AND ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC...

There was a well-publicized article in the Nashville Tennesseean about what’s wrong with country music today (it was nice to see somebody in Music City talking about this—a lot of people outside Music City have been talking about it for a long time). The premise was that all these songs about how wonderful it is to be a country boy or girl were written and performed by people who’ve never lived in the country, and don’t have a clue what they’re gushing about. All probably true.

I have a different idea about what’s wrong with country music, of course (and I did write a song about it—“Hank’s Song,” which was on the Santa’s Fallen album—the recording is at http://www.soundclick.com/share?songid=2794921). But the article does beg the question, “What exactly is country music?”

I’m a latecomer to country music, myself; I discovered rock ‘n’ roll in high school (my girlfriend and her friends were listening to it), and rock ‘n’ roll is still my favorite music to listen to. However, the Dodson Drifters—the “bluegrass punk” band that was little (pop. 50) Dodson, Oregon’s only claim to fame—played country music (with a lead singer who sounded and looked like Willie Nelson, we had to play country music), and I gradually developed an appreciation for it. And it is mostly what I write.

Perhaps an answer to “What is country music?” has to start with “Well, why do you write it?” I am fond of quoting Steve Goodman’s definition of country music—“It’s about Mother, trucks, trains, farms, prison, dead dogs and Christmas”—and I’ll periodically tell audiences, “This is a country music song ‘cause it’s got a dead dog and a truck in it.” But it goes deeper than that.

Country music tends toward very specific imagery. Even abstract concepts—and I’ve sung about those—are dealt with in terms of real people doing specific things. “Up close and personal,” as it were. No, it doesn’t have to be about life in the country—though I’ll often throw in country-boy imagery just for fun, noting (for instance) in “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” that a spaceship looks like “a silo with a shiny, pointy nose.”

It’s literate (yes, even with those drawls and “ain’ts”). Country music respects the intelligence of its listeners, assuming they are well-read (if not well-educated); its “cultural shorthand” is peppered with Biblical, Shakespearean and other references in full confidence that the audience will “get it” (and they always do). Other genres don’t do that. One trick I picked up from “Tampa Stan” Good was tossing polysyllabic words and foreign words and phrases into country music songs off-handedly (and always conversationally). “Copulating” in a country-music song? Of course. Why not?

Country music is self-deprecating, too. Us country folks do not mind making fun of ourselves. (And again, other genres seem to take themselves way too seriously.)

And country music can tackle social issues—though it’s not used much that way. Country music is an ideal vehicle for this, because the specificity—framing the message in terms of real things happening to real people—makes the message impossible to ignore. Perhaps the fact that country music doesn’t often get used to talk about issues gives it more of an impact when it is. People don’t expect it. (And I do like to hand folks the unexpected.)

So yes, the “suits” have gotten it all wrong—focusing (again, I think) on appearances and not looking further. (And so, be it noted, did the newspaper reporter.) That’s probably an outgrowth of the “eye candy” fixation that developed as Nashville some years back tried to imitate MTV. Like Danny the Dog (played by me) said in one of his radio interviews, “Everybody’s got to be young and pretty, like on the Disney Channel.” One can at least ignore them as irrelevant, and like Danny, go play with a Frisbee instead.

Joe

PLAYING IN THE "RAPTURE ROOM"...

Sunday’s jam session in Nehalem was next door to the Rainbow Lotus, in a former upstairs apartment that’s been remodeled into a performance space. It’s being officially called “the Center for Creative Consciousness” or some such north Tillamook County moniker; I think of it as “the Rapture Room,” because people coming for the music saw everybody’s vehicles parked on the street and couldn’t figure out where everybody had gone to (and one person did comment, “I didn’t think when the Rapture came, y’all would just end up on the second floor”).

It’s a pretty big space, and has tremendous acoustics. That’s where 45 Degrees North will be performing July 23, a week after the Wheeler Summerfest. (It’ll be the first “christening” of the performance space.) The “Rapture Room” comes across as very informal, since there’s an adjacent room through a big arch that looks like a living room (with included kitchen). I think this’ll be ideal for what we do. The Lotus will provide tea for our concert, and I’ve volunteered to bake cookies.

Michael and Sedona, proprietors of the Lotus, did like the “Blue Krishna” song, so it’s time to record it. I really would like to have a sitar lead on the song (considering the subject matter), and am trying to contact through a mutual friend a musician I know (or know of, rather) back East who built a sitar (and can therefore presumably play one). Failing that, I think I can make the Electric Banjo “emulate” a sitar with one of the effects settings on the Tascam. Perhaps Sedona could play flute, too.

