathgrass or 45 Degrees North, or both—can have our pick of Fridays or Saturdays in July. Fridays 5-7 p.m., Saturdays 1-3 p.m. We have to provide our own sound system, and it is unpaid. More of a consideration is there aren’t many Saturdays left in July that I have available.

For bring-your-own-PA situations like this, Deathgrass has a good sound system we can borrow, but 45 Degrees North does not: we’ve got a PA, and a 6-channel mixer, but we need speakers—good, decent-sized ones. The little PA can handle pretty big speakers. Affording them when one has no money, however, is a challenge, to say the least.

45 Degrees North will perform at the Bay City Arts Center’s open mike Saturday—another showcase/practice-in-front-of-a-crowd opportunity. We’ll do::

Manzanita Moon—soft jazz (Candice)
Road to Lisdoonvarna [NEW]—fast Irish love song (Jane)
Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy (me)
Wagon Wheel (Dylan)—mod. tempo country (Candice)

“Lisdoonvarna” was surprisingly easy to learn. It’s considered a love song (though it doesn’t sound at all like one) because little Lisdoonvarna (pop. 842) on the Irish coast is the site of one of Europe’s largest matchmaking festivals. The other songs are all standards, and we do them well. We will nonetheless practice one more time before the event.

I did get advised that “Hearts of Country Radio,” an Internet radio station in Princeton, Texas, is playing five of my songs—“Rotten Candy,” “The Dog’s Song,” “Crosses by the Roadside,” “Bluebird on My Windshield” and “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up.” Heard two of ‘em while I was listening. Link is
http://www.krykey.com/Radio/PRSPage.aspx?id=2451

Joe

WILLAMETTE WRITERS SETLIST...

Tentatively, the Willamette Writers’ Group setlist looks like this:

Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy two-step
Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass
Writer’s Block Blues—slow & sleazy
Bungee Jumpin’ Jesus—mod. speed Gospel
Crosses by the Roadside—slow two-step
Twenty-Four Seven—fast waltz
Rotten Candy—fast Gospel
The Taboo Song—slow & sleazy
When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies—fast bluegrass
Hey, Little Chicken—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
I May Write You from Jupiter—fast bluegrass
Leavin’ It to Beaver—fast bluegrass (but starts slow)
Last Song of the Highwayman—medieval two-step
Earwigs in the Eggplant—Irish drinking song
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
Born-Again Barbie—fast Gospel
The Cat with the Strat—talking blues
I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas—slow & sleazy

19 songs. Works out over an hour (there’s nobody on after me), but probably less than an hour and a half. (I maintain people like me best in small doses.) Includes a couple of my oldest songs (“Beaver” was written when I played with the Dodson Drifters, almost 35 years ago) and my newest (“Earwigs”). There are songs about writing, songs about food, and one for kids (“Cookies”); nearly all the songs on the setlist were actually written deliberately, for one reason or another (so much for my “oh, they just happen” claim), and the Rap talks a little about that.

I could include more, but one has to draw the line somewhere. I can make plenty of “but you included this one—why not that one?” arguments; while those are fine coming from someone else—that lets me know what songs people consider favorites—I tend to dismiss them when it comes from me. Whether I like a particular song is irrelevant—the only determinant of “good” is whether an audience likes it. In this case, all of the songs on the setlist are intended to make a point; the Rap is a sort of miniature lecture on writing, so the setlist includes a couple of songs I don’t play very often.

I’ll need some “gig infrastructure” for this one; they are expecting me to bring my own amplification. I have the mike and stand, but that little amp has only one input—it can handle guitar or voice, but not both. I need to find (or borrow) either a 2-channel amp, or speakers that’ll work with the little 2-channel PA I got from Carol.

A quieter (well, less musical) week ahead… That’s good—I have a few meetings to attend, work to do on the house, and it’d be nice to change strings on the guitar without having to play it right away. Writers’ Guild meets Thursday night; I help teach Beach Art week at the Arts Center Wednesday and Thursday; and it appears I’m hosting the open mike at the Arts Center Saturday night. I’ve been rejected for two of the three interim city manager jobs I was waiting on—still one to go.

