It remains untitled, but finally comes into creative focus as I understand where this material comes from, and who the character (or set of characters) is that makes this album. One of the songs is called “Love Belongs to Everyone,” which could to be a title cut. But I’m afraid it won’t do, because it’s one of those “means-the-opposite-of-what-it-says” lines, which nobody will get until they listen to the song a few times.

And besides, as Amy says, an album of that title, judged by its cover, will be easy to dismiss at first glance as a lazy collection of hippy, one-world, one-love musical platitudes. To that, I say, “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?”

“Ha,” she retorts. “If only that was what you had to say.” (The song itself is as dark as any I’ve written, featuring a highly disturbed character. But at least the chorus is uplifting… uh… in a kind of mournful way… You’ll have to hear it, I guess, and you’ll see what I mean.)

She goes on to ask, “Are you making another Sudden & Merciless Joy?”

No, I’m not. But, yes, this album comes from a restless, worried place. It’s not the domestic placidity of Yellow House. After all, I was ungrounded, moving from Eugene to San Diego to Yellowstone and back to Eugene, enjoying life, but struggling to get leverage in my endeavors. I should have indulged in sunny California mellow melodies, and wide open Yellowstone Big Sky . But this guy went further inward than outward.

That said, I insist that he’s not so existential as SMJ. He’s more like the Blue Rebekah storyteller who lodges at Yellow House.

If that has you wondering how this album is going to sound, all I can say is, “me too.” I’m in the capable hands of Ebbage, and I trust him all the way. Together, we’ll make sure the whole thing makes a good damn bit of sense.

Not always.

If you’re a devoted songwriter/recording artist, doing your sacred work somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd tiers of the Music Industry, here are a couple of guidelines:

1) If you gotta pay for an opportunity, it ain’t an opportunity.

2) The Biz is densely populated with working talent; no one “gets discovered” any more.

This second one is vague, so I’ll elaborate: Scouting agents are not scouring the vast regions of MySpace, Sonic Bids, and ReverbNation just to find you. Anything good that might happen for you, such as a recording contract, radio airplay, song placement, or a publishing deal, is happening for artists who are already within geographical or virtual proximity of the Biz entities that make those things happen. They do it better than you, and literally closer to the industry than you.

So when I get contacted by someone I’ve never heard of, telling me how excited they are about me, I recall what Groucho Marx said: “Never belong to a club that would accept you as a member.”

Oh, that sounds discouraging. But it only means what it means for everybody else in every other line of work. You have to show up and apply for the job. And you have to show up over and over and over again. It takes time, persistence, and patience.

If somebody e-mails you from Hollywood with a movie project that needs background music exactly like your latest masterpiece, and for a one time registration fee, they will add you to their select roster of song-placement clients, remind yourself of the two axioms above.

I do not want to risk committing legal libel on my blog site, so I will not deign to call my latest Music Biz suitor an outright scam. They are called SongPlacement.com. And they are from Hollywood. They contact unsigned artists via mySpace to tell them of a fresh movie production. They even provide an outline of the plot.

I replied that I was interested. ‘Cause it doesn’t hurt just to take a look. (Maybe your pride, a little bit, if you happen to get excited for a moment or two.) I then got a phone call, from a friendly fellow named Jesse, who said I obviously have a lot of artistic integrity, and that I have a great chance of getting placed in a number of productions. He also said that they would submit to “cool college” radio stations all over the country.

All this for a mere $200 registration fee.

That’s when I new something was wrong. I’ve done this music biz thing for a long time. And I know the math. In fact, I just submitted to “cool college radio stations around the country.” You know what’s funny? Two-hundred bucks doesn’t even pay for the envelopes!

A lot has changed in Music, because of the internet mostly. It’s easier for artists to promote themselves on a budget. It’s easier to reach a modest audience without depending on Big Bad Record Corporations. But some things haven’t changed. 1) It’s still a flesh and blood endeavor. 2) There are still people who try to make their money off the hopes and dreams of artists, rather than the consumers of music.

By the way, if you’re an Americana, Folk, or Country artist, and you wanna get your stuff submitted around the world, don’t wait for some web-based electronic trolling music-biz ghost with an exotic new business model to contact you. Find someone like my colleague Rachel Harrington from Emerging Artist Resources.

She puts hundreds of your CD’s in envelopes, addresses them, and puts them in the mail. Reviewers open them and listen, because they see her name on the package. It costs a pretty penny, but that’s what it takes. And every artist you hear on the radio, or in the background of a really cool movie, has made that kind of commitment.

