MERCANTILE POST-MORTEM...

Performance at The Mercantile in Beaver was very much fun. Packed house—I think the place holds around 80 people, and it looked like every seat was filled—and very appreciative audience. I think they’d like us back. And I’d like to go back. Jane and I only did five songs (more than any of the other performers, though) but I think we were the high point of the show.

I was asked whether one could pull something like this off at the Bay City Arts Center. We do those regular Open Mikes (there’ll be another one the first Saturday in March), but turnout is usually minimal; that big hall, holding over a hundred people, will have half a dozen to a dozen audience folks in it. The answer is yes, I think—but we’d have to do it more like The Mercantile does it. The Mercantile’s shows are not open mikes; the performers were all invited, and at least one of them (not us) is well known in the area, and The Mercantile promoted the fact that all those performers were going to be there. Could the Arts Center do that? Definitely. And it would be fun.

The biggest advantage The Mercantile has that we couldn’t compete with is they have no competition. There is no venue in South County offering entertainment of any kind—or able to—until you get to Pacific City (and there, the Pelican Pub and Kiwanda Community Center don’t seem to do much). People will come from miles around because there is literally nowhere else to go on a Saturday (or any other) night without driving a long, long way on bad roads. The Arts Center, on the other hand, happens to be a block away from a sizable tavern that does have live music on a regular basis, and you can’t schedule entertainment on a night when you won’t be competing for customers with somebody else’s event somewhere else in North County. North Tillamook County is simply more culturally active. Yes, one could still pack the Arts Center—but on top of everything else, what you’re offering has to be better than what everyone else has got—and you still may not get the customers.

The Mercantile did record the performers, and I’m anxious to see how the result turns out. They recorded both the live sound from the stage (with one of those super-fancy omnidirectional mikes) and “lined in” tracks from the little 5-channel PA system, into a Macintosh laptop running GarageBand, where they’ll mix it. All rather primitive and simple, but my Tascam is primitive and simple, too, and I know from experience I can get radio-quality recordings out of it. (I just can’t get them consistently.) I explained to co-proprietor Fred (and a few others) the “Song-a-Month Experiment,” and why I wanted to find places and opportunities to record for cheaply.

This coming week, I’ll plan on going to the Influence Music Hall in Hillsboro Friday night and take advantage of sound engineer Skip Farmer’s 3-songs-for-$15 deal, and see how that comes out. I wouldn’t mind having accompaniment with me, but I’m not going to ask—this is one of those “opportunities” where I don’t know whether it’s worthwhile until (and unless) I do it, and I don’t want to wast anybody’s time. If the me-and-solo-guitar recordings come out good, I will definitely try to get Jane (ideally) to come in with me. Music at the Tsunami Thursday night this week and Sunday night at the Rapture Room.

And I got tapped to schedule the entertainment for the Rockaway Beach Chamber of Commerce’s “Rocktoberfest” this year. That’ll be my third concert-promoter gig—I’m alread in charge of entertainment for Garibaldi Days and for the Relay for Life, both in July. I understand the Chamber is having their thing in October again, and hope that’s not a bad idea—the weather can be (and in fact usually is) bad by then.

Joe

A POSTER, A GIG, AND A NEW RETAIL OUTLET...

Poster for the “Jedi Pigs of Oz” puppet show is (mostly) done—just need to add the date and time. Rather than trying photo manipulation on the ‘puter, with new software I hadn’t used before, I did it the old-fashioned way—cropping portions of appropriately-sized photos by hand, pasting them down and scanning the result. Exactly how they would have done it in the ‘30s (except they would have used one of those room-sized “process cameras” instead of a scanner—I had one of those when I was a newspaper advertising manager in the 1980s). Librarian’s got the poster, and we’ve tentatively settled on a price and a date—Wednesday July 18. Other libraries may be interested as well.

Audition/rehearsal/sound check Thursday night at The Mercantile in Beaver for Saturday night’s “Oops, I Forgot Your Valentine” show. Played them a couple of songs, and they kept asking for more; I’m now on their agenda for five songs (originally, it was going to be only two), and there might be more if one of their scheduled performers doesn’t show (I understand there’s one who has medical problems). All love songs—and they specifically want to hear “Earwigs in the Eggplant” and “Welcome to Hebo Waltz” (the latter isn’t a love song, but Fred, the co-proprietor of The Mercantile, has a song about Beaver that mentions Hebo).

