"Cousin Frank & Bigfoot" - an interlude...again.

In the tradition of those 1/2  page blackout gags in humor comic of old, it's time for another visit with "Cousin Frank and Bigfoot"!

Talk to you soon.

"Another Interlude with Cousin Frank & Bigfoot!"

Another brief interlude in the tale of "What's Inside Jeff Overturf's Head".  Maybe I'll rename it "The Intermezzo of Cousin Frank & Bigfoot" instead.

I wanted to title this episode "Okie Dokie Smokey" in the great tradition of Hanna-Barbera Cartoon titles, but mostly in honor of all those one page gags in Archie/Harvey/Dell/Whitman/Gold Key comics I grew up with.  Long in rhyme or alliteration, but short in meaning or substance.

Just like me.

Oh...here's the theme song...

Talk to you soon!

"An Interlude with Cousin Frank and Bigfoot!"

While Jeffy is struggling with his own psyche, the rest of his world or course, keeps right on turning.  Let's take a brief interlude from his trials and peek in on "Ye Olde Drink Hole" and see how Cousin Frank and his best pal Bigfoot are doing.

Wait...there's even a theme song.  :)...c'mon, it's like 8 seconds long, it's not gonna kill ya!

                            

There's a closing theme, too.  C'mon...you're invested THIS far.

Back to our story next week.

Talk to you soon!

Graced With Too Much Style - A Jeffy Original Song

Talk to you soon.

New "The Telepone Song" Video - Now With Production (If Not Values)

Ah memories of Labor Day. The last paid day off between here and Thanksgiving. Harrumph!

Last week I reported that the Saturday of the holiday weekend was hosted by myself and roommate Mike here at "The Steamy Grotto" and a motly crew assembled for a day of beer, music and Italian Beef sammiches. Pictured below in a hackneyed panoramic shot are most of the players. Left to right Mark Crowley, me, Scott Michael Campbell (my sister's number 2 son), Frank Terando Jr. (my panoramic gave him 3 arms...betcha he brags about it) and Mike Crowley.


Taking the picture was Kelli King, taken here from a surveylance video at the mall I presume.

As the afternoon got greasier and drunker and clear thoughts seems few and far between...someone remembered us making a big to-do out of my "I Love Rachael Ray" song in video form and inspiration struck.

The audio is punchy in places, apparently the sound guy was as drunk as the rest of us, but here's the end result. A full cast version of "A Phone Call We've All Made (The Telephone Song)" an Uncle Jeffy composition...

Thanks guys. I dig the hell out of this stuff.

Here's hoping next Labor Day is as good.

Talk to you soon.

Music Monday - I Just Got Here A Little Too Late

I just don't dedicate enough time to singing or writing songs to suit me. And if this blog is here to give me the discipline to do so, so be it!

If I'm going to forge ahead and make up some new stuff (which is just good therapy for me) then I suppose I ought to empty the coffers of the old stuff.

This is maybe the first song I ever wrote without a partner waaaaaaaay back when I was young and dumb. It still has a lot of good rhymes in it, even if the sentiment is behind me.



Ya see...I was young and sensitive and fell for a woman, then I learned she was already married. The young adults tortured soul burns to be expressed and so I did.

Talk to you soon.

Show Bid'ness and The Economy: A Goofy Tale of Woes!

"Show me da money!" I guess I'd say if I felt like beating a dead horse. Here's a tale of life outside of show bid'ness.

Regular readers here know I like to make noise on my guitar and like to every so often make up songs on my own. This is called "writing songs" to most...I humbly just make up stuff that rhymes.

Wayyyy back in 2001 the company I work for had a talent contest at their Christmas party. A "Gong Show" type of thing actually. I wasn't going to enter the contest because I'm a sensitive artistic type of guy and was sure there weren't enough folks at my company to appreciate the high-brow humor and subtle nuance of my craft.

Then they announced there would be cash prizes and I decided it was not beneath me at all to pander.

And so I did.