They said they wanted to use the “Rapture Room” for recording, too, and it’d be interesting to see how well it works. I could use it—but my setup allows me to record anywhere, even on a street corner (and I have done that). With my singing mike, which has a small, narrow “cone” within which it’ll pick up sound, and the ability to plug instruments in directly, I don’t need a padded room like most folks do—I didn’t bother to insulate the studio in the garage, for instance. But the “Rapture Room” is a reflective space—that’s what makes it ideal for performing. Conventional recording might end up very echo-ey.

I do think 45 Degrees North is ready for the Summerfest. (I also realize not all of them think so, and practice is good. I just don’t have a lot of time myself to practice in, this week.)

With the idea of being able to create “reference” CDs for 45 Degrees North, like I do for Deathgrass, I’d really like to film our performance at the Summerfest. There’s a trick I know of (and think I can do) with the Final Cut program on the Arts Center’s Macs—extracting the sound from a video file and exporting it as a *.wav file, at which point it can be broken up into pieces and dumped to a CD as individual “songs.” What I don’t know is whether I could get a decent recording out of the video camera. There may be no way to know for sure without trying it.

If the recording comes out good, we might also have a “live” album on our hands. If that’s the case, I’d like to film the Deathgrass performance, too, with the same goal in mind.

And why we need the reference CDs? Because there’s no time any more: Wheeler Summerfest (Deathgrass and 45 Degrees North) July 16; 2nd Street Market (45 Degrees North) July 22; the “Rapture Room” in Nehalem (45 Degrees North) July 23; Willamette Writers Group (solo) July 28; Garibaldi Days (Deathgrass) July 30; Southern Oregon Songwriters Summer Concert in Talent (with Dan Doshier) August 6; Manzanita Farmers Market (45 Degrees North) August 12. Eating and sleeping? Should’ve done that last winter…

Joe

"CINDERPIGGY" AND THE WRITERS' GUILD...

A new person at the Writers’ Guild meeting Thursday night—a poet. Got to talk some about what makes poetry marketable, and how (or where) poetry and song are related. (They blend at the Oral Tradition: poetry like the old epics, or cowboy poetry, that’s meant to be recited rather than read. All the Oral Tradition stuff can be set to music—and I have done some of that. Played ‘em “The Strange Saga of Quoth, the Parrot,” which is a talking blues—actually a talking two-step—deliberately emulating Edgar Allan Poe’s rhythm and writing style.)

I still feel like I’m teaching rather than learning—but I was the Presenter Thursday night, so I guess I was supposed to be teaching. (Good practice, again, for the Willamette Writers Group performance July 28.) Went through “Wreck of the Old 97,” one of my favorite examples of bad writing, and showed how Johnny Cash and I had improved the song, he by adding a verse and me by changing one. (“Johnny Cash and I” has such a nice ring to it.) The group’s “homework” is to take something similar—like one of those one-verse-no-chorus songs from the 1920s—and improve it, keeping to the same writing style as the original. We’ll see how they (we) did next Thursday night.

The Writers’ Guild probably can’t keep up an every-week schedule, but I don’t mind doing it for a while—it helps people get to know each other. Once we’re no longer strangers, it’ll be easier to work together.

The "Cinderpiggy" videos are up, finally. The show is in two parts to comply with YouTube’s 15-minute limit (I’ll remember that next time, and make sure the show, with titlkes and credits, is less than 15 minutes long. “Cinderpiggy” was just under 20 minutes.) PART 1 is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24YOwV2E6k and PART 2 is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMQXuoRcLUM.

I think I like doing the puppet shows because it is something completely different—but it’s still working in a tightly-defined “box.” It will be a fairy tale—but our actors are both Star Wars characters and pigs. It must have parts for all six of them: Darth, Princess Leah, Luke, Hansolo, Yoda, and Chewy the Wookie (that’s three puppeteers, by the way, using two hands each), and the parts have to accommodate the “personalities” they seem to have developed over the course of four plays. There will always be a moral—these are Morality Plays, after all—though the six characters will inevitably have different ideas what that moral is. And we will close with a 60-to-90-second song written for the occasion and performed by the cast as a band.

What’s next for the puppet troupe? We will need to do another performance—around end-summer, I’d guess—but I don’t know what fairy tale to twist next.

Some vignettes… One of the responses to “Blue Krishna” was, “Joe! Where’s the dead animals?” (It’s nice to be famous for something.) One of the other bands at the Wheeler Summerfest would like me to sit in with them. (It’d be nice to assume that’s because of my guitar-playing ability, but I somehow doubt it.) The suggestion was made that Deathgrass march in the Garibaldi Days parade playing kazoos. (I don’t know if the suggestion was serious, but the answer is no.) The Garibaldi Museum would like to hire us to play the Crab Races next spring. (Answer to that one is yes.) Hearts of Country Radio is now playing seven of my songs. (They also did an interview.)