I’ll have Jane with me on fiddle: what we’ll play is:

Earwigs in the Eggplant—Irish fiddle tune
Naked Space Hamsters in Love—fast bluegrass
Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Abomination Two-Step—fast bluegrass
Welcome to Hebo Waltz—fast waltz

Listened to The Mercantile’s “house” band, which includes both Fred and co-proprietor Jim Loughrie; they’re good—I especially liked their harmonies—but couldn’t help thinking they could really use a lead player. I didn’t want to suggest myself for that role (I’m really not that good and I’m not sure they’d want me anyway—and besides, they’re all from the immediate Beaver area and I live quite a ways north), but they could use a lead something.

Fred’s interested in having me do a show at The Mercantile, and also wants to carry my CDs (yay!). The Mercantile will be my first Retail Outlet in South County. I wonder if I’ve still got the “Deathgrass CDs Here!” poster around—it’d be nice if they had one in the window.

Latest e-mail from CDBaby is promoting the idea of fan-generated videos. However, they’re suggesting one should have a contest, and offer prizes for the best video—CDs and such. I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I enjoy seeing songs of mine turned into video by others; there have been two that I know of—a band in Canada was filmed performing “Santa’s Fallen and He Can’t Get Up” a couple years ago, and I believe The Fintons (in Colorado) did one of their rendition of “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” Haven’t been any others that I know of.

As far as me stimulating videos of my stuff, I don’t know enough videographers—and I’m uncomfortable still about asking the ones I do know. Eventually, I will do so. A first step is probably to have more of my songs recorded in good enough quality to make it worthwhile having a video to promote them. Next Friday perhaps I’ll essay the trip to Hillsboro to see if the Influence Music Hall might be worth patronizing for recording.

Joe

THIRSTY LION POST-MORTEM (&C.)...

Thirsty Lion show was good. Only three of us “guests”—one performer didn’t show up. Fairly big audience—and very appreciative, even though most of them had come to hear the other two guys. (One of those guys was very, very good, too. Like me, he played all originals, and all love songs; he also had a decent voice, and had definitely mastered his guitar. His train song, the most country-sounding song he did—written, he said, for a girl who was leaving for Nashville—was one of the best-written songs, lyrically and musically, that I’ve heard in a long time, and I complimented him on it.)

The songs of mine the audience seemed to like best were “Spend the End of the World with Me” and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (I saw hands clapping to “I May Write You from Jupiter,” too). Closed the set with “Bluebird on My Windshield” rather than “The Cat with the Strat,” since “Bluebird” is a love song, and that went over well, too.

Hosts Skip Farmer and wife Nancy are the ones behind that “Influence Music Hall” in Hillsboro I’ve seen promoted on Portland Craigslist, and they encouraged me to come to their Friday night open mike thingie. The attendees would really like my stuff, I was told. I hadn’t gone previously, because it is on a Friday night, and on Friday nights I’ve usually gone down the street to City Hall to play music instead. Hillsboro is a 90-minute drive away instead of a 2-1/2 block one. However, they may have given me a good reason to go to “the Influence” one of these Friday nights.

Skip is a sound guy (and near as I can tell, a pretty good one—I understand he used to do it professionally). One of the things he does at “the Influence” is record the performers; for $15 ($10 if you’re a member of their Musicians’ Guild) he’ll e-mail you *.mp3 files of the songs you performed, recorded off the soundboard (so levels are set right, and there’s minimal ambient noise). A possible solution, here, to the “how do I get songs recorded cheaply?” issue I flagged with respect to the Song-a-Month Experiment. I could get three songs recorded—professionally, I think, though I’d have to listen to the product to be sure—for the cost of five bucks apiece and a trip to Hillsboro. Yes, I’d do that.

It’d be me and solo guitar, at least the first time—but there are some songs of mine that work well with just solo guitar. “Leavin’ It to Beaver” is one: it’s over six minutes long without a lead break, and every one of those long verses is chock-full of lyrics. “One Gas Station” might be another—it seems to drag if you add a lead break (and a lead break makes it go over five minutes). I would want to concentrate on performing songs there that have not been recorded professionally—but that’s some 75% of the “catalog.” I have a lot to choose from.

And if the recordings are good? I would want to see if fiddler Jane would want to go there with me on a Friday night, and perform (and record) three songs that present well with just guitar and fiddle. “The Abomination Two-Step” comes immediately to mind; so does “Spend the End of the World with Me.”

The other possibility—Skip and Nancy mentioned it, too—is there are a bunch of musicians that come to the Influence shows, and some of them could be prevailed upon to be an impromptu backup band for songs if I wanted. I know some musicians who could jump in and do a more-than-acceptable job first time through on a song they’d never heard before (I was told by one fellow in southern Oregon that my stuff was easy to follow because the music was so predictable). What I don’t know—and would have to find out—is whether these people in Hillsboro could do that. I’d have to watch them at work—and talk to them some—before I could know better. One song that could easily be done with an impromptu band is Diane Ewing’s “Alabama Blues”: I tried to get that “just a bunch of guys in a bar” feel when I recorded it in Nashville in 2007, but the session guys Mike Dunbar had assembled were just too professional-sounding.

