Don Fraser / Valentines Cabaret

14 Feb 1997

I still don't even remember how it happened but Don Fraser hired me to play bass for his Valentines Cabaret on the Confederation Centre Mainstage.  I'd never done a gig like this.  I'd done fake book gigs with friends but this was a pro gig.  Alan Dowling played drums, Don on keys and myself on electric and upright bass.  The two singers were Real Pelletier and Marlane O'Brien. 

The week of the rehearsals I happened to be sick.  Not just a cold.  Not the flu.  It was a flu like cold with fever...let's call it a flold.  Anyway...I was so sick that I felt like there was a poison corsing through every vein in my body.  I was so sick that I was blacking out. Blacking OUT!!  Seriously...I'd be in bed...shivering...and then I'd wake up on my floor and not know how I got there...and a couple times I fell over while walking.  I was so stupidly sick.  But I did the gig anyway...probably stupid really.  But funny now that I think about it.

Anyway I did the gig, blacking out and all, and had a great time.  I heard a recording of it years later and it wasn't that bad.  My time was pretty amateur but hell...I was pretty amateur...and sick..did I mention I was blacking out?!!? 

It was the start of a good musician partnership with Don Fraser as he's hired me many more times over the last 16 years and I've been first call for his yearly Valentines Cabaret every year since.

I've also worked with him in Forever Plaid ( Piano/Upright Bass only ), and of course with the Charlottetown Festival Orchestra for Anne of Green Gables, Canada Rocks, and Something Wonderful. 

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