Monkey. File.

My job of Merch Girl has kind of branched out into what I'll just call "Monkey" although Susan usually attached an adjective to the front of that which rhymes with "fit" and I take as a term of endearment. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, and this week we spent a lot of time filing things. It made me want to go home and file a bunch of my own stuff...but I'd probably need to hire a Fit Monkey of my own. Yesterday morning before a filing frenzy, Susan had a radio inteview on KGSR to play a song and talk about her performance this weekend at the Empty Bowl Benefit. More on that in a future post (but go to the benefit!). We had to be at KGSR kinda early...which means we had to be up even earlier. Coffee was in order.

A recap from a while ago.

It's been a busy one, as usual...and I've been remiss on making videos or even filming much. Here's some random bits from October and early November...more coming soon! Promise.

Merch Girl Contest Winners!

Phil and his awesomeness have announced the winners of the Merch Girl T-shirt Slogan Contest...go to his blog to see the results. I'm pasting a few of my favorites below...with 100+ entries there were a lot of funny ones. Some of you know me too well. Some of you are very literary...or just nerdy. My commentary in italics. Add your own in the comments if you think you can match these fine people. The ides of Merch. (Makes a history major happy). Merch: you didn’t bring any of your own…buy some of mine. Merching: great for padding a resume. I’d even sell you the shirt off my back (for $20 extra). (I always layer so it's not a big deal). Merch Girls Make Change “Where’s My Masking TAPE!!!” - merch girl (A real quote...said with much panic). Merch Girl of Venice. JPo and SuSang: A perfect Merch. Merch Girl: the cheapest thing in the van. Merch Girl: starved for attention and saltines since 1982. Merch Girl takes backseat to the PUPPPIES!!! Merch “No, I don’t have change for a 100" Gurl (I have been asked this! And I did it) Merch Girl- Will work for Diet Coke (Amen. And I do). Merch Gurls-The Coolest Person in the Bar (Thank you). Masking Tape - $2.00 Drink From the bar- $ 3.00 Truck stop dinner- $6.99 Being A Merch Girl- Priceless Merchin’ Magic Isn’t as easy as this Merch gurl Makes it appear! This Merch Gurl Makes Music AND Money! Merch Girls > Groupies Merch girls wheel and deal, then wine and dine. Merch girls wake up the band. The merch girl is a very sophisticated navigation system. (But Susan has discovered I'm not as accurate as her GPS). Merch girls fund the tour. Merch girls smell better than the band. (Hey I didn't say it). Merch girls are the opening act. Merch girls are also the closing act. Merch girls rarely offer discounts. (NEVER. EVER.) The Merch Girl: don’t leave home without her. In soviet Russia, the merch sells the merch girl. (This made me laaaugh). Saving the world from bad music one CD at a time. You want to swipe it where?

Merchtober Video

Thus explains the banana comment from the previous "out of context video" (Phil asked!). I especially like the "whoosh" sound the banana makes flying out the window....

Wanna Be a Merch Gurl?

Ok kids, my buddy Phil over at AllThingsPhil.net is cool enough to sponsor a contest whereupon you can win your very own copy of The Early Year! And since the contest, which he so cleverly designed, involves coming up with a witty Merch Girl t-shirt slogan of your very own...the grand prize winner gets their rock star slogan on a t-shirt made by ME. Because I like to Sharpie things. You even get to pick your t-shirt size. It's like the Gap but custom. So go be witty, and if you're witty enough...you too could be a Merch Girl.* (*Except not Susan's. She already has one. You'll have to find your own folk-rock star to tour and make funny videos with).

Out of Context

I'm really beginning to get into this editing thing...so much control, haha. Some randomness from the gigs this past weekend in Fort Worth and Stephenville...

At the Fairmount in Fort Worth

If you squint, you can see the band. Blogging from the merch table...our buddy Amy is here with HER video camera, and she just informed me that she has video of me singing along to "Happiest When I'm Moving" from about 12 minutes ago.  I thought the filmmaker was supposed to remain BEHIND the camera, Amy, hehheh.  The Merch Girl (TM) is a trademarked term to be used only with official permission and affiliation with Susan Gibson, Inc.  Or something.  Yay Fort Worth!  I like it here.

Bowling in Comfort

Susan played at Phil's Firehouse this weekend in Comfort, Texas...Phil's is a neat venue complete with 4 lanes of bowling. The kind of bowling where real people have to set up the pins after you knock them down. So cool. Phil was nice enough to loan me bowling shoes for the night because I like to wear bowling shoes. The set up: The gig was definitely a strike and not a spare. Drama! Of course...the merch: If every gig ended with bowling...well, that would be sweet.

That Talented Suz

Susan Gibson is just brimming with talent. Of course you are all familiar with her killer songwriting and guitar skills...but maybe you weren't aware of her multi-instrumental gifts and her calligraphy experience.

