Even before the pandemic hit in mid-March, Michael Bernard Fitzgerald had a COVID-friendly concert idea.
“Back in January as I was finishing up this album Love Valley, I was thinking it would be nice to tour these songs in a different way and to play them in a different setting,” he said. “This idea of travelling around with the venue, I thought it was interesting, based on all the years I’ve done of travelling already.”
When the world shut down, he sat on that album for a short time, but ultimately decided 2020 would be the year to release it.
“I decided to put out the music and revisit the tent concept,” he said.
And that was how the Calgary singer-songwriter spent his summer: performing for small cohorts under an elaborate tent in his backyard.
“I played 58 shows from June 3 until the end of August in my backyard,” he says. “Five days a week, with an average of six people a night, then six days, some weeks seven days, playing for people in this beautiful tent.”
It turns out, Calgarians had a pent-up appetite for live music in a safe setting; the entire summer’s worth of shows sold out in less than five hours.
“It’s been my favourite adventure as a performer,” Fitzgerald says. “It combines a lot of my favourite things. It’s a house concert, but we put a beautiful little PA set up in the tent, then the song starts and it’s like a concert hall, mini-theatre.”
After the success in his own backyard, Fitzgerald has decided to take that concept on the road across Western Canada. (Plans to visit Quebec and Ontario have been put on hold due to a surge in COVID-19 numbers.)
The twist: in keeping with the inspiration of his new album—a collection of warm, shimmering, acoustic-driven tracks that land somewhere between the vibe of Nick Drake and Jack Johnson—the “Farm Tour” is setting up on private farms or rural areas.
“I tell people, ‘This is the right record to go for a slow drive in the country or on the highway,’” he says. “That’s what it’s for.”
Only 20 tickets are released, with seating under the tent in cohorts, and guests aren’t notified of the exact location of the show until the morning of (they are, however, assured it’s within a maximum 45-minute drive of the town listed).
“We did that for a couple reasons,” he says. “No. 1, I thought it’d be fun to add that element of fun. Having a little fun this year is probably a good idea. No. 2, it would buy us more time to find locations.”
Fitzgerald and his team personally called landowners or farmers to pitch the unconventional idea—which took some time. “Sometimes it was a contact of a contact—or a brand new call. ‘We have this idea, can we set up on your land?’ You can imagine all the different reactions we got to that concept.”
On top of hunting down venues, setting up the tent for three hours, performing for two hours, and then tearing down for another two hours is a massive undertaking, but one Fitzgerald says is worthwhile.
At a time when most musicians aren’t touring, it also helps promote his new album, which was largely recorded in Calgary with help from his producer friend Josh Rob Gwilliam.
“We did go to Memphis to record one song and saxophone and to Nashville to record one song and peddle steel,” he adds. “Even the Calgary stuff [we recorded], when that March 15, 16 timeframe hit, we would’ve been stopped right there. I’m so thankful that was the case [that it was done].”
Fitzgerald will be playing songs from that album in Whistler (or the surrounding area) on Sunday, Oct. 25. While tickets are sold out, there are still a few available for Vancouver on Halloween.
And don’t worry, he plans to return to the Sea to Sky corridor next year as well. (Sign up for his newsletter to keep abreast of that.) Despite the fact that he’s shared the stage with everyone from Ben Harper to Sam Roberts and Kings of Leon, there’s something appealing about those smaller shows.
“The nice thing is, if the tent has to reduce in size, it will. If it can grow in size, that will be the case,” he says. “We’ll take it day by day.”
For more, visit michaelbernardfitzgerald.com.