I made up a song called "Christmas Time at OCB" (OCB is the company I work for, but for the sake of relativity in my story, insert your company name) and is was about as filled with inside jokes about our industry and our company's president and CEO as you can get.

The crowd and the judges loved it and I was honored with 1st prize. Like Loudon Wainwright III said "Shakin' hands with the devil ain't as bad as it seems." and I forsook my lofty artistic knuckleheadedness for good old commerciality...

...and was awarded a $1,000 cash prize. Other than the fact that those big foam-core backed checks don't fit well into ATM machines it was great! My brush wit' Show Bid'ness!

I then opted to go back to my bohemian roots and have fun with banging on the guitar and caterwauling for friends and family and neighbors...whether they liked it or not.

Somewhere along the line my nephew, Scott Campbell got into real show bid'ness. That's him below during one of our shared birthday parties. His birthday is the 14th of August and mine is the 8th and damned if some one's gonna spoil 2 weekends celebrating with us!

He appeared in a small independent movie a couple years back and did a scene where he was to play the guitar and sing a song. The only part I'll really take credit for in any of this story is that Scottie was inspired to learn to bang on a guitar after hearing me make noise on one...I'm proud to say that I helped pay forward the fun that can be had doing this.

During the filming, he decided to play a different song with every take. On one take he did a song made up by his old Uncle Jeffy called "A Phone Call We've All Made" alternately titled "The Telephone Song". For anyone who may have missed this universal broken hearted love song, here's my version.



Bring a tear to your eye? I thought it would.

Anyway, to make a short story long, in the editing bay the director decided to use the take with this song in it for the final cut of the movie.

I spent 9 months or so receiving e-mails and phone calls from lawyers on both coasts trying to convince them that they could have the right to use this made-up song in the movie at no charge. The movie was a little $300,000 indy film and I'd be proud to see my nephew up on screen singing something that I was gonna write even if they didn't pay me.

Besides the real fun would be to one day be walking down the street and hearing some stranger humming the dang thing. THAT would be cool.

I did work out that they only had the rights to use it in conjunction with this film at no cost and that I was the sole publisher and would receive credit as such.

Well the movie, after a long delay was finally released straight to DVD this week. Here it is.

After months of e-mails and stacks of pages signed, I got a call from the production company last month. It was time to reimburse me for my efforts.

Giving up on telling me for the unpteenth time that I wasn't seeking pay, I just folded and confirmed my address and waited to see what would happen.

This happened.

Don't get all jealous now...shooooooooot...anyone could negotiate like me!

The Brothers Crowley and Co., Nay Nay, Kelli and Frank all ran out this last weekend to celebrate my windfall!

I of course threw down the base of the cost from my $1 payday, everyone else filled in the rest!

I don't understand the why's a wherefor's of all this, I can just assume that there's some legality that says that even if I sign 27 contracts saying it's for free, they have to pay at least a dollar to prove acknowledgment.

And I got a copy of the contract stating this.

That's right...Uncle Jeffy's in the movies.

I gotta say though, over the course of 10 years the value of a song can drop 1,000%, from $1,000 to $1...times are tough all over.

Next time though I'm gonna take the advice of this anonymous "Jeffy's Angel"...

"SHOW ME DA MONEY!"

Stuff You May Have Missed...That I Hope You Didn't - Part One

This week at work I'm working a few extra hours and traveling a few extra miles. I'm NOT complaining (yet), I know I have nothing to whine about with the economy still floundering. And after all, it's not like I have to haul 16 tons of #9 coal to get may daily rations...I owe my soul to the company store without that much sweat. But it is crimping my blogging time more than I'm used to of late.

I've been lucky enough to garner a few new readers here of late, both Google followers AND lurkers, and it occurred to me that I've done a few things here that I'm fairly proud of that they probably will never see unless I re post them. Anyone doing a Google search on "John Prine" or "The Fleischer Brothers" has a chance of finding my rambling posts on them (I always invite folks to scroll through my "label" list in the right hand column to find points of interest as well) but no one would ever find some of the stuff I've done if they never knew they existed.