J-Poville

Yep, we made it home. We had one other minor adventure on the way back involving the dogs getting sprayed by a skunk outside of Dallas, so we had 3 hours at a car wash at 10 PM with tomato paste and vinegar (thanks, Beth!)...but we made it back only a little smellier. Ok, much smellier. But it was an adventure as always! Here's a tune from Susan in Charleston, SC...the real version is "Gatesville" from her latest record, but perks of being a Merch Girl include improvised songs for you. Sweet! It's kinda my new fave...

Tracking The Early Year: New Mexico Boy

This one makes me smile because it kind of brings a neat story full circle for me. Susan Gibson was nice enough to sing background vocals on this tune, and by now you all know she is one of my favorite singer-songwriters and has been since I was in college. We met in 2001 when she played in my Music Appreciation class. I was a freshman thinking about majoring in political science but secretly wanting to find a way to be a musician (and had been doing as such since about 5th grade). There wasn't a whole lot of example around Albuquerque of songwriters who toured and recorded on a sustainable level. Success to me meant a record deal and VH-1...which was totally out of reach. But THEN...I see this songwriter perform in my class who is making the music business work as a career without selling out to MTV, and who is writing honest and brilliant lyrics with a powerful guitar style. Um, hello? I was smitten. Suz came back to New Mexico a few times over my college career and we got to know each other a little more, and when I moved out here to Austin she offered her help countless times to this very green-behind-the-ears kid new to the scene. She didn't have to do that, but she did. Lately I've been her Merch Girl and have gotten to see parts of Texas and the USA that I probably would not have for a while otherwise...and I'm psyched to be able to do my part and work the merch table magic. When I opened for her during a couple of tours of New Mexico last year, I would always request a little harmony love on "New Mexico Boy" because she made it sound fantastic...so it was a no brainer to preserve it for posterity on The Early Year. Thanks, Suz, for everything. Shucks.

The Last Merch Meal: Fish Tacos

Waffle House. WAFFLE HOUSE! Jackson, Mississippi.

Lessons of Merching

Now...just to be clear...working for and with Susan Gibson means 8 million belly laughs a minute, and she's such a good sport with her video camera obsessed merch girl on the road. Everything you see here is entirely fabricated, based on one small joke we've had for a couple of months back when she yelled backstage so I could hear it, "J-PO! I NEED A PEN!" We've had fun with that ever since. Evidenced below...

Hello, Charleston

Ladies and gentlemen, if you are not aware, there is a GAS CRISIS. From Georgia to North Carolina to Tennessee to wherever the heck we are right now, pumps are covered in plastic bags and cars are lined up out onto the street when a gas station is actually open. It's kinda of creepy. We actually filled up in South Carolina today where diesel was cheaper than gas, and Susan paid the lowest diesel price she's paid since March. Meanwhile cars were lined up for gas at $4.09 a gallon. Weird. Luckily, I have my two souvenir piggy banks on the dash for good luck. I am transferring Susan's Outlook files from her PC onto her Mac...more nerdiness in the van. Might as well be comfortable doing it, right? Gig tonight in Charleston!! Might be the last one...Baton Rouge is a bit up in the air at the moment. We might be back in Texas sooner than we thought. It's still a long haul from South Carolina to Austin, though.

The Early Year and Eddie's Attic

We’re on our way to Winston-Salem, NC after a great time back in Atlanta. Susan played at Eddie’s Attic and my good friends Keith and Suzanne came to the show and then put us up in their home with fluffy beds and cute dogs and cats. Then Keith made CHEESE GRITS for breakfast and I think I might officially be a grits fan. So good! Keith and Suzanne also acted as couriers for me because I had 50 copies of The Early Year delivered to their house so I could see the thing as soon as possible. We popped open the box in the Eddie’s Attic parking lot...very cool. It turned out great. Video forthcoming, of course, haha. The other surprise of the night was a box of roses delivered to Eddie’s for ME...which confounded me as I was opening them. Shockingly, I am not known for having secret admirers, even with my charming camera presence. They were from my Merch Girl Groupies back in Texas, Teri and Sandy. They are great Susan supporters and always take good care of the Merch Girl...and when I told them we were going to Eddie’s Attic, they were very excited because Decatur is their old stomping ground and where they had their first date. (Front row table on the right of the stage!) So um...getting roses at Eddie’s Attic right after opening a box of my EP was pretty stellar. And the show was great and Martha Scanlan played too and she was great...and then the fluffy bed, and now we’re back in the car to North Carolina. Phew.

Paper Rock Scissors Fiddle!