Practice with 45 Degrees North Sunday afternoon, Arts Center board meeting Monday, practice with Deathgrass Tuesday afternoon. Maybe I’ll be able to put the new strings on the guitar after that. I’ll need them for the Summerfest gigs.

Joe

ANALYZING "BLUE KRISHNA"

Decision postponed another two weeks on the interim city manager job. I probably should cease considering them a viable prospect. There are a couple of other jobs I should apply for, and I’m not going to put life on hold waiting for these guys. On the plus side, the stress of wondering whether I was about to run out of time next week should force me to be more efficient at using my time. I have not been efficient at all lately.

“Blue Krishna” is done, I think. The lyrics are getting vetted by the “wolves” at Just Plain Folks, and I’ll see if they have anything to add. Depending on what (if anything) they say, the song will get performed at the Rainbow Lotus Sunday night—dedicated to Michael and Sedona, who own the place. It was the painting in their store of a blue-skinned Krishna that prompted the song. (Actually, it prompted my question, “Why is Krishna blue?” which prompted the song. A line like that demands a song to go with it.) It was meant to be a sensitive treatment of His Smurfiness, and I hope it comes across that way.

A little analysis is in order, with tonight’s Writers’ Guild meeting in mind (we were supposed to do songs about the ocean, and I came out with this instead). Was it written deliberately? Yes and no: the “Why is Krishna blue?” idea was interesting, but I get handed a lot of interesting things, and just file them away. It was after I came up with a chorus—and a compelling, hard-to-get-out-of-the-head melody—that I realized I might have something worthwhile. At that point, I did try to stay focused on the melody, and every short trip in the truck (I do tend to do my writing while driving) added little pieces to the lyrics until it was (sorta) done.

The song does follow the thinking patterns I went through—finding the Krishna and being curious (1st verse), some of his not-so-special attributes (he stayed a kid, had a job, played the flute for cows—that’s all in the 2nd verse), the important point—he wrote a moral rulebook nobody paid attention to (3rd verse). Each of the verses ends on a sad note, echoing the “times have changed” idea in the chorus. Last verse, where our protagonist takes Krishna home (tying back to the discovery in the beginning), suggests why Kris should maybe still be considered important—and it’s the little things, of course. All told from a kid’s perspective, because kids are able to look at things with “fresh eyes” (and not be considered nuts in the process). A redneck kid, I guess, since the music is unabashedly a two-step.

I can usually tell where the music came from, and this one’s no exception: it’s robbed from the theme song for the “Cinderpiggy” puppet show, “My Happily Ever After”—tweaked slightly, so it doesn’t sound exactly the same. The “Cinderpiggy” song was a frank throwaway, anyway—I doubt anybody will remember it.

“Blue Krishna” even has a Message (which I didn’t expect), in that “Tell him that the world might change, but some things stay the same” line in the chorus (whose meaning changes slightly each time—I like doing that). Change is not good or bad, it just is. But there are always good parts, if you look for them. I’d hazard a lot of people won’t like the song, because it could be interpreted like advocacy of a non-Christian belief system. I’d disagree—but I also probably do not care. It’s done, and I kinda like it. Now I’m antsy to record it, but I’ll wait until after the song gets performed Sunday; if the audience (and especially Michael and Sedona) like it, it’s worth recording.

Setlists are done for both Deathgrass’ and 45 Degrees North’s performances at the Wheeler Summerfest (which is next Saturday). Both 90-minute sets have 19 songs each (in each case, there’s a couple of short songs). Posters are done; so are the Raps. Next step is the notices to the “joelist” and to Facebook. And practice. Must practice. I will apparently have time to do so. (See? There are always good parts.)

Joe

MY BLUE KRISHNA?

At the Rainbow Lotus tonight, I saw a painting of the Hindu deity Krishna (the Lotus has a lot of that sort of stuff around)—and the guy had blue skin! Which prompted the question, “Why is Krishna blue?” (And yes, that does sound like a song, doesn’t it?)

According to Wikipedia, which is entertaining if not necessarily factual, Krishna’s name means “dark blue” or “black”—and early representations of Krishna show him as a black dude. It’s only in later, presumably less tolerant times that Krishna develops decidedly Aryan features and gets that Smurfy blue skin.