Joe

THE WRITERS' GUILD & THE PUPPET SHOW...

Six folks at the first get-together of the “writers’ guild.” Two came, I think, because of the notice in the paper; one the result of invitation. (And the other three were us who started the whole thing.) We traded backgrounds, and ideas, and what we expected to get out of being in the group, and we’ll meet again in a week—and bring instruments.

Ages ranged from a guy still in high school to, well, me. There’s a bass player (who also sings and plays guitar) and a keyboardist/drummer, as well as the usual run of guitar players. One guy’s got what sounds like a decent recording setup (which he may still be learning how to use). Some of us have performed before; others, not. And a wide range of backgrounds: rock, folk, jazz, heavy metal, country, and reggae. Yes, this could be a lot of fun.

Film of the “Cinderpiggy” puppet show is basically done; titles and credits have been added, volume enhanced (we should use more mikes and a bigger amp next time), the footage slightly edited (I removed a couple of long dead spots), and converted to *.m4v (which I guess is a Macintosh video format).

I created a YouTube account for the Arts Center, but couldn’t post the video there. It is, YouTube says, too long (19 minutes 52 seconds, and no, I can’t cut any of it, really). YouTube has a maximum time limit of 15 minutes—good to know for next time, but I have to worry about this time. There are other video hosting sites out there; it appears we might be able to use Vimeo—they don’t have a time limit, but they do have a size limit of 500MB (I don’t know—because I haven’t checked—how big the “Cinderpiggy” video is). YouTube may be the most famous of the video hosting sites, but I don’t need to worry about famosity—I just need a place we can tell people to link to.

The “Cinderpiggy” play is surprisingly well done, considering we had all of two rehearsals. The dialogue is snappy (and the audience seemed to catch most of the jokes), the flying pumpkin was a hit, and Chewy the Wookie (aka “Dad,” the Evil Step-Wookie) was definitely the star of the show.

I did a little further tweaking—the opening title and credits now include a short sound clip from Southern Pigfish’s “Darth Vader Blues,” the soundtrack for the credits in the first “Pig Wars” video. It’s an instrumental, which is deal for an opening. I didn’t want to use the whole thing—it’s over 3 minutes long, but I only needed 40 or so seconds. So another of the things I learned in the process was how to clip audio tracks and “overlay” them in the film.

Lessons for the future? In the future, I don’t think I’d use country music for the soundtrack. Rock ‘n’ roll is better. Our little piggies need something more raucous to perform to. Got a time limit to work with—15 minutes, including title and credits, if I want the thing to go on YouTube. (I actually don’t care—but having a time limit is a good thing.)

And the next sock-puppet play? (Of course, there will be a next one—these little piggies are starting to become famous.) “Hansel and Gretel” doesn’t have enough actors (I need parts for all of our “troupe”—Luke, Hansolo, Princess Leah, Chewy, Yoda, and Darth), and “Snow White” has too many (though I could always have Luke and Hansolo say the “other dwarfs” were at work). “Little Red Riding Hood,” perhaps? (Chewy could be the Big, Bad Wookie.)

Poster for my solo Willamette Writers Group performance is done, as is the one for 45 Degrees North for the Wheeler Summerfest. (Still have a Deathgrass poster to do for the summerfest.) Now that the Pirate Festival in Rockaway is over, I should be able to nail down a time for Deathgrass for the Rocktoberfest, too. Still working on the Rap for the Willamette Writers: I want it to be a talk on writing, with the songs illustrating points made in the Rap, but I don’t want to be obvious about it—the songs are supposed to be the focus, after all.

Joe

THE MID-YEAR REALITY CHECK...

Life gets interesting… I’m informed there are now three cities considering me (among other folks) as their interim city manager. I don’t know if any of them will decide on me, of course—perhaps none will—but it does feel good to have somebody consider me worth something. I may know in a week. Preferences? I have no preferences; in this job-hunting game, the rule is whoever gets me first, gets me. I would not have applied for those jobs if I weren’t prepared to take and keep every one of them.

It is almost July—time for the Mid-Year Reality Check. I assigned myself a Worklist at the beginning of the year. How well am I doing?

