Walter in Austin really liked Over The Waves and wanted the sheet music for it. You'll have to do the "right click and save as" thing or it'll just open in your browser.

I've also updated the original blog entry with the link.

Snake Suspenderz performed last night as the pit orchestra for Cedar's "All Hallows Oddville Spectacular" show at the Jewel Box Theater. Actually we mainly covered the first half since the second half was a large skit featuring a really large bed of nails and lots of folks on stage. The problem here being that the stage at the Jewel Box is pretty tiny and there simply wasn't room for all of us.

Interestingly, the skit was influenced by Dante's Inferno and on the way there the bus passed readerboard at the Magnolia Presbyterian Church. It had just changed from some Bible verse to "A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark." which is a quote from Sig. Alighieri himself. (Though not from his Inferno, as near as I can tell.)

What a weird coincidence.

We played a few of our tunes as well as Over The Waves. We also played Sweet Georgia Brown for the opening act, a tap dancer. Sorry to say I can't pull his name out of my memory to save my life right now except that the joke was his nickname was "Leadfoot." It was a joke, btw. He's quite a good hoofer.

Oh yeah... another small coincidence is that Lee, the excellent sound gal from the Snake's Renton River Days gig (this past July) was there for a different event, recognized me and said hi.

I took the bus down to the gig and managed to leave my "purse" on it when I exited. I didn't even notice until I'd walked the block to in front of the venue and, since I was early, decided to roll a smoke. Oh yeah. No nice, calming smoke for Hobbit.

Hey! I've got a great idea. Let's rub that in some more!

Before I left for the I thought about grabbing some of my — minimal — "set aside" cash but decided against it. Brilliant move, what?

The lovely Z Lady, despite her opposition to smoking, bought me a pack of Camels — though I usually roll my own — to tide me over.

Then it's showtime and I'm reading a lot of the tunes from charts. Reading. Right. Like with my reading glasses. The ones in the purse on the bus.

Enter Ned, one of the show crew. He had a spare pair of generic readers that, after the application of a bit of tape, worked to allow me to, y'know, see the charts I needed to read.

Whoever found my bag apparently just kept it because it wasn't at the Metro Lost & Found when I checked earlier. Monetarily it's probably a little over $100 lost. The real problem is all the irreplacable things like my Moleskine full of notes, my thumb drive, the key to the locker area (and nice restroom) here at the Market and a few other oddments of that nature.

I'm really bummed. Especially since it was me being somewhat uncharacteristically spacey. That's three setbacks since last Thursday. I hope the universe is done jacking with me, at least for a little while now. I'm pretty sure that stress was a contributor to my absent-mindedness.

I've been trying to stay as cheery as possible but these last 4 days have been no comedy, divine or otherwise.

I'm going through my inbox trying to catch up on lots and lots of Google Alerts.

On ukulele, of course. What else?

So twice in a row today, from two different self-appointed experts, I run into the persistent idiocy that concert ukulele are louder than sopranos — with the tacit understanding that tenors are therefore louder than concerts and baritones the loudest of all. This is crap. It makes me almost as mad as the one about needing small hands to play soprano. Grrrr!

The truth is — and you've heard this before — size doesn't matter. What matters is quality. I have a nice, high-end soprano that will blow your lower-end concerts, tenors and baris right out of the water, and not just in the volume department.

Please note that I said "quality" rather than "price" above. You can get a very nice instrument nowadays for around $200 (sometimes even less). Note this is for sopranos, my fave as you all know. The larger sizes will be more but in proportion to the soprano price range. They'll sound nice, have good volume and be emminently playable.

I'm still a soprano fiend, but whatever size ukulele makes you happy is the one you should play. Just don't choose a larger size thinking that's an automatic ticket to higher volume.

And the rest of you really need to stop spreading the silly idea around. Beginners come across that sort of thing and think it must be true. Why start them out with a disappointment?

Yesterday's Snake Suspenderz rehearsal was dedicated to instrumentals that we'll be playing as the "pit orchestra" for a vaudeville performance tomorrow.

Sketch has been having some back spasms so instead of dealing with his drum kit he used Thadd's snare and stomp cymbal. He also brought over his little banjo ukulele.