Therefor, with your kind indulgence, I'd like to spend the next few days re-posting some of my favorites that you would most likely not seek out, but that I'd like for you to see. :)

"TURF LOG" #1: "Cradle of a Comic Book Civilization!":

Back in 1994 I was an off-set press operator and had delusions of self-publishing a comic book. It was to be produced in black & white (budget considerations, you know) and I actually ran off a few copies of the first issue. The color cover was produced by making 6 single color passes (there's yellow on the back) on a one-color press, but the interior was all glorious black and white. Last year (June-July) as I began working on this blog, I decided to color it in Photo-shop.

Enjoy:




















Wayyyyyyyyy back there in the early 1990's at the age of about 31, I had also taught myself guitar. I was a fan of the comic book "Neil the Horse" and was intrigued by the notion of music in comic book form. Back then of course there was no technology that would properly get this across. Lo, came the multimedia platform that you sit before now! Here's the back-up feature to the comic book and me singing the song.

I'd suggest opening this in two windows so you can hear the song while you cruise through the comic book. Um...that's what I do anyway (he said embarrassed).








It's a little rough around some edges, but there's still things I like about it. I hope you do to.

See y'all tomorrow!

Happy President's Day...kind of

My attempt at wishing the select few a happy 3 day weekend...I kind of get off track.



...oh well...I tried.

See ya tomorrow.

Gimme A Woman - an Uncle Jeffy Classic!

As I referenced back in my "Pookie-Eyed Baby" post, about a zillion years ago I would whittle away the hours with my old pal Loren Christopher Michaels in his garage and write songs. A country song, a stripper-rock-&-roll song, a reggae song, a rap song, a 1920's style lullaby...most all with a humorous point of view.

At some point we had about 11 songs and we recorded a for-fun album for our friends, and going on the premise that we had covered every style of music, we titled the album "Walkin' Boy & The Scratch: Pissin' Off the World!".

Here's a re-imagining of the cover art work:

Loren was the musician on all tracks (I hadn't popped my guitar cherry yet) and I nick-named him "Walkin' Boy" as a reference to his fingers "walking" up and down the frets of the guitar. Pretty neo-pseudo-hip, huh?

Loren nick-named me "The Scratch" because, at the time I was working in a sandwich shop, and used to tell long drawn out stories at the end of the day, about how I had made the daily soup, the chili, the salsa, et al, from scratch. Pretty Alton-Brown-hip, huh?

I think the first song we truly collaborated on was "Gimme A Woman", the song you're about to see and hear.

I had made up the first stanza and was annoying people for months as I walked around singing it.

Over and over.

and over.

One night after I got off work, Loren and I got a silly bug up our kiesters to drive to Las Vegas. We had about 40 bucks between us, but seeing as I had to be back at work in 12 hours, we wouldn't be there long enough to spend much more than that anyway.

We got to Vegas about 10:30 p.m., wandered up and down the strip for 3 hours, then at 2 a.m. it was time to head back. This would give me time to shower and go make more soup at the sandwich shop.

On the way home we were both ready to sleep pretty hard. We were passing through Barstow, CA. and still had 2+ hours to get home. Knowing that the car couldn't drive itself, and feeling pretty punchy, we decided to finish the obnoxious, misogynistic, foul song I had been beating into the ground and my friends' heads for months, as an excercise to keep ourselves awake.

"Gimme A Woman" was born. Here it is:



This is not really a misogynistic song. It's a love song. All songs are love songs...you can't write a song unless you're in love.

So get over it.

Besides, we were just doing our job. Doing our best to piss off the whole world.

A Phone Call We've ALL Made

Here's a song I wrote that's a universal love song for us all.

The greatest pitfall besetting mankind is the same we've had for 135 years...the telephone.

It's not about man's need to be connected and to stay on the grid or anything as hackneyed as man's inability to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. It's much more basic than that.