WRITING. Not as good as I’d like. I have three “keepers” in the first six months of 2011, which isn’t great—I like to see a song a month, on average. “Pole Dancing for Jesus,” “Selling Off My Body Parts,” and “Earwigs in the Eggplant” are all good; “Earwigs” is a deliberately Irish tune, so it’s part of the “explore different genres” program, too. I have not done any co-writes.

ALBUMS. The Deathgrass album is done—recorded, mastered, manufactured, and for sale. The Southern Pigfish album (also on the Worklist) is not. It’s more problematic, because all those songs are supposed to be videos; I have run into a potential videographer, though. I’ve talked about doing the Gospel album, but thus far, that’s just talk. There is no money.

MARKETING. I did get the CDBaby account (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/deathgrass), and have had a few sales of the Deathgrass album that way. Three retail outlets are selling the CD, too. No Joe Website yet. Never did a CD Release Event, either. Still haven’t managed to get any video footage either of me solo, or of Deathgrass in concert. I did acquire a portable DVD-rewritable drive, that can be switched back and forth between computers, but it’s not installed yet.

VIDEO. Two more music videos done, both of them good: “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” and “50 Ways to Cure the Depression.” I also have the soundtracks for a couple more videos. Took a video class starting in February to learn how to use a real video camera, and I’ve processed, titled and credited some film. Haven’t pushed the “fan-generated” Southern Pigfish video idea.

MORE (AND MORE PAYING) GIGS. Yes. I’ll be doing the Willamette Writers this summer (performing at one of their fund-raisers), and I’ve done Whitney Streed’s comedy club (and she’d like me back). Deathgrass has been offered two paying gigs thus far this summer (Wheeler Summerfest and the Rocktoberfest), plus Garibaldi Days (a freebie). And I’m playing with a second band, 45 Degrees North, that’s been getting gig offers (they are good).

STAYING IN TOUCH WITH EVERYBODY. I’m still having trouble doing that—and if I end up getting a job, it’ll be that much harder. I’ll get down to southern Oregon at least once this summer, though, for a Southern Oregon Songwriters concert—and like last year, I’ll be doing it in conjunction with Dan Doshier. Haven’t been back to McMinnville since my Lafayette job ended—and I don’t want those people to forget me.

THE WORLD TOUR. I still don’t know how to pull that off. It’s been suggested I could attend some of the Coventry Songwriters get-togethers in England via Skype, and I will try that for starters. The key, I think, is having enough fans around when you get Over There to make the trip worthwhile.

So, some measurable progress—for a change. That should make me redouble efforts to accomplish the rest of the Worklist.

THINGS THAT WEREN’T ON THE LIST. I’ve written two more sock-puppet plays, both with “theme songs,” and both got filmed. Playing with a second band, and they do different stuff (but we’re still playing some of my tunes). Found some more places to play (and expose my stuff to different audiences). And I’m in on the ground floor of formation of a local “writers’ guild” that I hope will be helpful.

Joe

AND THE WHEELER SUMMERFEST...

Time to plan for the Wheeler Summerfest. Both the bands I’m in are on the agenda—and on the same day. 1-1/2 hour sets each. Main concern I need to have is both bands are performing some of my material, and in no case should they be playing the same song. So it’s necessary to do a “who plays which” shuffling. DEATHGRASS is easier to script for, because we only need to worry about one singer—me. Not in order, I think we could do:

Dead Things in the Shower—fast two-step
Tillamook Railroad Blues—deliberate blues
Things Are Getting Better Now That Things Are Getting Worse (Gene Burnett)—fast two-step
For Their Own Ends (Southern Pigfish)—folk-rock
Crosses By the Roadside—slow two-step
Rotten Candy—fast bluegrass
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow & sleazy quasi-blues
Dance a Little Longer (Woody Guthrie)—country rock
No Good Songs About the War—slow march
Free-Range Person—fast bluegrass
She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself—fast blues
Our Own Little Stimulus Plan (Betty Holt)—Buddy Holly-style rockabilly
50 Ways to Cure the Depression—folk-rock
Distraction (Diane Ewing)—slow two-step
The Dog’s Song—rock ‘n’ roll
Duct Tape—mod. tempo country
Selling Off My Body Parts—fast bluegrass [NEW]
Un-Easy Street (Stan Good)—mod. two-step

Only one of those is new. 10 of the 18 songs are off the album (45 Degrees North will do “Armadfillo”); four are staples of the Failed Economy shows, and one—“Distraction”—we did at daughter’s wedding. One Woody Guthrie tune; might want to close with another—“Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad,” which is a real uptempo rocker—if so, I should take out one of the two-steps.