The combination of the banjo sound and the tuba sound is what Thadd calls "nearly liturgical" for the type of music we often do. So for most of the session, that's what I played.

I really have to get my banjo uke up and flying again. Sketch is going to bring his to tomorrow's gig, but it's not the same as having one I'm really used to (though I haven't played it since the skin broke on the way home from an Emerald City Jug Band gig on Orcas Island, a way long time ago).

In any event, one of the tunes we're practicing is Over The Waves. You'll recognize it even if you don't recognize it by name. You've heard it more times than you can count.

It goes one time through with Thadd's trombone playing the melody and sal's tuba doing the usual tuba bass line. Then there's a pass through it where the tuba plays the melody and the trombone plays all sorts of oddball obligato stuff. Lastly is the second half played again, with the trombone doing the melody.

This is probably the rawest rehearsal tape we've released into the wild. And in 6/8 time, no less. We'd only gone over it about 3 times before recording it. If it stays in the vaudeville/circus repertoire we'll do another one later so that you can compare and see if it's just a matter of more rehearsal or if we're actually trying to plumb new depths in the louche department. We don't really care one way or another. Louche is what we does!

As always, we're quite interested in what you think about it. Feel free to comment!

[Update 10/26/09: Walter in Austin noted in the comments that he'd like the sheet music for Over The Waves. You'll have to do the "right click and save as" thing or it'll just open in your browser.]

Yesterday someone threw a handful of change into my case and in amongst it was a little brown object that my fuzzy eyesight couldn't quite make out. It looked for all the world like the tag end of something someone had made from that plastic lacing you braid into things in craft classes everywhere. I finished my song and looked closer. It was a tiny little monkey.

Now, I've written a tune called Naughty Monkey. It's on Snake Suspenderz latest CD, Serpentine. I was amused that I got a little monkey in my case and I've been setting him out in my case — along with a weird 3 leaf clover made from green glass jewels glued to felt that someone else had tossed in a while back — as sort of a good luck charm during my sets. But I still hadn't seen the little guy with my reading glasses on.

Today I was showing it to someone and they said, "Oh! Curious George!" I put my glasses on and damn if they weren't right. So it was a naughty little monkey after all!

If you click on the picture up in the left corner of this post you can see a bigger version, with a bit more of my hand in it for scale.

Meanwhile, feel free to take a listen to the tune.

P.S. the pic was taken with the little web cam built into my new netbook. I was sitting in Post Alley at Pike Place Market when I took it. A little fuzzy, but it works.

Last night Snake Suspenderz just had our first full-on rehearsal in some time and, thanks to the magic of Thadd's Zoom H2, we've got not one, but two new rehearsal tapes for your delectation.

The first one is Singin' In The Rain. I learned this easy arrangement on ukulele from Seattle music teacher Michael Lynch. He's got lots of great ukulele instructional videos up on YouTube. Check him out!

This was actually the first song we played at the rehearsal. I just started playing it, we'd never done the tune together before. We didn't even bother to print out charts for sal, the tubist, he caught it right away. We ran through it once, talked about how we were going to arrange it for a moment and then ran through it again with the recorder on. A little light futzing about "post production" and the mp3 presented here was born.

The next one is the Fats Waller/Andy Razaf tune, Honeysuckle Rose. The ukulele got a little lost in the mix — I was sitting too far from the H2, live and learn — but it is in there and it's a pretty good recording so we're releasing it into the wild.

I'll be catching up on the links at the Snake's site to include these two new rehearsal tapes but meawhile, y'all get the early peeks.

Let me know what you think!

A few days ago a guy stepped over and dropped a dollar into my case. He said, "I was over by the honey stand and noticed my foot was tapping. I figured it had to be because of you."

Thanks, dude! A buck and ego-boo. Bonus!

It's a short saga.

I sold two CDs during my one set busking at Pike Place Market today. One of the people paid me with a $5 silver certificate (1953 series). I occasionally see the $1 silver certificates, but I haven't seen a $5 one since Grandpa Fenner's coin collection.