Krishna is presumed to be the author of the Baghavad Gita, but some sources claim Krishna doesn’t really exist—another deity, they say, actually wrote the book under an assumed name. Besides, Krishna is a kid; he’s never shown older than a young man (sometimes he’s even a toddler). He’s the only deity who had to work for a living at an “earthly” job (he was a cowherd). And he often is shown with only two arms, instead of the four that most Hindu deities have (multiple arms, I learned, indicate super powers). He is considered a Supreme Being only in certain towns in India. Some sources call him a ladies’ man (he did play the flute)—while others say the only ladies attracted to him were lady cows. Yes, Krishna might have a lot of reasons to be blue.

In the Disney movie Peter Pan, audiences (presumably comprised of little kids) are told Tinker Bell is dying because not enough people believe in fairies any more, and the kids are told to clap their hands real loud to let Tink know that yes, people really do believe. Maybe that’s Kris’s problem, and maybe something similar is called for. And then “Krishna won’t be blue any more.” Yes?

I don’t plan on mentioning intolerance at all; the message (and I’ll be understated about delivering it) is that belief determines reality. The song presently has a decent chorus, but just one or two couplets out of verses—and the song, I think, will need two or three verses. It’s a two-step, of course. Tentative title: “My Blue Krishna.”

Working on the Deathgrass setlist for the Wheeler Summerfest; biggest hassle is picking which of 80-odd songs we should do. Once I’ve got ‘em picked out, I’ll just burn CDs with the songs, in order, and distribute those along with the setlist. I expect we will be able to get by with one practice before the gig.

It’s very easy, and I wish I could “do” 45 Degrees North the same way. Down the road, perhaps—but I don’t think it’s possible right now. The advantage I’ve got with Deathgrass is I’m the lead singer, and we’re doing my stuff, so it’s easy for me to make recordings (I already have them for a lot of material). 45 Degrees North has three other singers (two vocalists and a fiddle) besides me, and I can’t sing those guys’ stuff (and I think only one of them has the ability to record). We are probably limited to going over stuff in person—and one big advantage of doing so is we work out arrangements for things while we’re doing so. (That is the way the Dodson Drifters used to do it, but the Drifters were practicing every night.) It is time-consuming to do it that way—and one of my worries is I may run out of time if I end up with a job. (I may find out about the job this week.)

Practice with 45 Degrees North Tuesday night this week, meeting Wednesday night, Writers’ Guild Thursday night. Posters are done for Deathgrass and for 45 Degrees North for Wheeler—and I have (I think) a Deathgrass T-shirt design, too. Film from the open mike to clip and manage, the “Cinderpiggy” video to finish—and Krishna has to fit in there somehow, too. Turning blue, he is…

Joe

THE ARTS CENTER OPEN MIKE...

Bay City open mike was good. Between the attendees at Eric Sappington’s Artist-of-the-Month reception and those at the open mike, they polished off nearly six dozen cookies, so we either had a big turnout or a very hungry one. Besides Eric (who was our featured performer) and 45 Degrees North, we had a couple of cute singing toddlers, some poems, a short story, and a segment of a very interesting science-fiction novel. Good practice for me being emcee. Had the sound set up in advance so I didn’t have to worry about it.

I probably do the open mike a bit different from other hosts. As far as I’m concerned, everybody gets their 15 minutes of fame, just like Andy Warhol promised, no matter what they’re doing. (I myself thought what the spoken-word people were doing was fascinating. I hope others did, too.) Nice that nearly everybody was doing original stuff—without, be it noted, anybody telling them to. This could turn over time into something like the Wild Goose’s open mike in Ashland, which has become a forum for writers to show off new material.

Charlie videotaped the whole event, using two cameras—and I do want to see how he merges the two films. I want to learn how to do that. (And I want to configure the film—2-1/2 hours worth of it, I think—so we can have pieces on the Arts Center’s Website.)

I think 45 Degrees North is getting the Professional Performer Routine down (something Eric and I had talked about—if you act like you know what you’re doing, people will believe that you do). No sound check necessary (it had been done ahead of time)—we could just step on stage and play. Good setlist, showing off our best material—and practiced in advance. We didn’t use a single music stand, even for the Celtic song (and people do notice things like that). I do the Rap—I’m comfortable behind a mike, and I have it all worked out ahead of time anyway.

One couple, as they were leaving, said 45 Degrees North should be the featured performer(s) at one of these open mikes. (That could be arranged. It is good to have an open mike following the Artist-of-the-Month reception—it increases the crowd at both events—and not all artists are also musicians like Eric is. In those situations, you can have somebody else be the featured performer.) They also liked “The Road to Lisdoonvarna,” our latest foray into Celtic music—a fast-paced Irish love song.