And for 45 DEGREES NORTH—my part, anyway—we can do:

Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow two-step
Hey, Little Chicken—quasi-blues
Welcome to Hebo Waltz—fast waltz

All of those we’ve practiced (and “Armadillo,” with the Heavenly Chorus, is one of the group’s favorites). Need to include one more—to be fair, each of us should have five songs—but I’m not sure what (yet); it should be an uptempo number—the band does enough slow stuff, and I don’t need to add to it further. The others will need to decide what they want to perform—I don’t want to make that decision (though I’ll happily mix it up into a workable arrangement, and script out the Rap). To the extent uptempo numbers are needed, I can always substitute uptempo-er ones of mine for slower ones of mine on the list.

45 Degrees North plays the Pine Grove potluck tomorrow (Tuesday) night—unplugged. Two cities are reportedly thinking of me as their interim city manager, and I might hear from one or the other (or both) in the next couple of days. And Thursday is the first get-together of the “writers’ guild” at the Bay City Arts Center. I don’t want to miss that.

Joe

WILLAMETTE WRITERS GIG THOUGHTS...

The Willamette Writers gig in late July is a barbecue to benefit the children’s program. So… an hour’s worth of songs about writing (they specifically requested “The Writer’s Block Blues”), songs about food, and songs for kids. I looked through the “catalog,” and yes, I think I can do that.

The Rap can talk both about the craft of writing, and about inspiration. I did this some years back—gave a seminar on songwriting at the “Moograss” bluegrass festival, and used my performance later that day to illustrate points I’d made in the seminar.

Unlike a lot of writers, I deal in sound bites—my “stories,” as Eric John Kaiser calls them, have to fit in a 3.5-to-5-minute “box” and still express a complete thought with no loose ends. What that thought is is where inspiration comes in. How I deal with it is the craft. The humor, the looking at things sideways, the playing against type (songs about death need to be happy and upbeat, for instance) and expressing things in terms of roadkill are deliberate (and probably just attention-getting tactics).

I can give them examples of my more deliberate writing. (It really doesn’t all “just happen.”) “Leavin’ It to Beaver” was a counter to Jeff Tanzer’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (his song was a bunch of images from old movies, so mine was titles of old TV shows). “Twenty-Four Seven” sought to write a song that was entirely cliches (and incorporate the Plain English Society’s “worst cliches” list). “The Taboo Song” included the 15 things the Times of London said you couldn’t put in a song. And “The Writer’s Block Blues” was a deliberate (and successful) attempt to end a spate of writer’s block.

“Hey, Little Chicken” tried to answer the question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” (It’s also a song about acquiring food—and this is a barbecue.) ”Earwigs in the Eggplant” was a love song combining an alphabetical list of garden vegetables, fruits and flowers with an alphabetical list of garden pests (and was the result of a suggestion that 45 Degrees North do “something about vegetables” at the Farmers Market gig).

Some of these answer the question, “Where does inspiration come from?” Like I said in one of the “Joe Show” videos, it comes from everywhere—you just have to keep eyes and ears open, and remember the world is a very strange place and people very weird critters.

“Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues” resulted from a discussion on a writers’ site about the blues (it’s also about food, since the dog gets eaten). “I’m Giving Mom a Dead Dog for Christmas” came from a comment by Steve Goodman at a Bob Dylan concert, and “When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies” from a comment somebody made after Bobbie Gallup and I wrote “Dead Things in the Shower” (I better include that one on the setlist, too). “Born-Again Barbie” happened because of a comment I made on one writers’ group’s announcement of a song contest about women of the Bible. And “The Cat with the Strat” was a poem—a Dr. Seuss parody I ended up having to set to music because a band wanted to record it.