I’ve talked up the Song-a-Month Experiment to a bunch of people now, and everyone I’ve talked to seems to agree with the “why do albums?” argument. I think I’d better do it. Might be a couple other writer-performers I know who might follow suit.

Rehearsal Thursday night for the “Oops, I Forgot Your Valentine” show at the Beaver Mercantile Saturday night. Friday? Might still go to City Hall. I’ve been doing an awful lot of traveling lately.

Joe

NEW VENUE, AND COMPUTER THOUGHTS...

Poster’s done and notices are out for the Thirsty Lion performance on Valentine’s Day. We’ll practice Monday afternoon. This just might go all right.

I connected—finally—with the folks who have put together the new performance venue in the old Beaver Mercantile (a former cheese factory). Yes, they’d like me to play there. Their next show, February 18, is a Valentine’s show featuring a number of local performers, and they’ll let me on to play a couple of love songs. I was asked specifically to play “Earwigs in the Eggplant,” which I can do (guess that makes that one a “keeper”); the other one will be my call, and I’m not sure which it should be. About half my material is characterizable as love songs if one defines “love” loosely enough.

The operative question is to what extent I’m dealing with an audience that is already familiar with me and my stuff—I know some of them are, obviously. If I’m dealing with a crowd that is mostly new, I’ll want to give ‘em one song that (with “Earwigs”) will kinda sum up the “flavor” of a Joe performance; if they mostly know me, then I want to give them something they haven’t heard before.

The Mercantile also reportedly has a Sunday morning get-together of writers they’re calling the “un-Church,” and I’d like to attend that, too and see what they have going.

The new MyDVD9 software works in the Arts Center’s old (1999) PC but not on “Lazarus” the laptop. (It works on the H-P laptop, too, and it’s newer than “Lazarus.”) Roxio (the software manufacturer) is no help—their techie said they were under orders not to provide any support for the “legacy” program because Roxio wants you to buy their new version 10 (which I have no intention of doing). I do like what I’ve seen of MyDVD9; it may be the replacement I was looking for for Windows Movie Maker, which is a bit hokey and limited—but if I can’t make the MyDVD9 program work on “Lazarus,” I may have to switch computers.

Presently, I use the little H-P just for burning CDs (it’ll burn DVDs too). None of its peripheral stuff works. The flat-screen monitor is shot, the keyboard doesn’t work, the wireless Internet card and the Ethernet cable port are both non-functional—and I can’t stand the finger-pad the Younger Generation is accustomed to use instead of a mouse. So if I rig the H-P up as the home computer, I’m basically using it for its brain (and DVD-rewritable drive, of course), and rigging up a remote monitor, keyboard, mouse and Internet thingie—all of which I do happen to have on hand. If the H-P is going to stay home, do I care?

“Lazarus” travels well; he’s a little oversized and heavy, but except for the inability to burn CDs (a design defect in that model laptop which Dell never did fix), everything works pretty much okay. I’ve been taking “Lazz” to my square dance caller classes—he mates up to a sound system just fine. So “Lazz” can become the traveling computer—the role I’d originally planned for the H-P.

The hard drive from old “Alice” appears to be history. “Bad sectors,” I’m told—the apparent result of my installing a “Service Pack 3” for the WindowsXP operating system (curse you, Microsoft)—which are preventing the extraction of any data. That means the permanent loss of seven years of photographs (including photos from two trips to Nashville), a couple of irreplaceable programs, and all the files from the 2009 Joe Songbook—lyrics to roughly 80 songs.

Thankfully, most of the music files for those 80 or so songs had been archived on Soundclick and ReverbNation, so those aren’t lost—but I’ll need to re-do the Joe Songbook from scratch. (Of course I remember the lyrics to all the songs.) I’d been wanting to put out a new edition anyway—I have written some new songs since 2009, after all. The new edition will just have to have different (and less exotic) photographs. Lots to do…

Joe

A SONG-A-MONTH EXPERIMENT?

I saw the suggestion today that artists should quit this fixation on producing albums. Albums may be what record companies want to sell, but they’re apparently not what the public wants to buy. (It’s been noted repeatedly that record companies do not care what the public wants to buy. Folks with less hubris should care, though.) What people are paying to download from places like iTunes and Rhapsody are individual songs—singles. What radio stations are playing—have always played, except for a brief psychedelic period in the ‘70s—is singles. Maybe what we should be delivering to the public is singles. Sure, we can still produce albums—but as collections (perhaps themed collections) of songs that have already been released as singles.

