It was the evening of the Big Snow—six feet worth fell overnight in Cascade Locks, Oregon, January 6, 1980—that the Dodson Drifters recorded “Valvoline,” the first song of mine that ever got played on the radio.
It was a fluke. We were partying in the studio, which was in Portland, and sound engineer Craig Imm was experimenting with the equipment, and had got things arranged so when you recorded you heard lots of reverb through the headphones, but none of it ended up on tape—and Craig said, “Joe, sing something.” “Valvoline” was written on the spot, standing in front of the microphone—playing and singing very slowly, because of all that reverb I was hearing in the headphones.
It was the best recording that ever came out of our studio. It was very obviously live; you can hear “Big Bob” the bass player open the sound room door very quietly, walk across the room, pick up his washtub bass—all very quietly—and come in precisely on the downbeat of the second verse. We recorded the lead later; “Brother Bill” Howell, our lead singer, was doing the taxes for a sax player (in real life, Bill was a tax lawyer, a very good one), and got him to play lead on the song—not once but twice, so it sounded like Dueling Saxes.
A jazz station in Portland played it (we knew the DJ—you could do this, back then) and it became the Dodson Drifters’ first radio hit (of two in our entire career). Weird thing is, people still request the song now and then—and I have to remind them, “This hasn’t been played on the radio in 30 years!” Apparently people still remember it. It is, I guess, one of the Dodson Drifters’ most enduring legacies. A throwaway song, written and recorded on the fly, during a party, on a snowy night.
And it’s how I’d like everything I record to come out: simple, obviously live, note-perfect, and mixed perfectly, too. The sort of thing one can listen to over and over again, and not get tired of it. I’ve had a few recordings come out like that—Mike Simpson’s recording of Deathgrass doing “She Ain’t Starvin’ Herself” is one of those—but not many. That’s not a reflection on the sound engineers I’ve worked with—who have been very good—but rather on me as a perfectionist.
I got my recordings from the Influence Music Hall performance, and they’re okay. Sound engineer Skip was right: they’re crisp and clear (he even included a little of the applause at the end). Next time—yes, I think there will be a next time—I think I’ll ask for a little reverb on the vocal; I have, as I’ve often told folks, a voice made for silent movies. Really, the only faults I have are with my own performance (perfectionist, as noted above). I used my Audacity program to speed up “Talkin’ Overpriced Coffee and Gasoline Blues,” and it’s better for it; I may do the same for “Selling Off My Body Parts.” Tempting to add more instrumentation, but I’ll leave it alone.
Jane has found a standup bass player who’s interested in playing with us (and he’s pretty good—I’ve heard him); I think we’re about to have another band. Possible to do it as a trio, but I’ll ask Ken if he’s interested in being lead guitarist. That’d give us both a “whiny lead” (fiddle) and a “non-whiny lead” (guitar), which in my opinion is ideal for both performing and recording. I’ll make him recordings of my stuff; thankfully, most of it is archived on Soundclick or ReverbNation (“Alice” the ‘puter’s hard drive is formally dead, I’m told—none of the seven years worth of files can be extracted). That takes care of my stuff---but it’d be nice if we could perform other stuff as well. The thing I’d like to hit for, though, is us doing all originals and traditionals (public domain, anyway), at least when we’re being paid. I realize most small-time performers (and most venues) pay no attention to copyright stuff, but as a writer, I like to do so on principle: “The laborer,” like the Bible said, “is worth his hire.” If you’re being paid to play stuff somebody else wrote, that writer is supposed to get paid, even if it’s just the 9.1 cents required by law. One of these days, I hope I’ll be paid, too.
From a recording standpoint, I’d like to drag the new band to the Influence Music Hall and record them. That might be ideal for the Song-a-Month Experiment. (Oh, and Cliff the bass player wants lyric sheets, too. Guess I better finish the New Joe Songbook.)
Joe
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
MORE UPDATES...
