The "Taking Ontario (plus Montreal)" Tour!
23 April 2023
It's finally time to hit the road again! My passion project, How to Say Sorry and Other Lessons, never got the tour it deserved because, well, you know, a pandemic got in the way.
Now it's time to bring it to Eastern Ontario and I am super stoked with the band I get to play with! Of course, my co-writer and life partner David Restivo will be with me as an essential part of the music. I'll also have two musical sheros, Montreal's Valérie Lacombe (drums) and Toronto's Lauren Falls (bass). I've been selling this show to presenters as three women plus a pianist born on International Women's Day. Since female empowerment and self-actualization are big themes in the album, it feels deeply right to have these awesome women in my band.
I was inspired to tour with fabulous women when I met Valérie this past November. She came to Whitehorse as part of the all-woman JUNO-nominated Ostara Project. It was very joyful to hear fantastic music being made by fantastic women musicians. Men still outnumber women instrumentalists by a huge margin, so it's moving to see women playing together at the absolute highest level.
As for Lauren, I first met her when I was living in Toronto in 2015 and have been a huge fan ever since. If you don't know her yet, check out her debut album, "A Little Louder Now", which came out in late 2022 and was nominated for Jazz Album of the Year: Solo this year!
Here are the dates and cities for this tour. You can get more details and ticket links on the "Shows" page.
- May 26 - Toronto | Arts & Letters Club
- May 27 - Waterloo | The Jazz Room
- May 28 - London | Aeolian Hall
- June 1 - Kingston | MacCallum Hall
- June 2 - Ottawa | Shenkman Arts Centre
- June 3 - Montreal | Upstairs Jazz Bar
The making of "How to Say Sorry" post #2: John Lee
19 September 2020The first time I met John Lee was the night before our first gig together at the Atlin Arts and Music Festival. He and Kelby had worked together extensively for a few years, including on the tour David did on Vancouver Island, so he seemed like the natural fit for the band I wanted for the festival.
John arrived in Atlin with nothing more than a tiny backpack. I mean, a tiiiiiiiiiiiiiny backpack! I had asked "The Fellas" to have something dressy for the gigs, and when I saw his "luggage", I wondered if he'd missed the memo. But shortly before the gig, he produced a suit jacket, dress pants, shirt, tie, and shiny shoes out of that puny pack like some kind of modern-day male Mary Poppins. Even more impressive: his duds weren't the least bit rumpled. He looked sharp!
That is just the beginning of the magic of John Lee. When you hear him shred a bass at a million miles an hour with virtuosic gusto, you might not be surprised to learn that he went to the prestigious Berklee College of Music. But he didn't study bass there. No, he went there as a drummer. At the "Piano Summit" workshop at the Atlin Arts and Music Festival, John handed off the bass temporarily to David and tore it up on a piano, to the great delight of the audience. And then in March, when he came to Whitehorse, he spent the first evening at my house making my little guitar play like it had never been played before.
John plays music the way other young men drive fast cars — sometimes I’m a little afraid for him, but it is exhilarating as he deftly weaves his way around the notes. I especially love his bass solo in “Make a Little Noise”, and particularly his interplay with Kelby at the drums. I enjoy singing along with the instrumental solos on the album, and that one is especially fun to sing.
John is fun to hang with, too. Our band photo shoot was a blast with him playing his bass both on camera and off. (I highly recommend having live music during photo shoots! It adds so much energy to the pictures.)
John says his job is to make people's musical dreams come true. He certainly delivered at the live concert we recorded for this album, and I am grateful to have him on the record.
For more John, visit https://www.facebook.com/johnleemusician/
To purchase music: https://fawnfritzen.bandcamp.com/merch
Photos by Christian Kuntz Photography
The making of "How to Say Sorry" post #1: Kelby MacNayr
08 September 2020I need tell you about my bandmates! I was blessed to work with wonderful musicians in creating How to Say Sorry and Other Lessons. Let me start with this character: Victoria-based drummer Kelby MacNayr.
Kelby is an old friend of David’s. In fact, Kelby cat-sat for David about 20 years ago in Toronto, but they lost touch after Kelby went back to live on Vancouver Island. In 2017, David and I were at the Gastown restaurant Chill Winston when we saw a guy pass by outside in the twilight, carrying a drum throne down some stairs outside our window.
“I know that guy!” David exclaimed. “That’s Kelby MacNayr!” We didn’t realize we were sitting right above the hopping music venue Guilt & Co. After dinner, we went down to see if we could catch some music, but the show was sold out. We could hear great music spilling through the doors, though, fun New Orleans style jazz.
Soon after, David had some gigs in Vancouver, so he reconnected with Kelby and they did a small tour together on Vancouver Island. Kelby is one of the most active musicians in the area, producing concerts at venues all over the Gulf Islands.
When I was invited to perform at the Atlin Arts & Music Festival in 2018, David knew that Kelby would be a great fit for the band I envisioned.
Kelby arrived in Atlin at 2:00 am, enveloped me in a giant hug and said, “I love it here!” After a few hours of sleep, we headed for the Festival grounds for breakfast, a brisk 20-minute walk. Two minutes into our walk Kelby exclaimed, “I have to run!” and he took off to the end of the road for the sheer joy of movement, then turned around and ran right back to us.
That is Kelby in a nutshell. I’ve known him to leap into snowbanks to make snow angels (while wearing jeans and sneakers) and jump into freezing Atlin Lake in his underwear just to try out the water. He has the beautiful, enthusiastic, spontaneous energy of a child.
But he is also one of the most emotionally mature and sensitive humans I have ever met. He was with me when I was preparing to showcase at BreakOut West in October 2019. I was rattling off the list of things we had to do to help get the venue ready, like moving pianos and chairs and sound equipment. He looked me in the eyes and said with a steadying voice, “But YOU don’t have to do all that.” “Oh, but we have to help out with it because we need to…” He interrupted me, “But YOU don’t have to do it all. How much time do you need transition from business Fawn’ to ‘performer Fawn’? You should take the time you need to do that before the showcase, and let the rest of us do that work.”
From our first rehearsal of How to Say Sorry and Other Lessons, Kelby has been a stalwart supporter of the project. After he heard the stories and songs for the first time he said, “These are really important things you’re talking about, and there just so much heart in this show.”
So that's the kind of human Kelby is: sensitive, loving, joyful, and playful. I've always found that a musician's playing reflects their personality, and that is certainly true of Kelby. I still get a thrill whenever I hear the tracks he plays on, delighting in his creative choices and attunement to his fellow bandmates. And when I see the videos of our show, I can see how he transitions so smoothly between sticks, brushes, and mallets, that the changes in sound are absolutely seamless.
I'm so happy and grateful to have Kelby on this album. He is a gem of a person and a wonderful musician!
For more Kelby, visit http://www.kelbymacnayr.com/
To purchase music: https://fawnfritzen.bandcamp.com/merch
Photo by Christian Kuntz Photography