The Commuters prepare to share the stage with Tell Mama

We are so excited to be hosting the Night Before Christmas food bank fundraiser again this year and joining us on stage for the celebrations is my favorite local rock band, The Commuters.

This year we are adding another twist to the mix - the theme for the night is “Local Flavour - Local Sustainability”.  Local food and local music will surround you all night at this great annual event.  We are encouraging event-goers to consider committing to a monthly gift to the foodbank of $10 or more.  For a $10 commitment we are offering an event ticket for free (donation of food or $5 still required at the door).  For a donation of $15 monthly the party-goer receives free entry to this year’s event.

We are hoping to give away 200 free tickets and in the process, help to keep our local food bank sustainable with regular monthly payments.

We had a great time at the Bookstore Cafe in Camden East last night.  We had an lovely visit from a Tell Mama family member, Bill, made a few new friends (welcome to the family Carol Ann) and got to sit and chat with Oskar Graf, guitar-maker and founder of Blue Skies Music Festival.  It is so wonderful and unexpected when our friends and fans (let’s call them frans, sound good?) come out and spend some time with us - there’s nothing better than that.

The Bookstore Cafe has a lovely, intimate atmosphere, great food and wonderful staff - Mary Ann has done an excellent job of transitioning from a corporate position at Sunnybrook to a rural, entrepreneurial lifestyle in Camden East.  As usual, I brought our camera to record the performance, remembered to set it up in a perfect corner of the room - and then I totally forgot to turn it on!  I only noticed near the end of our last set as we were performing Moondance - I looked over, saw the camera and thought well, that was useful

Well, any of you who use twitter or facebook already know that Tell Mama had quite an experience this last week during our brief Toronto tour.  For those of you who don’t tune in to those touted social media transcripts, here’s what went down…

Half an hour out of Perth with Franc, his son Marcel and all of our related gear crammed into my little 1992 Honda Civic, our muffler falls apart.  Not tragic but not exactly a joy ride for poor Marcel in the back seat!  Franc’s car which is the same year and make did exactly the same thing to him last week.

So, we get into Toronto at 5:30pm (that’s rush hour for all you country folk :)) and take the Don Valley Parkway to Dupont and Bathurst so we can drop Marcel off at home on our way to Kensington Market.  When all of a sudden we’ve dropped six inches and we’re dragging the underside of my car along the pavement - cue grind to a halt.  Why I even tried to shift into first gear and pull over to the side is beyond me - geez, I wonder why we aren’t moving anywhere.

(more…)