One. Forgot to mention an “upper” from Influence Night: I stopped to get some of that ghastly overpriced gas in case I got marooned in the mountains in the snow on my way home (I didn’t get marooned, obviously, though the highway was slick); the gas station was run by a couple of teenagers (one with girlfriend) and they noticed my “Deathgrass” T-shirt (which I’d worn to the music hall) and asked, “Is that rock?” So I explained that “Deathgrass” was the band, and how we got the name—somebody’s attempt to describe country music written by me and performed by a heavy-metal bassist and drummer, jazz-and-classical blues harp player, and classic rock lead guitarist—and I left the gas station with one of the kids saying “We have to check this out!” I hope they do.
The lesson? You create fans one at a time—and you should always be in a position to take advantage of the opportunity. I have CDs and the “joelist” notebook in the truck wherever I go, just like I have my digital camera on my belt whenever I leave the house, because you never know what’s going to happen.
Two. Another song that would be good to do with an impromptu band at the Influence Music Hall would be “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” Yes, the audience heard it Friday night, but they haven’t heard it with a full band—and I wonder if Skip could patch a remote mike out into the audience to catch them singing along. That would be neat—and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is another that needs to go to market soon, with a good, professional recording.
Could we manage to do three songs with the impromptu band? They’ll be on stage, after all, and it’s easier (and less time-consuming) to keep ‘em on stage playing rather than move ‘em off so I can do one song solo. “Alabama Blues” and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” are close to the same tempo; it’d be good to separate them with something that sounded different. How about a blues? If our session is close to St. Patrick’s Day (and I’d like to be doing this soon), could do “Invitation to St. Patrick”—it’s a standard 12-bar blues (easy to follow), and fairly obviously funny (and I want to keep emphasizing that “it’s okay to be humorous” message).
Alternatively, we could do “Spend the End of the World with Me”; that’s a fast-moving number, which would be something different, too. It’s ragtime, but I’ve noticed people don’t seem to have any trouble following the chord progression. And it’s another get-it-to-market-quickly song.
Three. Working on my third singing square dance call—“A Fool Such as I,” the song by Bill Trader (always give credit to the writer) that Elvis made famous. I replaced the “plus” choreography with “mainstream” moves. And I repeated the trick I used with “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me,” and wrote it all down; it helps me remember, just as with song lyrics.
Again, I want to be a little surprising. It’s not that I can “sing Elvis,” but that this particular Elvis song just happens to fit in my narrow voice range. As Bing Crosby said once of “White Christmas” (which I can also sing), “Any tone-deaf orangutang could sing this.” Yep. That’s why I can. Goal is to have it ready to perform Tuesday night at caller class. That’d give me three. By mid-March, I need to have an hour’s worth of material down, and I’d like all of it to be a little off-the-wall. A square dance caller is first and foremost an entertainer; people go to square dances for the same reason they go to concerts—they expect to be entertained, and they’re going to have fun. I intend to deliver. I’ve got one more of the Hanhurst Music recordings to practice (Huddie Ledbetter’s “Midnight Special”), and then I want to start recording my own.
Music at the Rapture Room tonight; Arts Center board meeting Monday, caller class Tuesday, Tsunami on Thursday, and another Arts Center open mike Saturday (for which I need to do the posters and invite people). I’m probably playing music in Garibaldi Friday night—I can’t afford to drive to Portland a lot with these gas prices.
Joe
The lesson? You create fans one at a time—and you should always be in a position to take advantage of the opportunity. I have CDs and the “joelist” notebook in the truck wherever I go, just like I have my digital camera on my belt whenever I leave the house, because you never know what’s going to happen.
Two. Another song that would be good to do with an impromptu band at the Influence Music Hall would be “Pole Dancing for Jesus.” Yes, the audience heard it Friday night, but they haven’t heard it with a full band—and I wonder if Skip could patch a remote mike out into the audience to catch them singing along. That would be neat—and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” is another that needs to go to market soon, with a good, professional recording.
Could we manage to do three songs with the impromptu band? They’ll be on stage, after all, and it’s easier (and less time-consuming) to keep ‘em on stage playing rather than move ‘em off so I can do one song solo. “Alabama Blues” and “Pole Dancing for Jesus” are close to the same tempo; it’d be good to separate them with something that sounded different. How about a blues? If our session is close to St. Patrick’s Day (and I’d like to be doing this soon), could do “Invitation to St. Patrick”—it’s a standard 12-bar blues (easy to follow), and fairly obviously funny (and I want to keep emphasizing that “it’s okay to be humorous” message).