The guy at the coin shop in the Market said a collector might pay "up to" $10 for it. I said to myself, if I can find someone to give me $7 for it I'll call it a win. I asked around the craftpeople and agents and lo!, Gino is a collector. He offered me $7 (without prompting on my part).

I said "Sold!"

Cool.

Except for the little version of Sexual Life Of A Camel I did a couple weeks back — and, weirdly, didn't publicize much at all — it's been a long time since I posted a new video. Well, Saturday I was at the Fallen Angel's place and recorded Dream A Little Dream Of Me. I got it processed yesterday — via the good graces of Rose Red, my faithful old eMac — and just uploaded it to YouTube about 20 minutes ago. And here it is...

There's a link to watch it on YouTube in the first paragraph, just in case the embedded video isn't working for you.

I originally started learning it to accompany a young lady named Michael Edwards 4+ years ago. I recall that it was a little hard for me to do. A couple months back I decided to take another stab at it and it just fell under my fingers. Apparently generic progress sometimes translates to specific song progress. Cool.

Still got a clam in there, but it sounds almost like I meant to do it, so I thought I'd leave it in instead of doing another take. And the two bobbles in the lyrics are very minor, so it's good to go.

Let me know what you think!

My friend Eddie Lloyd is making a documentary called "This Is Man." From his email:

"What does “being a Man” mean to you? How have your views changed throughout your life on Manhood? What do you feel your place in the World is? In the life of your Family? These are questions we have been asking ourselves lately, and we feel that in reaching out and asking other Men around the world their feelings about their place in the world, it might help us all understand a little more about ourselves and our own place in the World. Perhaps we can all gain a little more understanding about how others, from different generations and different social, ethnic and political backgrounds, feel about issues common to all of us. How does a thirty year-old feel about his place in Turkey as opposed to a thirty year-old in Kansas? Are we really that different? These are the questions this project is looking to help answer."

If you're a man sort, go to http://thisisman.blog.com/ and check it out.

I'm catching up with (and nearly there) the blogs I've been unable to read regularly because of my limited web access. Today I discovered one from bout a week ago that Radley Balko at The Agitator posted about Google’s Aggravating Ad Policy.

The reason you no longer see google ads on my site is because of the very situation that he blogged about except I never heard anything about porn spam on old posts being the culprit. I'm pretty much on top of the issue, but sometimes GMail sends comments from my blog into the spam folder. I suppose I may have missed one somewhere.

They ripped me off for nearly $100 and, unlike with Radley, that represented nearly a year instead of a month.

Of course, the bright side is I asked around and found a couple fine ukulele companies to run ads. I've gotten articles in kind for the ads and though by the strictest terms of our agreement I should have taken them down by now, I'm just much happier having ads for companies I know and trust appearing on my site as opposed to whatever the algorithm decides.

But the owed money does still hack me off some. I sure hope the $96 and some pennies helped Google avoid bankruptcy, the poor dears.

Amanda Palmer recently said this about why artists are asking their fans directly for money. It inspired a huge slew of comments (nearly 500 of them), both pro and con.

If I got ~500 comments on one of my blog posts I'd probably faint or something.

I'm not sure I'm 100% behind everything she's doing to raise money, but I agree that the way it's going to work from here on out is a direct relationship between artists and their friends and fans. I see no reason to let in a middleman to collect money for you.

Amanda mentions that she has one of those"online tip buckets" and she gets donations there. She has a fan base that's in the 5 or 6 figure range — i.e. completely out of my league — so I'm wondering if any of you out there have a donation link of any sort on your site and whether you think it's worth the trouble.

I am, of course, talking to those of you who are musicians or other artists and don't have entire mob scenes full of fans.

And those of you who're on the fan end of the equation, what do you think about the online tip jar thing?

Being a busker myself, the idea of an online tip jar sounds normal to me, but I'd be interested in other takes before I go through all the hoorah to set one up.

Please leave a comment and/or pass on this post's link to any of your friends who might have input on the subject.

Queen of Hearts is a tune I wrote right after hearing Chris Lunn do Jack of Diamonds at a Victory Music open mike. Chris played a "guitar banjo," that being a banjo body with a 6-string guitar neck on it.