Simply put, telephones and booze DO NOT mix.

The very first telephone call ever made is well documented. Alexander Graham Bell calling his assistant in the next room saying, "Watson. Come here. I need you."

No one wrote down the second phone call ever made, but I've got a shiny new dime to bet you it was Alexander Graham Bell drunk at 3 in the morning calling an old girlfriend.

This is a love song for all the guys out there who ever had to make that call (and yes...we did HAVE to make it) and for all the women out there who ever had to accept the charges.



We're sorry. We're not stalkers, we just miss you sometimes.

Everybody Writes A "Hank Williams" Song

Born this day in 1923, Hank Williams would have been 86 years old today.

Hank Williams passed away on New Years Day 1953 at the young age of just 29 years old. His recording career had only just begun less than 6 years prior in 1947, yet he produced an amazing catalogue of songs in that short breadth of life.

11 #1 singles and a passel of top 10 singles, Hank was on about every juke box in the country as well as all over the radio and the fledgling TV. He wrote and sang the most rollicking of Honky-Tonk party songs as well as the most heart/gut-wrenching broken-hearted-love-pain songs ever to come out of a song writers pen. So young, yet he seemed to know more about the joys and heart-aches of life than one who had lived twice or even three times as long. His songs have been recorded by everyone from Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles right up to today with folks like Norah Jones...all feeling personally what Hank wrote and sang and wanting to sing it themselves.

Hanks driving, bouncing rhythms (all with a beat produced by his guitar, drums were not allowed on The Grand Ol' Opry back then) and fluid lyrics, not to mention real heart-felt emotions on his sleeve, were a true foundation for the advent of rock and roll. Which wasn't fully born until 2 years after his death.

Here's Hank singing one of his happy go lucky tunes on the Opry...being introduced by a young June Carter:




Hank was indeed a drinker. Hank also had an addiction to pain medication which was prescribed to him for a chronic back problem. Both are rough on the heart. I see also a man who loved too easy and hurt too hard when love turned on him. That's rough on the heart too.

Hank was due to play a concert on January 1, 1953 in Clinton, Ohio. Weather was bad so he couldn't fly, so he hired a car and lay in the back seat all the way. Before leaving his hotel, he gave himself an injection of a cocktail of vitamin B-12 and morphine. Laying in the backseat would let him relax his back, so he had a couple beers and even began scribbling notes on a piece of paper for a new song. Sometime during the night his heart decided to call it quits and Hank never made it.

Ironically fitting, his last recorded single was titled "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive".

Dying this young with such a promising fount of creativity and talent still just barely tapped...and dying on the road, is probably the first in the tragedies which also find it's home in the lore of rock and roll. Hank Williams, just like Buddy Holly, Steve Gaines, Ronnie Van Zant, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Ritchie Valens, Kurt Cobain and others...it seems their job is "to burn, not rust".

Here's Hank singing "Cold, Cold Heart" one of his iconic signature songs, the video also features again, June Carter and a second song. Anita Carter singing Hanks "I Can't Help It If I'm Still In Love With You" to a smiling Hank Williams.




You may not need your crying towels, but you better tighten the straps on your hearts anyway.

Over the years many song writers and singers have performed songs which pay tribute to Hank and his legacy. Hank Williams Jr. probably has done a dozen or more, my favorite being "Family Tradition". Waylon Jennings did "Are You sure Hank Done it This Way?", Jerry Jeff walker did "I Feel Like Hank Williams Tonight", Kris Kristofferson did "If You Don't Like Hank Williams, You Can Kiss My Ass" and many, many, many more.

Back about 16 or 17 years ago it occurred to me after pondering this, that everybody writes a Hank Williams song. ...and what's wrong with that? It was also a New Years Eve when I thought this, the anniversary of Hank's death. I had to write one too.

Here's an Uncle Jeffy original song called "Everybody Writes A Hank Williams Song".




Thanks for all the songs and inspiration Hank. 56 years after your last guitar strum, you still got it!