Two things stand out which please me: First, he cites the pop/rock song “Promises” as one of the better songs on the CD. Other reviews either ignored it, or mentioned it in passing as “stylistic meandering” that veers away from the tidy semi-acoustic stuff on the rest of CD.

Second, he describes the writing as “naive and innocent.” This sounds like a slight, but I think he meant it in a good way. Plus, I think of such naivete as kind of a writer’s victory. I had been honing the writer’s skill of making a distinction between author and the character who is speaking. Previously, some Shipe tunes would be saturated with too much awareness. I wanted the Yellow House characters to speak from specific points-of-view, limited to the experiences portrayed in each song, while broader and deeper meanings would go un-said. In other words: more story-telling, and less poetic, emotional philosophizing (Not to mention all the dark cynical impulses that accompany all that agonized deep-thinking.)

The paradox is just how much work it takes to become so “naive and innocent.” (In the same way that Picasso spent 60 years learning how to paint like a child.)

3rd Coast Music’s Freeform American Roots Chart

Entering at #16, tied with Chuck Prophet.

I couldn’t be more pleased. DJ’s and programmers in this part of the Biz treat independent music with honest respect. Even those who reject Yellow House send me e-mails indicating that they gave it a seriously listen. If it doesn’t fit their repertoire, they usually pass it along to someone else who might run with it, laying the contact info on me as well.

Now that I’m wrapping up the international promo run, I finally have a partial-but-substantial list of North American outlets spinning the album.

WDBX Carbondale, IL http://www.wdbx.org/

WMBR Cambridge, MA

KBCS Bellevue, WA

WVIA & WVYA Scranton &Williamsport, PA

WRPI Middleburg, NY (On Sonny Och’s program; she is the sister of Phil Ochs the great folk poet.)

KVMR Placer County, CA

Freight Train Boogie http://freighttrainboogie.com/

Radio Wayne http://www.radiowayne.com/

CJTR Regina, SK

WADN Shirley, MA

KWSU Pullman, WA

KZMU Moab, UT

CFBX Kamloops, BC

WSDP Canton, MI

CET Vancouver

WVUD Newark, DE

CITR Vancouver

CHES Erin Radio, Ontario http://www.erinradio.ca/

KPFZ Lakeport, CA

WCOM http://www.taprootradio.com/

WRIU Rhode Island

WNCW Spindale, NC

WHEE Martinsville, VA

WHUS Connecticut

KLCC Eugene, OR

KBOO Portland, OR

KLRR Bend, OR

The songs getting the most airplay:
Hours Go By
Just in Time
Yellow House
Hipster
Honky Tonk Romans

“We Got a Situation,” “Elegant Failure,” and “Bleeding in Your Shoes” have snuck in a spin or two.

I have three professionals to thank for their help: Rachael Harrington from Emerging Artist Resources, Claire Flint from Three Seed Design, and my publicist Leona Laurie

Several songs are rotating on playlists. The DJ’s have nice things to say, lending votes for the FAR reporting charts.

Radio Crystal Blue, has Yellow House listed at 13 on their top 100 for the year.

Stay tuned for more data and a list of stations.

What they do have, however, is a great Irish scene. Irish bands and Irish pubs. (Gentlemen from Flogging Molly reside there.) I was lucky to fall in with these folks. Ned Giblin, of Brehon Law, invited me to play Wednesdays at his pubs, J.J. Landers and R. O’Sullivan’s. So, I had regular gigs and a close look at a timeless style of music. (The influence of Ned and his cohort David Lally is bound to show on my next album.)

In Oceanside, I befriended Doug Whorly and several of his showcases at McCabe’s, where I met the lovely and talented road warrioress Jacqui Foreman. She honored me by covering my “Faith in the Man.”

It was at a Whorly showcase where my wife, Amy Wray, filmed the video of me covering The Pretender’s “Brass in Pocket.”

I didn’t bother working the L.A. scene. Too big, and like different country. But at the urging of my publicist Leona, I played a couple times at The Gypsy Den in Orange County. (Once with Trevor Davis.)

We lived down the beach from football star Junior Seau, who has a beautiful blue Pit Bull named Rocky. I mention the dog, because it was about this time that my connection to the international Pit Bull community really deepened. I was getting daily e-mails from dog lovers about my song “Pit Bull Blues,” which I gave out freely to anyone engaged in canine care and rescue. Soon, videographer Jeff Fleiss contacted me with the idea of making a video. By spring, he had hauled me up to L.A., filming me in front of the Coliseum amidst 25 Pit Bulls and their trainer, Dogman. He put it together with some excellent footage taken by Amy, and boom… there was a sweet video… still getting legs on the web.