It really does make sense. Can I do it?

The process is fairly simple. I write a song which I know is a “keeper.” After doing the usual “draft” recording on the Tascam, I assemble the musicians, we go into a studio and record it professionally. The product goes to the various online distributors, and I tell the “joelist” it’s out there. I burn CDs with the single song on them, and send those to radio stations (&c.) that I know. If I’m being as productive as I like, I’m doing that once a month, on average.

I have to worry about costs, of course, because I have no money to sink into this. In this scenario, online sales are the only means I have of recovering production costs, and I’ll only get 70 cents apiece out of the 99 cents the vendor will charge. If I spent $100 on the recording, I would need over 140 sales to make my costs back. I’m really not sure that’s possible yet—are there really 140 people who’d pay for a new joe song on a consistent basis, even at just 99 cents?

After I’ve done it for a while, and word has gotten around, it might be possible to expect sales on that scale. For the immediate future, though, I’d need to find a way to get the studio work done for no or minimal money, because I couldn’t reasonably expect a return. I do know a couple of people who have been working on home studios, and I’ll talk to them about being part of this Song-a-Month Experiment.

I’ve got not only new songs to release this way, but there’s a good 60 existing songs that have never been recorded as anything but Tascam drafts. I could professionally record and release those, too. Yes, there could—and would—still be albums, but they’d be “themed” albums (like the “12 Reasons Joe Is Going to Hell” album I’ve talked about), or “Best of…” albums, and the only cost would be in the manufacturing (short runs, of course)—the studio work would already have been done.

Elsewhere: Tried “Valvoline” out on the square dance callers as my first singing call, and it went over well. Now I need to choreograph a few more. Tentatively, I’ll be doing this on stage at a square dance in mid-March, and I’ll need about an hour’s worth of thoroughly rehearsed material. I’ll need to find and use mostly other people’s material for this—there won’t be time to record any of my own. Using my own songs for square dancing is something I want to do, however, and there are at least three more of mine that I think would work. I need to create the equivalent of karaoke tracks, though—concentrating on achieving precisely the 64-beats-repeated-seven-times needed for singing calls. (There’s that need for a studio again.)

I have a couple of recordings from the 2007 Pineyfest “demo derby” that are karaoke-able, too, because one of the recordings of each one was sans vocal (so I could substitute somebody with a real voice later). I assume those will have to be lengthened to hit that requisite 64-beats-repeated-seven-times, but I think I have the software to do that.

Tuesday night at the Thirsty Lion. Dang—that’s coming up fast. Need to get notices out. And practice.

Joe

UPDATES...

Yes, the Arts Center Open Mike was good. Jane and I did “The Abomination Two-Step” (I continue to be surprised that’s such a hit), and the two new songs, “One Gas Station” and “Spend the End of the World with Me.” One couple apparently came hoping they’d hear the “One Gas Station” song. Not sure where they’d heard about it. Jam session afterwards (my favorite part). Suggestion was made that we should have a “jam potluck,” where we’d just all gather for dinner and playing music, without the structure of an open mike; I like that. We could do it downstairs in the Big Room next to the kitchen, and I could provide my little PA system.

It was also suggested the Arts Center do a themed open mike (Gene Burnett does one monthly at the Wild Goose in Ashland)—an “Armageddon Night,” say, in which all the songs would be about the end of the world—and couple that with an art show in which all the artwork had an end-of-the-world theme, too. That also is doable, and would be fun. The Arts Center is likely to have a month or two this year in which there isn’t a scheduled Artist of the Month (happened last year), and we have to fudge; this would be a good fudge. And the end of the world is an ideal topic for this year, which is supposedly the last year, ever.

The to-do list grows… Charlie videoed the Open Mike, so I have footage to work with, to compile into both YouTube videos (15-minute increments) and a DVD (some of the performers have requested a DVD of their work, and I’d like to deliver). The easiest way to do it may be to prepare the 15-minute increments first, then string them together on the DVD as “Part One,” “Part Two,” and so forth. I have a “French video” to do of the Artist of the Month mosaics (there are actually several artists, all students of the same teacher), and have the perfect soundtrack, I think, in the form of Ken’s and Jane’s instrumentals at the Open Mike, if they’ll let me use them.

