Today, I got news from CD Baby (the online site for self-distribution of CDs) that sales of The Viper and His Famous Orchestra’s Everything for Everyone have finally topped the $10 mark, thanks to a single purchaser in Urbana, Illinois, who took advantage of the quantity discount and bought two — count ’em — two copies of the CD. This is important, since it’s only after you’ve made at least $10 that CD Baby will actually cut you the check, which they’ll be sending out tomorrow (see my earlier entry: “We’re in the phone book! We’re in the phone book!“)

Woo hoo! Paid gig! And what makes it even cooler is that I’ll now also be getting paid for what apparently are the 10 single-song digital purchases that have made around the world through Apple iTunes, along with iTunes-Europe, iTunes-UK, and even iTunes-NewZealand.

This turns out to be interesting, because it lets me know the songs for which people are willing to shell out their hard-earned kale. “Ukulele Rhythm” is the clear front-runner so far, accounting for a full 40% of all sales (i.e., 4 of the 10!) and showing up on each of global versions of iTunes that I listed above. This means that someone in New Zealand, right now, could be singing “Greb your hemmeh.” After that, it’s “I Left My Liver in Libertyville” with 2 sales, and one each for “Das Kapital” (from iTunes-Europe, of course), “Hey! Rounders,” “Pretty Is as Pretty Does,” and “Rhapsody in Blue.”

I’d be surprised at the relative success of “Ukulele Rhythm,” except for the fact that the title provides a sort of built-in branding for ukulele fetishists of the sort I encountered most recently at the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Ukulele Invitation in Annapolis, Maryland — on which I’ll put a note or two on here tomorrow.

Most of that $19.19, of course, will be plugged right back into getting more stuff out to CD Baby, including taking care of the compulsory licensing notifications and fees I’ll need to take care of to get the earlier, all-cover Viper and His Famous Orchstra EP, A Song for All Seasons, out for distribution. And of course 27.3 cents a piece will be going out to Angie Heaton and the Gershwin estate, for the sales of “Pretty Is as Pretty Does” and “Rhapsody in Blue,” respectively. And if the rest of the orchestra comes sniffing around: hey, I might have to cut them in too.

The Paint Branch Ramblers (my current old time, bluegrass, and jug band) now have a blog to call their own over at http://paintbranchramblers.wordpress.com/. News, show listings, and free downloads can all be found there — so get thee there. Our next show is this Friday, June 6, opening the “cabaret” portion of the 2008 Mid-Atlantic Ukulele Invitational (M.A.U.I.), and playing as the warm-up and pit band for the evening’s performance of Saturday, June 7. See here for details.

In the meantime, please enjoy this scratch track we’ve been using to practice some of the entr’acte music we’ll be playing as the pit band. In this case, what you’re hearing is Cue #2 for the “Paint Branch Ramble.” Pick up a comb and wax paper and play along.

download

I just discovered that someone named Lyndon Johansen had left the following message for me on April 4 as a reply to a February 2007 post.

I found The Viper & His Famous Orchestra while searching iTunes > ukulele. I’m a mandolin picker attempting to play tenor ukulele. All new to me. Does the “Reply” reach anyone that can provide me with a chord changes for Hey! Rounder? It’s a great song but a bit difficult to figure out. Thanks, Lyndon

This was nice to get for a couple of reasons: 1) it means our stuff made it through CD Baby to iTunes! and 2) it means someone wants to sing lines like:

Hot butter in the pan
Hot baby in the diaper
All for the man
And none for The Viper

So I sent him the following reply today, and I’m going to paste the chord changes below just in case anyone else might want to play along too:

Hey! Rounder,

I just saw the comment that you left on my Viper blog (as you can maybe tell, my blog and I aren’t on the closest of terms) about “Hey! Rounders.” I’m flattered that you’d like to be able to play it, so I’m attaching the basic chord changes for it.

By way of explanation, each cell of the table represents a four-beat measure of the music, so if two chords are in a given cell, then each gets 2 beats. The degree symbol after a chord means a diminished chord (e.g. C dim = C+Eb+F#+A, which are actually the same notes as F# dim) — you probably already know that. In actually playing, I sometimes substitute 9th or 13th chords for the D7 and G7 chords, and C6 for C.

In the recording on “Everything for Everyone,” I’m playing a baritone ukulele, which is tuned D G B E. (How are you tuning your tenor ukulele?) You’re also hearing a trombone, double bass, and suitcase.

So here’s a recording, and the chord changes to go with it:

“Hey! Rounders” (download here)

INTRO

VERSES

BRIDGE

CODA

The Paint Branch Blue Boys recently completed a demo recording of three tracks, produced through the Herculean efforts of James Key in his home office, from which the following recording of “Everybody’s Truckin'” is drawn.

(download here)

The lyrics we’ve devised for this Western Swing standard stay just this side of clean. Peter Jensen came up with my favorite pair, which is “Everybody’s nippin’ and tuckin’ / Everybody’s liposuckin’.”

The line-up for this recording is as follows: Mike Paul, vocals and blue-blown comb; Peter Jensen, violin and vocals; James Key, bass and guitar; Ryan Jerving, banjo ukulele, jug, and vocals; Michael Sevener, banjo. Though all three demo songs were recorded in multi-track style, with each musician recording their part separately, this is the only song on which we actually did overdubs that we couldn’t reproduce if we were playing the song live. In particular, listen for the solo section in the middle in which James brilliantly brought things down to just comb (Mike), banjo ukulele (me), and jug (me again). This is our Sgt. Pepper’s moment.