That was one of two Shipe production videos that got made in ’09. SoCal is the land of movies, so it seemed right to film while I was there.

A most serendipitous fortune was meeting fellow Oregonian, former Eugenian and Renegade Saints fan, John Grimshaw, a filmmaker who had just produced 20 Wheels to Memphis (Adminium Films) At John G.’s direction, we made an arty video of “Yellow House.” This was one of the most enjoyable creative collaborations I’ve been a part of. He became a great friend; I hope to work with him again and again.

I didn’t have enough time to work the San Diego scene. Disappointing, because they have one of the best tiny acoustic venues on the West Coast in Lestat’s. There, I went to see my friend from Portland, Stephanie Schneiderman, another great road warrioress. (Being on the road is tough; it means a lot to have familiar faces from home show up in the audience.)

Since I was on a sabbatical, I wasn’t all business. Pleasure: Besides daily milk shakes on the pier, and Irish bands, it was zoos and deserts. Anybody who knows me knows I love the zoo and the desert. San Diego has the best zoos. And Joshua Tree National Park has the best deserts. I went to the Zoo and Wildlife Park 4 times. Joshua Tree twice. We stayed at the same place U2 stayed when they were making their groundbreaking album. (Another Irish band, you know. So I worked up “Red Hill Mining Town” and brought it back to the Irish Pubs.)

Oh, another pleasure: Dyson, my old drummer came down, and watched the Padres play the S.F. Giants.

May rolled around and we had to leave. But where to go? Yellowstone National Park, to live among bison, wolves, bears, moose, geysers and tourists. Professionally, this too seemed like a mistake. Dial-up internet, no cell phone service? But this was a childhood dream come true. Yes, work was difficult. But I was able to write a lot. And I could tour circles around Montana and Idaho, where they deeply appreciate live acoustic music. I could approach my usual Northern Idaho stomping ground from the backside, doubling the size of my familiar circuit. The drives were long, but gorgeous. I found myself gigging as much as I always do: Vino Rosso in Idaho Falls, Sandbagger’s in Pocatello, Riley’s in Helena, The Cellar in Missoula… In Boise, I got to hang with my other former drummer Scott Headrick.

In June, I came home for my most important gig of the year: Officiating at Ehren Ebbage’s wedding (to Anna), as a Universal Life Minister.

Living in Yellowstone, I didn’t feel like I was missing much. Played softball, worked out in the gym, played piano, met new people who never talked about politics or religion. And, Amy and I started filming a Yellowstone documentary.

In July, the nightmare occurred: we lost our hard drive. Every new song I had recorded from the start of the year, and the music for Amy’s film… gone! I had been pushing in new musical directions, and much of it wasn’t sticking into memory. So, losing it all really took the wind out of my sails. (The less said about that the better.)

In August, I returned home again for Tim McLaughlin’s Music Edge Camp, to teach with Ebbage & Zack. There is nothing like teaching kids for getting yourself back on track.

In October, we came home. Back to work. I had trouble with the transition–trying to re-connect with my regional circuit, re-establishing my place on NW roster, re-building my student clientele. But an invitation to speak to a mass-media class at the U of O stirred my confidence and enthusiasm. Motivated, I moved aggressively on several Shipe fronts. First, I signed on as lead guitarist for The Last Drags with Pat Kavaney and Jerry-Groove. (This de-isolates me as a musician, and scratches my rocker itch left by The Renegade Saints.) Next, I kicked off international promo run for Yellow House, with Emerging Artist Resources. (This is already paying dividends beyond expectation.) And finally, I moved an upright piano into my house (with the help of River my protogee and his bandmates in The Tunnel Kings.)

There was peripheral sadness as the year was closed. My agent Linda decided to retire. (Not so sad for her, really.) Also, longtime Eugene arts patron Wally Slocum passed away. (The Renegade Saints reunited for the memorial at the WOW Hall.) And saddest of all, a close friend of mine lost a brother.

The holidays began cheering me up, threatening to put me back on the sunnyside, when suddenly, I was hospitalized with a kidney-stone, or gallstone, or herniated disc, or something. That really sucked, for sure, but when I woke up from sweet Morphine and ever-friendly Vicodin, I checked into my business to find that I already have a new agent. Plus, I found out that I’m on folk charts in Europe and Australia.

So now, as I start the new year back at Headquarters at West of Eden, rediscovering workaholism, I think to myself: The next time I want to release three or four videos, double my tour circuit, and get radio play on two other continents, I’ll take a sabbatical.