All videos—and I have videos of my own to do, too. I still haven’t looked at Kathryn’s “Blue Krishna” work on the old digital camera. With luck, between her and Sedona’s footage, I have enough for the music video. Next trip out to Cascade Locks (Tuesday?), I need to stop in little Dodson, Oregon, and take photos (or film) of what’s left of the town for the “One Gas Station” video. I have the video of “Spend the End of the World with Me” to do, too—and as I recall, the script for that one’s more complicated. With all that to do, I have got to make the video work take less time.

I understand the “Pig Wars” puppets are to be retired after our next show (which will be our Wizard of Oz parody, Jedi Pigs of Oz). I suppose it’s time; one can’t keep this up forever, and our “actors” have had a good 3-year run—more sequels than a lot of movie actors get, in fact. We’ve done the Three Little Pigs (Pig Wars), Billy Pigs Gruff, Sleeping Piggy, and Cinderpiggy, and the scripts and performances have gotten better each time. I would like to ensure our “finale” is both perfect and gets a lot of attention.

And besides things to do, there is good news: One of my songs got selected for an album of children’s songs being produced by the Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. as a benefit for the Maslow Project, which deals with homeless children. The song? “When They Die, I Put Them in the Cookies,” of course. Got a form to send them waiving copyright fees, so all proceeds from the record can go to the kids.

Elsewhere? Not much. On the job front, no news at all. There are still a few places where I haven’t been rejected yet, but I’m working on it.

Joe

"JEDI PIGS OF OZ" (&C.)...

The library is interested in another puppet show for the Summer Reading Program, and I have one ready to perform: our “Pig Wars” version of The Wizard of Oz, starring Princess Leah as Dorothy, Luke as the Scarecrow, Darth as the Tin Man, Yoda as the Wicked Witch, Hansolo as the Great and Powerful Wizard, and Chewy as the Cowardly Wookie. And introducing Glyn, the Good Witch who’s stuck in a balloon and can’t get out. Hight Jedi Pigs of Oz. I reviewed the script, and with Karen’s edits, it’s good. It’s got a closing-credits song, too (still need to record that)—a ragtime-style commercial for Hansolo’s great-and-powerful-wizard services.

Our cast will need some additional props: Darth needs the classic upended funnel on top of his helmet, to make him instantly recognizable as the Tin Man (I’ll repaint his helmet silver, too); we’ll need green sunglasses (and swim goggles for Darth’s helmet) for the Fab Four’s sojourn in the Emerald City; Yoda needs a sock-puppet sized witch’s hat; Scarecrow Luke, some straw; and Princess Leah may get a Dorothy-style pinafore, courtesy of Karen. A white ballon for Glyn the Good Witch. And we’ll repaint the pumpkin from “Cinderpiggy” green (it’s Emerald City, after all) and call it a watermelon.

Designed (on request) a promotional poster, parodying the 1939 MGM movie poster; I couldn’t find a Depression-vintage movie poster font I liked, so I used one I already had, and faked the receding perspective thing they were so fond of back then. Next step—photograph the “actors” in their Oz costumes (next week?), and Photoshop them into the poster. I found a good photo of a crashed spaceship (yes, there’s one of those in the play, too), but haven’t figured out how to Photoshop that into my poster.

I’ll be hosting the Saturday open mike at the Arts Center; Jim offered to help set up sound (he’ll be out of town that night), and I accepted—being largely tone-deaf, I can use all the help I can get. I have heard from some folks I know who say they’re coming, and it should be fun. Good music. Also to do for the Arts Center: an instrumental soundtrack, maybe five minutes long, for the “French video” of our Artist of the Month pieces—some very beautiful mosaics.

The me-and-Denise setlist is done, I think, for the Valentine’s Day show at the Thirsty Lion. Six songs, all with lead breaks and the possibility of harmonies:

Armadillo on the Interstate—slow & sleazy
Spend the End of the World with Me—ragtime
Eatin’ Cornflakes from a Hubcap Blues—slow, sleazy quasi-blues
Rotten Candy—fast Gospel
Pole Dancing for Jesus—slow & sleazy
Naked Space Hamsters in Love—fast bluegrass

Rap is done, too, and I delivered the setlist and CD. Next—arrange time to practice before the gig.

I have my singing call for the square dance caller’s class down, I think. And it will end up being a song of mine, after all: the 1980 Dodson Drifters hit, “Valvoline.” I’ve got music; I can sing it, and I have figured out (and practiced) what parts to cut and replace with square dance moves. Hope it goes over well with the dancers. I have tentatively arranged for a “guinea pig” session with the local dancers next Wednesday after our square dance club meeting, and will get to try out my little PA system. I still need a post and base for the second speaker stand.

Joe