If preparing these tunes for re-release has taught me nothing else, it's taught me to appreciate my latest recording all the more. As I work my way through the eight cuts from the original cassette they get harder and harder to make listenable.Of course, it's also teaching me more about the capabilities that Audacity has in the mastering department. So maybe my next one will be even better.

This one's wave form was in hideous shape.  I can't believe the volume changes that were in it, as well as spikes that should have sent the VU meter on the little 4-track through the roof, but I managed to miss them when they happened.

I'm still pretty happy with the song itself. My guitar picking isn't too shabby on this one either. I seem to recall it being one of the first tunes (if not the first) that I wrote with a fingerstyle solo in it.

What do you think?

(P.S. If you're just finding out about my old cassette, you can click on the "kuwyj" tag and bring up a list of all the blog entries on the subject. There's 4 downloads available at the time of this writing and at least one or two more coming.)

That's right, here's the title track from Keepin' Up With Your Jones, the early cassette release I've been yammering on about for a while now.

In fact, after 4 or 5 posts on the subject, I'm going to make up a new tag "kuwyj" and tag 'em all that way so that any latecomers to the party can easily find all of the downloads.]

You're welcome. Happy to do it.

This tune was re-written a bit (and apparently slightly re-titled... aging and failing memory) for the Snake Suspenderz first release, Preliminary Slither. So if you've got that one now you can download the original and compare.

As usual, I'm eager to hear any feedback you have on the tune. Drop me a comment!

...but some link love too. Kind of like the story from the other end.

UPDATE: I've tagged this (and all the other posts on the same subject) with "kuwyj" so that you can find the whole saga (and all the downloads) re: the Keepin' Up With Your Jones cassette easier.

Mornings lately are spent at Local Color in Pike Place Market, drinking coffee and trying to catch/keep up on all the web stuff I let go slack when my easy home web connection went the way of the dodo.

And see, the little web-cam in my netbook works.

Now if I could only get some software that saved the video from same in a format that iMovie likes I'd be rockin'. The software that came with the 'puter is called "cheese" and it saves video in "ogg" format. *sigh*

In my description of Black Betty Blues I forgot to mention that the door slamming sound right after the line "...has got to show a profit or shut his door" is my then significant other standing in the doorway of my room while I sang the vocal and slamming the door at the appropriate time.

I have a vague recollection of it requiring several takes to get it just so.

Recording was so interesting back then.

UPDATE: I've tagged this (and all the other posts on the same subject) with "kuwyj" so that you can find all the downloads easier.

This is the second song I've re-mastered from my old cassette, Keepin' Up With Your Jones. (If you missed the first one, go ahead and download it. I'll wait.)

This is one I wrote and it's called Black Betty Blues. It's a silly little ditty about what a hard-knock life it is because I had to sell my electric guitar in order to make rent.

Black Betty was a cheap Korean knock-off of a Stratocaster — black, of course — but it was the first new electric I'd ever owned.

There were several occasions on KUWYJ where I did little talking intros/outros to songs. I seem to recall doing that because I was trying to stretch the playing time of the cassette as much as possible. This was one of those tunes. However, in almost every case I cringe when I listen to them. I therefore chopped off those bits from the mp3 while I was re-mastering. Believe me, you won't miss it.

I'm pretty pleased with the guitar solo on this one. If I recall correctly, it was played on a little Ovation Celebrity, an acoustic guitar that was equipped with an underbridge pickup.

I was going to link to a pic of an Ovation Celebrity but the modern ones seem to all have cutaways and active electronics — i.e. all sorts of knobs and buttons on them. Mine was just plain. Progress, right?

Damn. Not like I didn't already feel old.

I can't for the life of me remember what effects box I had. I remember it was a multi-effect thing and it was full-rack size. One of the problems with recording on an old 4 track is that you have to apply the effect as you're recording. After a few bounces you end up with a muddy mess. There's a couple artifacts like that on this track, but all in all it came out of the re-master pretty well.

Let me know what you think!

UPDATE: I've tagged this (and all the other posts on the same subject) with "kuwyj" so that you can find all the downloads easier.