Could do another open mike Saturday, August 6—but I can’t host it: I won’t be here. I’ll be in southern Oregon, performing at the Southern Oregon Songwriters Summer Concert. September’s a possibility; that’d be Labor Day weekend, but I don’t see that as any more of a problem than Independence Day weekend was.

Deathgrass is on for the Wheeler Summerfest (also Garibaldi Days at the end of July and the Rocktoberfest in September); now we need to find time to practice. I have warned everybody I might have a job soon (I may find out this week), and if so, it’ll reduce my availability, like (though not as badly as) last year. One of my tasks over Independence Day weekend is to nail down what we’re going to play at Wheeler, and make copies for everybody. I wasn’t happy with my first draft of a setlist—it was really high-energy (good), but I didn’t think it allowed enough “wailing room” for the blues harp. We need slower songs for that, I think. I want, too, to depart a bit from country music—this isn’t really a country band we’ve got here.

Video class Tuesday night, a city council meeting to be at Wednesday night, and the Writers’ Guild Thursday night. Upcoming weekend is the last gig-free weekend for an entire month. Concert Season has started…

Joe

"STEAMBOAT BILL" AND THE WRITERS' GUILD...

Looked up the top songs of 1911, the year the railroad to the Coast was completed; “Steamboat Bill” was #20 that year—and it’s the only one with any connection at all to trains (and a pretty thin one at that). There are maybe half a dozen songs from that year that were memorable; most famous is probably Shelton Brooks’ “Some of These Days,” which Sophie Tucker made famous. (That one would be fun to learn primarily because Candice could probably sing it really well. I doubt the chord progression would be easy.) Most of the top songs of 1911 were quite forgettable (and have been appropriately quite forgotten).

One might be able to put together a setlist of train songs, however (I have had a tentative invitation for Deathgrass to perform at the “Rails 100” celebration October 1-2). “Tillamook Railroad Blues” is a Deathgrass standard, of course, and Skip Johnson said he’s got a train song he can send me; might not be hard to find others. I’d still want to stick to originals and traditionals; I think that’s possible (and important).

Six at the Writers’ Guild meeting Thursday night. Jim Nelson had us all do an idea exercise referred to variously as “mind mapping” and “vomiting on paper”—writing down as fast as possible all the words, phrases, &c., generated by a single keyword (in this case, “ocean”). Some people did get beginnings of songs out of it; I didn’t—though a couple of catchphrases, “Bubbles, Queen of Whales” and “Treasure of the Vampire Fish,” could turn into song material later. For homework (homework?) we are supposed to turn our “ocean” ideas into a song. (Bubbles? You there? C’mon, honey—we got work to do.)

Next week—we are still getting together weekly—it’ll be my turn to be the presenter. I expect I’ll want to talk about inspiration, and where it comes from (which is everywhere, by the way—I am fond of my “Bill Shakespeare” mantra, “The world is a very strange place, and people are very weird critters”).

And for an exercise, could we maybe try to improve on something? Would that be too outside people’s comfort zones? The Dodson Drifters did it constantly (with two writers in the band, it was almost second nature—we even improved Hank Williams and Bob Dylan). The classic example I’d cite is that old bluegrass turkey, “Wreck of the Old 97,” which really is not a well-written song (it is beloved by bluegrass musicians for other reasons)—but Johnny Cash added a verse, and then I changed the last verse, and it got a whole lot better. The task might be to take a one-verse song (there were a lot of them written in the early days of phonographs, when you couldn’t fit a lot on a record), and expand it to where it’d be marketable today—i.e., 3-1/2 to 5 minutes, with at least two verses and a chorus (and maybe a bridge). I do have around somewhere a sweet little one-verse French two-step from the 1920s about the dangers of premarital sex—and obviously the message is still current.

We shared songs, too. Some folks had works in progress, and I applaud their courage in exposing them early. I’m still not comfortable doing that. I did mention I was working on a “werewolf bluegrass” tune, and maybe next time I’ll have something I can expose. It was good to have writers tearing into each other’s material from a wide range of perspectives—that’s a kind and quality of input the pros never get, and I think it’ll be really helpful. One lady had a song I believe I can set to music (I warned her it would come out country if I did); with luck, she’ll send it to me. It’d be my first musication this year (and the Worklist says I should be doing a dozen of them).

Open mike Saturday night at the Arts Center; I’ll host, because Jim will be out of town. Several folks have said they’d come, and it should be fun. (And Charlie will videotape.) With luck, I’ll have help from Jim setting up the sound before he leaves town.

Oh, and for those who were wondering—I think the washing machine is fixed.

Joe