Alternatively, we could do “Spend the End of the World with Me”; that’s a fast-moving number, which would be something different, too. It’s ragtime, but I’ve noticed people don’t seem to have any trouble following the chord progression. And it’s another get-it-to-market-quickly song.
Three. Working on my third singing square dance call—“A Fool Such as I,” the song by Bill Trader (always give credit to the writer) that Elvis made famous. I replaced the “plus” choreography with “mainstream” moves. And I repeated the trick I used with “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me,” and wrote it all down; it helps me remember, just as with song lyrics.
Again, I want to be a little surprising. It’s not that I can “sing Elvis,” but that this particular Elvis song just happens to fit in my narrow voice range. As Bing Crosby said once of “White Christmas” (which I can also sing), “Any tone-deaf orangutang could sing this.” Yep. That’s why I can. Goal is to have it ready to perform Tuesday night at caller class. That’d give me three. By mid-March, I need to have an hour’s worth of material down, and I’d like all of it to be a little off-the-wall. A square dance caller is first and foremost an entertainer; people go to square dances for the same reason they go to concerts—they expect to be entertained, and they’re going to have fun. I intend to deliver. I’ve got one more of the Hanhurst Music recordings to practice (Huddie Ledbetter’s “Midnight Special”), and then I want to start recording my own.
Music at the Rapture Room tonight; Arts Center board meeting Monday, caller class Tuesday, Tsunami on Thursday, and another Arts Center open mike Saturday (for which I need to do the posters and invite people). I’m probably playing music in Garibaldi Friday night—I can’t afford to drive to Portland a lot with these gas prices.
Joe
Saturday, February 25, 2012
INFLUENCE MUSIC HALL POST-MORTEM...
The Influence Music Hall is a nice place. (It could use a better heating system.) Decent stage and very professional sound system, and at least two people who know what they’re doing with it. I am interested in seeing how the recordings turn out.
They had a decent crowd, too—a little over two dozen people, which filled most of the seats in the place. The other performers? Open mikes tend to run the gamut, and this was no exception; some performers were better than others, some were more professional than others, some did originals and some didn’t. Big mix of styles, too. Nearly all of the performers appeared seriously interested in learning from each other (a big plus) and the Influence was providing an extremely professional environment.
From me, they got “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (sound engineer Skip requested it—he and wife Sandy had heard it at the Thirsty Lion), “Talkin’ Overpriced Coffee and Gasoline Blues” (because I am upset about those fuel prices and assume everyone else is, too) and “Selling Off My Body Parts” (introduced as a “May it rest in peace” song about the economy). One slow, one half-fast, and one fast. The liked “Body Parts” best, I think. I was the only performer who did anything humorous, and for the most part the audience wasn’t expecting it. (There were only three or four of them who’d heard me before.) Maybe it’ll be a lesson for some of ‘em: music does not have to be sad, or serious, and sometimes it’s better if it’s not.
As this is written, I haven’t heard the recording of the performance. “Pole Dancing for Jesus” I don’t really care about; I want to record that with accompaniment—maybe a full band—later. (I wasn’t happy with my guitar playing on that song, either. I got better later.) The other two songs are okay for me-and-solo-guitar recordings—I didn’t flub anything—and if the recordings come out okay, I’d like to get them to market quickly because the subject matter is topical.
I was asked when I was going to bring “that fiddle player” (Jane) to the Influence Music Hall. Well, I do want to hear how the recordings came out first, of course, because that provides the justification for galivanting off to the Big City when one could as easily be playing music right here in Garibaldi. But I could do it any Friday she wanted to go. (Same applies to other musicians, too.) I know from experience now that (1) one can get there in an hour and a half, (2) they start sign-up at 7:00 and if you get there a little early, you can sign up to perform early because most of the performers don’t get there early, (3) there is a decent-sized and attentive crowd, (4) there’s refreshments—coffee, pretzels and wine.