Here's a tune from Lawrenceville, GA. The house concert had to be moved to the porch because so many people wanted to come because Susan is THAT COOL. One of the fun parts of this trip is that Suz is not afraid to grab the camera and let the merch girl play some...it gets me extra saltines in the van, too. Marian Brackney, Susan's fiddle and violin virtuoso, is nice enough to play along with my songs and make me sound 40 times cooler.

Keeping the Merch Girl Alive

Hello Johnson City, TN

At the Acoustic Coffeehouse in Johnson City about a minute ago...

From South to North

Greetings from outside of Asheville, North Carolina.  We left Lawrenceville about 2 PM and Suz plays in Johnson City, TN tonight.  The kudzu vines are amazing and I feel like I might get covered myself if I stand outside for more than a few minutes.  There are lots of mountains in South Carolina and North...it's chilly today and we're all wearing our hoodies and driving with windows down.  The dogs are sleeping on the couch after a rest break in Greenville.

Oh Atlanta...

Great house concert in Lawrenceville, GA tonight right outside of Atlanta. We left Birmingham at a leisurely pace, discovering that : a) It's hard to find a mailbox to mail stuff in. The blue official kind. b) Bugs were all over the front of the van. c) Boiled peanuts are sold in cans around here. As we went through Alabama it was kind of freaky to see evidence of a fuel shortage.  Entire gas stations were closed or there would be one pump open with a huge line of cars.  There didn't seem to be as much of a problem with diesel, which is good for Susan.  Cuz...we have gigs to be at. Thank goodness we have a plastic Jesus, a cute turtle, a gig potato, and a can of boiled peanuts on the dash for good luck. More tomorrow...it is so ridiculously late you don't wanna know...

The Saga of Waiting

At an unidentified chain store somewhere in Fort Worth last Wednesday...

Songswap in Birmingham!

Susan is songswapping with Beth Wood tonight in Birmingham...here's a shot of Suz being an attentive listener.  Beth is awesome. Birmingham is beautiful!  So much history here.  But we gotta get up and drive to Lawrenceville, GA tomorrow...

Stars Fall on Alabama

Almost to Tuscaloosa, AL and close to Birmingham! Small Stages tonight...ready to rock the merch. A few more hours in the car. There are lots of trees and mist. That is all. Also, Oasis called this morning and The Early Year is done and being shipped out TODAY. I will intercept a box next weekend in Atlanta, thanks to some friends of mine there willing to receive mail. Yay!

Hello Mississippi

We just crossed over the Mighty Mississippi River...we're in Vicksburg and again, THANKS TO THE POWER OF THE SHOTGUN SEAT INTERNET, we reserved a room in Jackson for the night. The Boss took this photo of the Merch Girl hard at work on two laptops. Yes, we had a situation that required a PC and Mac. They got along well.

We are...

On the road! Somewhere on I-20 going into Louisiana...

Onward...to Birmingham

I made it on the train to Fort Worth yesterday, only an hour late...because sometimes trains have to stop and wait for other trains. I saw lots of coal fly past me in railroad cars, for sure. We were originally going to Baton Rouge tonight, but that one got canceled because of hurricane Ike clean up still in progress, so we will be there on the way back instead. Our first stop then is Birmingham, AL...very excited. We're repacking our stuff (yes, I have been here a day and need to sort again) and will take off this afternoon and drive as far as we care to. Suz got a wireless network USB thing so theoretically, I can be online in the van. This is a miracle. So um...check out Susan's tour page and come to a show. Yo!

T-shirt Plethora

Lessons learned this weekend: - Just because the weather people say there's a hurricane coming, and winds, and rain, and the city shuts down and cancels a bunch of stuff, and you huddle up with lots of Diet Coke...does not mean that you will get any hurricane weather or even wind. Or rain, for that matter. Nothing 'round here, folks. That's ok. - Inking t-shirts with Sharpie takes a LONG time. Katie and I watched lots of hurricane coverage and 1.5 movies while I inked 3 shirts. - Sharpie does remarkably well if you take your time. - I am no calligraphy expert. The results: We're lucky. It's true. My favorite.

Hurricane Party

Well, something's blowing in from the south: In the spirit of Mary Chapin Carpenter's line from "Down at the Twist and Shout" -- "they have a hurricane party every time it blows" -- my buddy Katie and I are going to hunker down with some hummus, Diet Coke, and blank t-shirts and Sharpies. See, I decided that being on tour as a Merch Girl for 2.5 weeks...well, no one wants me to wear the same Susan t-shirt every night. No one wants that...probably especially Susan because she sits in the van with me. So Katie and I have been coming up with clever things worthy of a t-shirt. I'll share what we come up with later, but one of Katie's suggestions was "Merch Girls Do It On the Bar." Oh my.

