EXCERPT: The Fun Times Brigade

Excerpted with permission from Book*hug Press

Chapter 4

Fran and Jim and Amy had recorded sixteen songs, but they still hadn’t decided on a name. Jim wanted “Jim, Franny & Amy.” Amy thought it also sounded too much like their folk band, “Fran & Jim” with her tacked on, but didn’t have to say anything because Fran refused to be called “Franny” and Ben said it was derivative. “Too Sharon, Lois & Bram.”

They tried out the Playground Revival, the Dancing Hearts, Kangaroo Zoo, the Silly Butterflies, and Kazoo Attack, but nothing was quite right.

“What about the Fun Times Brigade?” Fran said as Ben was wrapping up a meeting about their first potential tour.

And from the moment Fran said it out loud, they all knew it was the one. They were the Fun Times Brigade, and Ben got them marching-band costumes for their first photoshoot.

“Not a bad show this afternoon,” Jim said, handing Amy a whisky at the back of the tour bus after their first tour stop. Amy didn’t really drink whisky, but she accepted the drink as Parry Sound disappeared behind them. It seemed unfathomable that they were already touring, but they had done a series of successful shows in Toronto, and run-outs to Kingston, Guelph, and Waterloo, and now had thousands of CDs sitting in a warehouse in Mississauga, and they were touring it. Touring the shit out of it, as Jim liked to say. Amy didn’t know how they would ever fill all these venues, but Ben kept showing the ticket-sales reports on his laptop, and in the span of a few months, Amy had gone from being a struggling singer-songwriter playing birthday parties to pay her rent to playing auditoriums with musical legends.

“You need to up the tempo on ‘She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,’” Ben said over his beer, his right knee jiggling. “And you need to slow down the pace in the middle of the set. The energy gets too wild and it’s too hard to bring them all back down for ‘You Are My Sunshine.’”

“I still think it was a solid show,” Fran said and sipped her glass of chardonnay. She made a face and got an ice cube from the tiny bar fridge.

Most of Amy’s musician friends were crashing on acquaintances’ couches and playing empty dive bars in the middle of nowhere, and it was strange to be travelling in this fancy bus. Before the tour, Amy had Googled images of tour buses to know what she was getting into. Was it like the party buses people rented for proms or weddings? And where would they sleep?

The bus had a little sitting area in the front, behind the driver, and another at the back of the bus, cordoned off by sliding doors. The sleeping area had two bunks on each side, top and bottom, with curtains for privacy. Amy took the top bunk, on top of Fran’s lower bunk, and she tried not to worry about rolling off in the middle of the night.

Their driver’s name was Marcus and after introducing himself, and giving them a tour of the bus, he told them the code word—flowers. If anyone said flowers, it meant they had to take a shit, and he’d find the next rest stop.

“Why can’t we use the washroom?” Amy whispered to Fran at the back of the bus.

“He’d have to clean the tank by hand,” she explained.

“Oh my god,” Amy said, horrified. “Got it.”

Flowers, she repeated to herself, though there was no way she was going to forget it.

[SPACEBREAK]

In Sudbury, Jim taught Amy how to ask for more monitor in a sound check, and in Sault Ste. Marie, Fran taught her how to put on stage makeup so she wouldn’t get washed out by the stage lights.

“I think we should add ‘Baby Beluga’ to the set list,” Ben said between Thunder Bay and Winnipeg.

Jim rolled his eyes.

“We can do our own version of it, a bit more folky, with some finger-picking and three-part harmonies,” Fran suggested.

But Jim hated doing covers, especially Raffi or SLB covers—that’s what he called Sharon, Lois & Bram.

“How’s this?” he asked, pulling out a piece of paper and drafting a new set list without “Baby Beluga.” Amy glanced at Jim’s messy handwriting and made out the classics—“Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” and Fran and Jim’s “Fly Like A Butterfly” at the end so all the grandparents would go wild.

“Sure,” Amy said, knowing that Jim would switch it up mid-show anyway.

“Works for me,” Fran said.

Ben’s cellphone rang and he ducked into the bunk area of the bus to take the call.

“You’re shouting into the mic,” Jim told Amy after Ben slid the divider closed.

She felt embarrassment prickle at the backs of her eyes, but was grateful Jim hadn’t said anything in front of Ben. She knew she was singing too loudly—her throat had started hurting in Sudbury—but she had no idea how else to draw the kids in and keep them with her. She was used to performing for a handful of people who were more interested in ordering another beer than listening to a song about her most recent breakup, that or a living room full of kids touching her guitar or wrestling with a sibling at her feet. She wasn’t used to auditoriums with hundreds of seats, plus balconies.

“You’ve got to spread your energy to every corner of the space,” Fran suggested.

Spreading her energy around sounded woo-woo, but after finishing a show in Winnipeg with a raw throat, she was afraid she was going to lose her voice completely, and that would be the end of her career with Jim and Fran, so she tried it out.

She stood on stage in Brandon, Manitoba, and imagined her energy like a purple beam spreading throughout audience. It felt weird, and she almost missed her cue to start “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” She wasn’t sure it worked, but she tried it again in Regina, and again in Swift Current, and Saskatoon, and by the time they played Medicine Hat, her throat hurt less and Jim had stopped telling her she was yelling.