Talked to Skip about what I had in mind for recording Diane Ewing’s “Alabama Blues.” He said there are a couple of bass players who could be enlisted to come on a night I was going to be there, maybe a drummer (we don’t have to have a drummer, though), Gene (whom I know from the Jews Harp Festivals) plays a good lead guitar—and if I could have Jane play fiddle, that would be ideal. Me on rhythm guitar and vocals, of course. Sent Skip my arrangement, and a link to the draft Tascam recording on Soundclick. Now, if we’re going to do this, could we do three songs with this band? What should the other two be?
Elsewhere, good news and bad news. The good news: I found at a yard sale an effects pedal for the Electric Banjo. For a dollar. Runs off a 9-volt battery. The bad news? My cheap, off-brand iron-on transfers are not going to work. Too faded, and too cheap-looking. (The instructions were in Italian, not Spanish, by the way.) I don’t want to pay the $3-apiece price for the Avery transfer stock but it is the quality I want. The trick is to find the stuff (or equivalent) somewhere for cheaper. At $3 a label, I can’t make a profit.
Joe
They had a decent crowd, too—a little over two dozen people, which filled most of the seats in the place. The other performers? Open mikes tend to run the gamut, and this was no exception; some performers were better than others, some were more professional than others, some did originals and some didn’t. Big mix of styles, too. Nearly all of the performers appeared seriously interested in learning from each other (a big plus) and the Influence was providing an extremely professional environment.
From me, they got “Pole Dancing for Jesus” (sound engineer Skip requested it—he and wife Sandy had heard it at the Thirsty Lion), “Talkin’ Overpriced Coffee and Gasoline Blues” (because I am upset about those fuel prices and assume everyone else is, too) and “Selling Off My Body Parts” (introduced as a “May it rest in peace” song about the economy). One slow, one half-fast, and one fast. The liked “Body Parts” best, I think. I was the only performer who did anything humorous, and for the most part the audience wasn’t expecting it. (There were only three or four of them who’d heard me before.) Maybe it’ll be a lesson for some of ‘em: music does not have to be sad, or serious, and sometimes it’s better if it’s not.
As this is written, I haven’t heard the recording of the performance. “Pole Dancing for Jesus” I don’t really care about; I want to record that with accompaniment—maybe a full band—later. (I wasn’t happy with my guitar playing on that song, either. I got better later.) The other two songs are okay for me-and-solo-guitar recordings—I didn’t flub anything—and if the recordings come out okay, I’d like to get them to market quickly because the subject matter is topical.
I was asked when I was going to bring “that fiddle player” (Jane) to the Influence Music Hall. Well, I do want to hear how the recordings came out first, of course, because that provides the justification for galivanting off to the Big City when one could as easily be playing music right here in Garibaldi. But I could do it any Friday she wanted to go. (Same applies to other musicians, too.) I know from experience now that (1) one can get there in an hour and a half, (2) they start sign-up at 7:00 and if you get there a little early, you can sign up to perform early because most of the performers don’t get there early, (3) there is a decent-sized and attentive crowd, (4) there’s refreshments—coffee, pretzels and wine.
Talked to Skip about what I had in mind for recording Diane Ewing’s “Alabama Blues.” He said there are a couple of bass players who could be enlisted to come on a night I was going to be there, maybe a drummer (we don’t have to have a drummer, though), Gene (whom I know from the Jews Harp Festivals) plays a good lead guitar—and if I could have Jane play fiddle, that would be ideal. Me on rhythm guitar and vocals, of course. Sent Skip my arrangement, and a link to the draft Tascam recording on Soundclick. Now, if we’re going to do this, could we do three songs with this band? What should the other two be?
Elsewhere, good news and bad news. The good news: I found at a yard sale an effects pedal for the Electric Banjo. For a dollar. Runs off a 9-volt battery. The bad news? My cheap, off-brand iron-on transfers are not going to work. Too faded, and too cheap-looking. (The instructions were in Italian, not Spanish, by the way.) I don’t want to pay the $3-apiece price for the Avery transfer stock but it is the quality I want. The trick is to find the stuff (or equivalent) somewhere for cheaper. At $3 a label, I can’t make a profit.
Joe
Friday, February 24, 2012
HIGH GAS PRICES? FEELING MUGGED YET?
