Thanksgiving 2012

I just got home from the annual Thanksgiving celebration at my sister, Mary's house. She has it every year on Black Friday because my Bouchard's are not into the shopping thing so much and we all have in-laws that like to have Thanksgiving celebrations on Thursday. Anyway before the feast we reflected on all the things we were thankful for and I realized I have way too many to list before we started on the food. Most of us were pretty hungry. I figure I can list them here on my blog because even though some people who read it will not care about some things they might be interested in other things.

So let's start off with the beginning of the year. New Year's Day started with our set at This Ain't Hollywood in Hamilton Ontario. At ten minutes after midnight we played our set which was as riotous as usual or maybe more so because the spirit of celebration was in the air (everybody was high). It was then that we recorded Blue Coupe's latest single, More Cowbell (Gotta Fever)" and we partied well into the morning after we played. Special thanks to Lou Molinaro and Ian Nielsen for making the recording possible.

The next highlight was at the last day of February when we went into Carriage House studios to record the first set of basic tracks for our second album. We recorded 7 tracks that day and left with a great feeling of accomplishment.

In the meantime I had registered for a pottery class at Stony Brooke University and started getting into making cool stuff out of mud. I still am not that great 10 months later but I've learned how to center the clay and some of my stuff looks almost professional. I may be giving pottery for presents this Christmas.;-)

At the end of March we returned to the Carriage House to record 7 more tracks for the new record (one was a redo of a track we did in the first session) and the results of that session were even more pleasing than the first.

Then in April Blue Coupe went to Corsica and Southern France for a short tour. The shows were awesome with the great venues, accommodations, food, fans and performances. Blue Coupe LOVES France. Special thanks to Dominique Berard for making it happen for us.

In May we started a string of gigs that took Blue Coupe from one high to another with supporting slots with Alice Cooper and Edgar Winter to many headlining gigs throughout the summer and early fall.

In October I played a gig with Robert Gordon for the CMJ Music Marathon that had me on guitar and Robert on vocals, a duo. We played songs we had written decades ago and were enthusiastically received which give me the encouragement to suggest to Robert we should record these tunes properly, which we intend to do in early 2013.

This fall Joe and I had the pleasure of participating in the Blue Oyster Cult 40th Anniversary Reunion show where the 5 original members of Blue Oyster Cult played to together for the first time in 27 years, something no one (especially the 5 of us) though would ever happen. It was not surprising to me that everything wen t smoothly onstage but backstage there was a genuine sense of warmth and appreciation that only time can create. It was a magical moment for me.

Last week Blue Coupe participated in the Hamilton Music Awards, a show that was taped for broadcast on Canadian nation television on December 15th. We performed and we presented awards, something that was outside my personal comfort zone but was ultimately rewarding and energizing and something I hope to do again.

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