Other lessons in all this? Don’t operate in a vacuum—people need to know what you do. (Other people have become the major source of my ideas.) Hang out, one way or another, with other writers; they’re peer review, and alternate perspectives. (And like economist Ben Stein used to say on his TV show, “Stay tuned—you might learn something.”) And be different. (They probably already know this.) You have to either be saying something new, or saying something old in a new way. There are umpty-billion people on the planet, and there’s a woman in China giving birth every 20 seconds. (Yes, I know—we must find this woman and stop her.) Why should people listen to you, and not somebody else?

That enough, maybe?

Joe

ILWACO POST-MORTEM...

First Big Gig for 45 Degrees North was Saturday night in Ilwaco, at the River City Theater. Nice place, by the way—it’s an old American Legion hall, so it’s got a decent-sized auditorium, stage, kitchen, et al. The Peninsula Players, the TAPA-like community theater troupe that owns the building, are a nice bunch of people, too. They asked us to do two hours instead of three, and we were able to re-arrange the setlist without too much headache.

We ended up using our own sound system (good that we brought everything—we needed it) because the theater’s was way worse than ours. (They do have bigger speakers, though, and for next time—there will be a next time—I learned how to hook them up to our PA system.) Having the setlist in big print on a board behind one of the mikes worked well. Got all six channels working on the antique mixer (that thing continues to surprise me—it must be 40 years old). I did the emcee work (since I had a Rap scripted out for everything), and it was okay. And the Ugly Orange Bucket with its “Tipping Is Not A City in China” sign did get some tips—without us ever having to mention it was there.

On the distaff side, I did get a number of helpful comments. Our energy level could be higher (we were all insecure about the show); when the Crazed Weasels mandolin and fiddle players joined us for a trio of songs, the energy level went up several notches—and people did notice. I was told we should play more uptempo stuff—people like it better. I should look up more (instead of worrying about the setlist, and whether I had the Rap memorized well enough). Candice should belt more—she has a real good voice. And Kathryn’s mike wasn’t delivering a clear sound (I couldn’t hear that from on stage, and I don’t know if the problem was with the speakers (ours are real small), with being too close to the mike (which distorts), or whether the singing mikes should be plugged into something other than the mixer (there are two more inputs on the front of the PA amp, and I’ll have to try those, I guess).)

Original songs went over a lot better with the audience than covers. Since one wants to deliver what audiences want to hear, I’d say that means we should phase out covers as quickly as possible. (I don’t like to do covers anyway. Besides the copyright issues—which admittedly most cover bands never encounter because enforcement of copyright laws is so lax—I see no point in enhancing the famosity of already-famous people. I would rather promote unknowns—including ourselves.)

I’d make only two exceptions, I think: Candice and Kathryn’s rendition of “Moon River” is impeccable (and the song is a Broadway show tune rather than a standard jukebox number), and Gram Parsons’ “Sin City” is topical because of the local tsunami scares (it’s also really obscure). Anything “traditional” is fair game, of course—no copyright problems there—and that incorporates most (though not all) of the Celtic and bluegrass fiddle tunes we do.

Next steps: We have another performance Tuesday night, at the Pine Grove potluck in Manzanita; I’ve given everybody suggestions for the songs we should do, and I think they’re okay. Need to assemble them into a setlist, script out a Rap, &c. We should gather at Pine Grove early and set up and test the sound. (We will be needing to use our system again, I think.)

This is Week Two From Hell coming up, but it’s not all music: I have a couple of meetings to attend (one of which may be deciding whether to offer me a temporary job), and the film footage from the “Cinderpiggy” puppet show to convert to video, with titles and credits. What we’re calling “the writers’ guild” will be meeting for the first time Thursday night at the Arts Center. Willamette Writers gig to firm up (I know what night it is, and how long it is, but I don’t know time or location). And now that the Manzanita Farmers Market is open, I need to check it out—45 Degrees North is playing there August 12.

Joe