A rant, for a change. The price of gasoline went up 50 cents a gallon while I was en route to my caller class last night (a 2-1/2 hour trip). It will doubtless go up some more, since the media had been warning about it for some weeks before that refinery in Seattle caught fire and (curmudgeonly) provided a convenient excuse. Means my caller class now costs over $50 a week (and I’d feel a lot better about that if most of that cost was going to the instructor instead of into my gas tank) and is probably going to cost more. I feel like a mugging victim. Worse still, not only are the muggers going to go unpunished, they’re likely to be rewarded with my tax dollars, just like AIG was rewarded with my tax dollars after they ate 90% of my pension fund.
There are wider-spread economic effects, of course. I was working in southern Oregon four years ago when gasoline prices went over $5 a gallon, and the economy, which was shaky to begin with, just stopped. (Gas prices eventually went down—not as much as they’d gone up, of course—because the suddenly unemployed public wasn’t driving, period.) Will the new high price of gas slow recovery? Hah. I don’t think there will be a “recovery.” (And I will not say “I told you so” when I’m proven right. I won’t. Really, I won’t. No one listens to me anyway.)
So what do (or can) I do? Well, the message in my “Talkin’ Overpriced Coffee and Gasoline Blues” (http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=5385260), to abandon the car at the gas station and go home and take a nap, is tempting. Not practical, of course (but I’ll promote the song as much as I can anyway). Not drive? Well, I won’t drive as much, obviously, because I won’t be able to afford it. I may miss some caller classes (now that they cost $50-60 a pop), and I’ll enlist square dancers I know to attend the classes and let me ride into town with them—and I’ll set up a crew of dancers to practice on close to home. Today’s trip to the Influence Music Hall in Hillsboro may be my last “recreational” trip to the Big City for a while. On the job front, yes, I’ll go wherever I’m called for an interview (if I get called), but the jobs I’m going to be really interested in are the ones that don’t entail a long commute.
But it ain’t just gas (as I remind people regularly). It’s plastic. Everything is made out of plastic or packaged in plastic and all that plastic is made out of oil. So? I will revert to how we used to live in little (pop. 50) Dodson, Oregon, where there was no garbage service, and I will simply avoid buying anything and everything packaged in plastic or made out of plastic. No, my individual actions are not going to change the world, irrespective of what Margaret Mead said, and I’m not going to expect them to. I’m simply upset, and I’m going to do the lifestyle equivalent of putting my money in a credit union because I’m upset with the big banks. I’m upset at the big oil companies, and I will avoid buying their product to the extent I can. It will not change a thing, but I’ll feel better. In the end, all I have control over is me, anyway.
And of course there are opportunities. Every cloud has a silver lining (and silver commands a high price these days). I’ll record the talking blues at “the Influence” tonight, and if the recording comes out decent I’ll send it off to every radio station DJ (&c.) I can. Ditto for “Selling Off My Body Parts,” which I’ll also do tonight. Might as well kick off the Song-a-Month Experiment with something topical. And after that? Who knows? Are we having fun yet? I hope somebody is.
Joe
There are wider-spread economic effects, of course. I was working in southern Oregon four years ago when gasoline prices went over $5 a gallon, and the economy, which was shaky to begin with, just stopped. (Gas prices eventually went down—not as much as they’d gone up, of course—because the suddenly unemployed public wasn’t driving, period.) Will the new high price of gas slow recovery? Hah. I don’t think there will be a “recovery.” (And I will not say “I told you so” when I’m proven right. I won’t. Really, I won’t. No one listens to me anyway.)
So what do (or can) I do? Well, the message in my “Talkin’ Overpriced Coffee and Gasoline Blues” (http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=5385260), to abandon the car at the gas station and go home and take a nap, is tempting. Not practical, of course (but I’ll promote the song as much as I can anyway). Not drive? Well, I won’t drive as much, obviously, because I won’t be able to afford it. I may miss some caller classes (now that they cost $50-60 a pop), and I’ll enlist square dancers I know to attend the classes and let me ride into town with them—and I’ll set up a crew of dancers to practice on close to home. Today’s trip to the Influence Music Hall in Hillsboro may be my last “recreational” trip to the Big City for a while. On the job front, yes, I’ll go wherever I’m called for an interview (if I get called), but the jobs I’m going to be really interested in are the ones that don’t entail a long commute.
