Summer is over, back to teaching...

So the summer tour is over. I was away for six weeks playing a handful of shows with Kobo Town, as well as a few jams and recording sessions with Chlorine Dream and my old mates from BOUND. I even did an improv jam with my cousin Zach Kellum in a yoga studio (I was drenched in sweat when it was over).

It was a great time seeing the wilderness of Canada, the mid-west and Niagara Falls. And as always, it is a true joy to go across the Atlantic to Europe. France is an amazing country - the food, the people, the history and the architecture. Germany is one of the few countries that got the entire concept of design and functionality right.

There were memorable shows and shows that weren't special in any way, but that's how it goes really.  We always tried to do our best and play our hearts out. One show we had to wait for a torrential thunderstorm to pass us by. One show in France saw us take four different trains and spend over eight hours travelling, but the view was amazing in the end.

We had a few days off after the first gig in France and we stayed in Paris, we walked everywhere and ate like kings, I think I had probably a dessert with every meal (I love you Cafe Gourmand).

The day before we left for Berlin, we took a train to Montpellier, ate in the town square, took a street car to the beach and jumped in the Mediterranean Sea, the temperature was absolutely perfect, and we all thought out loud, 'Yes! this is the life!'

The hardest part of the tour was flying out that early morning on the 18th back to Toronto, a connecting flight from Berlin to Zurich, then to Toronto, then drive in traffic to Niagara Falls and play a gig that night. The time difference and jet lag caught up with me while I was on-stage and I could feel myself falling asleep, even though we got through the gig pretty okay we were all tired from flying.

But all in all, it was a great summer!

Here were a list of Kobo Town tour dates...

July 10th - Festival Park, (Toronto, ON)
July 21st - Ness Creek Folk Festival (Saskatoon, SK)
July 23rd - Improv Yoga Class with Zach Kellum (Toronto, ON)
July 28th & 29th - Calgary Folk Festival (Calgary, AB)
August 4th - Festival du Bout du Monde with Kobo Town (Crozon, France)
August 10th - No Logo Festival with Kobo Town (Fraisans, France)
August 11th - Festival Les Aeriennes with Kobo Town (Mende, France)
August 17th - House of World Cultures with Kobo Town (Berlin, Germany)
August 18th - Niagara Falls with Kobo Town (Niagara Falls, ON)

And now that summer is over, it is back to school. I'm preparing all the different classes to sing Christmas carols for the last day of school. What a job! What a life this turning out to be.

Music teacher during the year, touring musician during summer.

Thank you God for the miracle of music and being with me on this journey called life.

Gigs, gigs, gigs

I love playing shows. Even the ones where I'm exhausted. Just getting up on a stage is like a drug for me. I've played hundreds, maybe close to a thousand shows over the last ten years of my life.

But yet, it's only happened a few times, perhaps about four that I can truly remember, where there's this perfect synergy between band and audience.

Four times. From 1990 to present day.

These are those times: -

- Roxy Cinema, Trinidad (October 1990) - My first 'real' show with my thrash metal cover-band Warhead, at the end of our set, the crowd was screaming our name, I was 16. We played an encore. The band lasted another year before we called it a day. I thought my music career was over then. Little did I know it was just beginning.

- El Mocambo, Toronto, Canada (November 2008) - I played a solo acoustic show for a group of underprivileged migrant school children. They all wanted my autograph after. I've never experienced such gratitude, I was 34. They never heard my music before. Such honesty and appreciation.

- Womad Festival, London, England (July 2014) - Charlie Gillet Stage, 4pm show. The crowd was screaming for us (Kobo Town) in-between every song. They sang along to songs they never heard till that evening, I know this because we've never played at Womad before. It was the loudest and most appreciative audience we've ever played for, we signed autographs for almost an hour after, I was 40.

- Assumption Church, Trinidad (2001 - present) - The Saturday evening choir is sometimes a hit and miss, but every once in a while we get it right, and we play hymns the way they're meant to be played - reverent, with love and homage to God, and I can see the look on the parishioners, that they enjoy what we do, and for a brief moment, the church is filled with a sense of peace and love. God's peace perhaps.

Four times, over the space of 25 years.

Not bad. Not bad at all.