Labor Day Weekend

Spent the weekend on the road again (now it's stuck in your head! Haha!) with Susan selling t-shirts and CDs to the fine folks in Wimberley, Marble Falls, and Fredericksburg. I realized that on the San Angelo trip I took a lot of random photos of odd stuff, so this photo essay will focus on...the music. Plus Suz was kind enough to let me play some tunes this weekend. Her only requirement is that I play "Paper Rock Scissors." I can handle that kind of employer demand. Susan's tie dye fit well in the artsy town of Wimberley at the Cypress Creek Club. This is me trying to be cool. Marble Falls was next - a show at the gorgeous Uptown Theater. Susan played great...and then the UFOs started to hover. Doo doo doo. Wrapped up the weekend in Fredericksburg at the Auslander. Here's a shot of the crowd behind Susan and Michael. Susan let me borrow her band. I get the coolest band members lately! Then she took over photographer duty so I could blog about it. Classy.

And then there was DONE.

By all accounts The Early Year is out of my hands for the next couple of weeks! The fabulous people at Oasis received the artwork from Emily, (who did just a fantastic job and you should hire her for all your graphic design needs and pay her a lot of money)...and the master is sitting somewhere in New Jersey because the post office overnighted it. Flying. Like an eagle. Into the future. Now what? Well...I suppose you could pre-order it (pre-oderitpre-orderit!!!) while I take a nap. There's a little something something in it for ya if you order early, so Czech it out. More merching this weekend...if you are in Wimberley or Marble Falls or Fredericksburg (or you want to be and really, who doesn't when there's Susan Music involved?)...come say hello! Oh, and I realized that I made an egregious error in my liner notes and neglected to thank a very important group of people that had a big role in the production of The Early Year. I'd like to write them a special note right here right now: Dear President George W. Bush and the Federal Government, Thank you very much for the tax refund check that I found in my mailbox this summer. Thanks to you and your generosity, you have allowed more singer-songwriter folk music to be released into the world, which as I recall was one of the lesser recognized tenants of your father's "Thousand Points of Light" speech in 1988. I promise to do my best to give back to the economy with The Early Year by using it to facilitate more gasoline consumption through touring, buying pretzels and Starbucks in a can from various convenience stores across the country, and by recycling all my guitar strings by making yard art and jewelry. Again, thank you very much and when you move back to Dallas/Fort Worth please come to a show. I will buy you a scone. Sincerely, Jana

Sheep in San Angelo and Other Road Oddities

Another fun merch adventure...this time at the Steel Penny Pub in San Angelo. Lots of interesting things to look at! Eden, Texas - home of the most barbed-wired prison I think I have ever seen. It was someone's job to wind miles of razor wire around chain link fencing. Wow. We tailed this towed RV for a long time...they left the back window blinds open and a giant mirror was hanging on the wall. Total safety fail. There was a very patriotic sheep in front of some offices in San Angelo...The Sheep of Justice, as I called it. Note the weird cherubs on the sheep itself. The merch table at the Steel Penny. I graffiti'd on the dart board score keeper. Awake after waking up for laundry at 8 AM, playing the Artist Market in the afternoon, driving to San Angelo, and merching it up. Long day! Wouldn't change a thing.

Puzzling.

A moment in Cracker Barrel somewhere between Fort Worth and Austin. Never got it down to one peg. The coffee was good, though.

Merch Girl Escapades

Last night was another fun one involving Susan Gibson music, Diet Coke in cute little glass bottles, and lots of t-shirts flying off the...rack? Shelf? Bin? Can things fly out of bins? (They can when j-po is merching, hehheh). Cheatham Street is one of my favorite venues in Central Texas because it's full of history and there's live music almost every night of the week. Their open mic is highly respected as one for songwriters because people actually listen, and it was one of the first ones I hit up when I moved here. There was also space for hanging things which took the merch set up to another level. I was jazzed. I think we'll incorporate these grids into the traveling merch set up, and I have some other ideas, too. Lighting. A listening station. We're going hi-tech, y'all! Beauty.

Merch Girl Shoe Saga

Back from Denton and Ft. Worth...great trip again, even with a wardrobe malfunction on the part of my flip flops. Ahem. When we pulled up to the gig in Denton, the plastic part that enables the "flip" in the flip flop broke. I started loading in the merch barefoot because...well, what else could I do? Sad shoe times. Load in attire. It was then that a good friend of Suz's and now a friend of mine I am ever indebted to randomly found a pair of foam flip flops in her car from a pedicure she had recently gotten. They were even a nice green accent to my old pair! I rocked one of each for the night. Stylin'. Thanks, Nichole! Except the pedicure flop was not meant for rocking the merch counter all night, so by the end I had destroyed that one, too. Bare foot again, I was. Note the flip flops at the top that are NOT on my feet, at the bottom. The next day Susan was kind enough to swing by a Wal-Mart and I picked up an appropriately green pair with an "egg crate" sol