But it ain’t just gas (as I remind people regularly). It’s plastic. Everything is made out of plastic or packaged in plastic and all that plastic is made out of oil. So? I will revert to how we used to live in little (pop. 50) Dodson, Oregon, where there was no garbage service, and I will simply avoid buying anything and everything packaged in plastic or made out of plastic. No, my individual actions are not going to change the world, irrespective of what Margaret Mead said, and I’m not going to expect them to. I’m simply upset, and I’m going to do the lifestyle equivalent of putting my money in a credit union because I’m upset with the big banks. I’m upset at the big oil companies, and I will avoid buying their product to the extent I can. It will not change a thing, but I’ll feel better. In the end, all I have control over is me, anyway.
And of course there are opportunities. Every cloud has a silver lining (and silver commands a high price these days). I’ll record the talking blues at “the Influence” tonight, and if the recording comes out decent I’ll send it off to every radio station DJ (&c.) I can. Ditto for “Selling Off My Body Parts,” which I’ll also do tonight. Might as well kick off the Song-a-Month Experiment with something topical. And after that? Who knows? Are we having fun yet? I hope somebody is.
Joe
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
THE SQUARE DANCE CALLER AT WORK...
Ordered three songs from Hanhurst’s Music, the people who supply music for square dance callers—“A Fool Such as I” by Bill Trader (the song was made famous by Elvis, Hank Snow, and a few others), “The Midnight Special” by Huddie Ledbetter, and “Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me” (yes, the Hee-Haw theme) by Gospel songwriter Susan Heather. Yes, I can sing all of them. Been working on the Hee-Haw song first. (I think it fits my image.)
From Hanhurst, I got “karaoke” versions—i.e., sans vocals—but also extra recordings of each one that include choreography sung by a square dance caller. I might use some of those callers’ moves, and I might not. I’ve listened to parts of the calling, and “A Fool Such as I” includes some choreography that’s “plus”—i.e., more complicated than the “mainstream” square dancing I’m going to be working with initially—so I’m going to have to work out my own moves for that one. Caller class this week is Thursday night (I’ll miss music at the Tsunami), so I have some work to do.
I’ve got one other possible source for square dance music. “Chippewa Bob” the saw player’s got a couple of “karaoke” tunes he uses with the Friday Night Group; one of them I know won’t work because it’s a 12-bar blues, and I need 16 bars for square dancing, but the other karaoke song of Bob’s I’ve heard might work. But what I’d really like to have a listen to is the album the two tracks came off of. For a singing call, I need 64 beats repeated seven times. (I find myself counting beats now, as I listen to songs on CDs.)
And I really want to record some—both some songs of mine, and some traditional country and bluegrass tunes that just aren’t available from the Hanhust catalog (which is a tad limited in scope). Of mine, “One: I Love you” would work, I’m sure; so, probably would “Duct Tape,” “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” and “The Dead Sweethearts Polka.” All have the requisite number of beats. Two Woody Guthrie tunes I’d like to record as square dance calls are “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More” and “Aginst the Law.” The latter is a 16-bar blues, rather than a 12-bar blues, so it’ll work for square dances. (And I’m obviously attracted to the more obscure stuff. As “Valvoline” proved, if I’m doing something nobody’s heard before, I can’t be compared to anybody.)
I need a full band for this stuff, I think. It’s important to have a strong bass line, both for the dancers to follow and for me-the-caller to not get lost, so we need a bass player; ideally I want the usual “whiny lead” (fiddle, harmonica, or the like) and “non-whiny lead” (banjo, guitar, or the like). Should it be done in layers? That probably depends on the recording setup and the musicians—and the sound engineer. If I were doing it—and I do not want to be—I’d record rhythm guitar first, to a click track, and then add the bass and other instruments. It could be done with four tracks like the Tascam has (guitar, bass, and two leads).
Next step, then, is to enlist the musicians and the sound engineer. It would be nice if the three recordings I bought from Hanhurst were the last three I had to buy. (It’d be nice, too, if other square dance callers ended up interested in the stuff I produced. It’s possible—as noted above, the Hanhurst catalog is a tad limited.)
