My Tour With Amy Brandon - Day Four

Day Four - Fredericton

On Thursday, we were heading to Fredericton. We were heading to our first gig!

We woke up that morning and hit what has become a routine - coffee and rehearsal. After we ran our tunes fairly quickly, we loaded up the car for the four hour drive to Fredericton.

We arrived at the James Joyce (our venue for the evening) and loaded our gear. We met with the manager. After a bite to eat and some running around to find a cell phone charger (I forgot mine). We hit the stage.

The Gig.

I was a little worried before we started playing, Amy warned me the the crowd could be sparse, and it seemed like it would be. We are fortunate on the tour, because Amy did a brilliant job booking each venue, and none of our shows have a cover charge, but it's still nice to play for a crowd. Just before we started playing, a nice crowd of people show up and the James Joyce comes alive!

Amy and I had worked out set lists beforehand, so there were no questions about the material. This was great, because we could focus on making the music. I'm not sure if it was because I was nervous, but I was counting off our tunes faster than we had rehearsed them. This wasn't a problem from a musical/technical perspective, but definitely a problem time-wise. We added some standards to each set, which was incredibly relaxing. Common material. It seemed like we were able to experiment more with these tunes. The interesting thing (at least to me) that happened with my playing was that I feel like I became more free within the original material that we each had brought to the duo.

After a few sets of music, some shop talk with a local saxophonist and some dinner, we headed back to the hostel to sleep.

The next day we played Moncton.

See you in the next post!