First four songs typeset for the New Joe Songbook; it’s slow going but I’ve been deliberately doing two a night. I still have no idea what to use for photos. Designed a solicitation letter, too, to send or give to bands and musicians I want to enlist to perform at the three events where I’m in charge of entertainment (Garibaldi Days the Rocktoberfest, and the 2012 Relay for Life); sent it to the lady who’s in charge of the Relay to make sure I got my facts right before I send it out to too many people.
Caller class Thursday (instead of playing at the Tsunami) and performing/recording at the Influence Music Hall in Hillsboro on Friday (instead of playing at City Hall). Yes, two trips to Portland in two days right as the price of gas goes through the roof. I assume there will still be music at the Rapture Room Sunday night.
Joe
From Hanhurst, I got “karaoke” versions—i.e., sans vocals—but also extra recordings of each one that include choreography sung by a square dance caller. I might use some of those callers’ moves, and I might not. I’ve listened to parts of the calling, and “A Fool Such as I” includes some choreography that’s “plus”—i.e., more complicated than the “mainstream” square dancing I’m going to be working with initially—so I’m going to have to work out my own moves for that one. Caller class this week is Thursday night (I’ll miss music at the Tsunami), so I have some work to do.
I’ve got one other possible source for square dance music. “Chippewa Bob” the saw player’s got a couple of “karaoke” tunes he uses with the Friday Night Group; one of them I know won’t work because it’s a 12-bar blues, and I need 16 bars for square dancing, but the other karaoke song of Bob’s I’ve heard might work. But what I’d really like to have a listen to is the album the two tracks came off of. For a singing call, I need 64 beats repeated seven times. (I find myself counting beats now, as I listen to songs on CDs.)
And I really want to record some—both some songs of mine, and some traditional country and bluegrass tunes that just aren’t available from the Hanhust catalog (which is a tad limited in scope). Of mine, “One: I Love you” would work, I’m sure; so, probably would “Duct Tape,” “Naked Space Hamsters in Love” and “The Dead Sweethearts Polka.” All have the requisite number of beats. Two Woody Guthrie tunes I’d like to record as square dance calls are “I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Any More” and “Aginst the Law.” The latter is a 16-bar blues, rather than a 12-bar blues, so it’ll work for square dances. (And I’m obviously attracted to the more obscure stuff. As “Valvoline” proved, if I’m doing something nobody’s heard before, I can’t be compared to anybody.)
I need a full band for this stuff, I think. It’s important to have a strong bass line, both for the dancers to follow and for me-the-caller to not get lost, so we need a bass player; ideally I want the usual “whiny lead” (fiddle, harmonica, or the like) and “non-whiny lead” (banjo, guitar, or the like). Should it be done in layers? That probably depends on the recording setup and the musicians—and the sound engineer. If I were doing it—and I do not want to be—I’d record rhythm guitar first, to a click track, and then add the bass and other instruments. It could be done with four tracks like the Tascam has (guitar, bass, and two leads).
Next step, then, is to enlist the musicians and the sound engineer. It would be nice if the three recordings I bought from Hanhurst were the last three I had to buy. (It’d be nice, too, if other square dance callers ended up interested in the stuff I produced. It’s possible—as noted above, the Hanhurst catalog is a tad limited.)
First four songs typeset for the New Joe Songbook; it’s slow going but I’ve been deliberately doing two a night. I still have no idea what to use for photos. Designed a solicitation letter, too, to send or give to bands and musicians I want to enlist to perform at the three events where I’m in charge of entertainment (Garibaldi Days the Rocktoberfest, and the 2012 Relay for Life); sent it to the lady who’s in charge of the Relay to make sure I got my facts right before I send it out to too many people.
Caller class Thursday (instead of playing at the Tsunami) and performing/recording at the Influence Music Hall in Hillsboro on Friday (instead of playing at City Hall). Yes, two trips to Portland in two days right as the price of gas goes through the roof. I assume there will still be music at the Rapture Room Sunday night.
Joe
Sunday, February 19, 2012
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
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
Saturday, February 18, 2012
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
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
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