Tag Archives: open mic

“Halfway There” (Original song by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome again to the Open Mic Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

Today, I bring you the title track to my 2009 album, “Halfway There”.  This is a very special video for me, as this original song live video was selected as one of the top three Instagram videos in the Sam Ash music store open mic video contest!  From there, it went on to win the national Open Mic video contest title!  I was given a $100 gift card to Sam Ash and I’m so glad an original song of mine got that kind of recognition.  It was even featured on Sam Ash’s homepage once it won!

“Halfway There” was a concept I had for an album.  Basically, I was growing up and had to come to terms with getting a job, getting married, and potentially giving up some of the lofty goals I had for myself in previous years.  So, a lot of that album has to do with that sentiment.

But, you know something?  I realized along the way that I’m pretty happy where things ended up.  I realized that I didn’t really want to spend all of my days and nights trying to get gigs, living in perpetual poverty, and holding down some menial job until I hit it big.  Now that I have a normal “day job”, it’s given me the flexibility to  have a nice home and to get some of the guitars that I’ve always wanted.  And, from everything I’ve heard and read, fame isn’t really all it’s cracked-up to be.  I hope to make a name for myself with these Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music videos online (and maybe get recognized for it someday), but that’s something I can do in my free time.  Problem is, like everyone else that’s married and has a house, I don’t have much free time!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I’ve been able to do on my little free time lately.  Going to these open mic nights has brought me out of my comfort zone, but its also ignited my love for playing music again.  I’ve met some interesting people, too.  Stay tuned for more, as I continue to dig into my catalog of original songs and play at open mics around the state.



“Opportunities” (Original song by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome everyone to another installment of the Open Mic Sessions with Jim Fusco!  Today, I bring you another session from my gig at Sam Ash Music Store in New Haven, CT back on April 3rd, 2013.  I went with my brother Mike while he was visiting home for his birthday.  I remember wanting to go to another venue, but chose Sam Ash because they gave me a $10 gift card just for playing!  Yeah, I go where the “money” is…

Anyway, it gave me an opportunity to play another original song from my 2012 album, “Those Around Us”.  This is one of the faster tracks on the album, “Opportunities”, which features a great drum track from my brother Mike.  As we know, tracks like that are great for pairing-down into the famous “Laptop Sessions” style of performing- just me and an acoustic guitar!

So, I hope you enjoy my original song, “Opportunities”.  Stay tuned as I bring you more of the “Open Mic Sessions” here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs and original music video blog!



“Choose Your Words (Carefully)” (Original song by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome, everyone, to the first installment of the Open Mic Sessions, where I’ll bring you my performances of my original songs from various open mic nights.  The video will be a bit choppy, the sound won’t be perfect, and there usually aren’t too many people in the crowd, but it’s been a lot of fun for me to do these, so I wanted to share my original song performances with the world!

Today’s video is of my song, “Choose Your Words (Carefully)” from my 2012 album, “Those Around Us”.  I think I’ve received a great response to this song every time I play it live.  People either relate to the words…or just find the chorus catchy. 🙂  Either way, it’s been one of my favorites to play and is always the standby song for when someone says, “Play one more!”

This video was taken by my brother Mike at Sam Ash music store in New Haven, CT on April 3rd, 2013.  As you can probably tell, there wasn’t much of a crowd…but the staff sure seemed to like it!  Sometimes, even if there isn’t a big audience, it’s still cool to hear your original song amplified like that.  There’s something empowering about that.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s video and stay tuned each week for more videos from the Open Mic Sessions!


“How Are You Feeling Tonight?” (Original song by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

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By Jim Fusco:

Hello everyone and welcome to another new edition of the Open Mic Sessions!  That’s the web video series where I showcase some performances from various Open Mic Nights throughout my travels in Connecticut (so far- that radius may increase!).  I’m excited to bring you more original songs in my quest to play a different original song every time I go out there!  At the pace I’m going, it’ll take me quite a while to cover all of my material.

Today, I bring you “How Are You Feeling Tonight?”, which is the last track off of my 2012 album, “Those Around Us”.  This is a favorite of fellow Laptop Sessions songwriter Jeff Copperthite, as are most of my “album-ending” songs.  I’ve always been critical of songs that various bands choose to end their albums.  They tend to choose songs that are slow and introspective.  I think “How Are You Feeling Tonight?” is also slow and introspective, but this song (the recorded version) has a good beat, too.  It’s also got some biting electric guitar- some of my favorite guitar sounds I’ve done so far.  I always want to send the listener off after listening an album with the want to play the disc over again.  So, I try to put a catchy song at the end that will sound good juxtaposed with Track 1.

The original version of this song also contains block harmonies throughout the song.  That’s kind of rare with me, which is odd considering how much I love harmony vocals.  I can only really think of a couple other songs I’ve done that have harmony vocals throughout, namely “Never Outweigh the Chances” from my 2002 album, “My Other Half”. And that song was done like that on suggestion from my brother Mike, so it wasn’t even my own idea!  I’m glad he made the suggestion, though, as I love the way that came out.

I thought this would be a good song to do solo acoustically in a live, open-mic setting.  I wrote the song with an acoustic guitar handy, though I came up with the “How are you feeling tonight?” line while doing something else- probably just singing to myself in the shower or something.  I liked the idea of that- many of us ask questions of those we care about, even though we already know the answer.  Do we ask because we’re trying to confirm our suspicions?  Are we asking to coax an answer out and possibly start a dialogue?  Or, do we ask just out of concern?  These are the types of questions I tried to explore during the writing of “Those Around Us”.

The funny thing is that I didn’t ask these questions consciously throughout the writing process for the album.  After all of the songs were written, I realized the theme of the lyrics I was writing- analyzing the relationships between me and the people around me that I cared about…or used to, for that matter.  I think someday I’ll look back on “Those Around Us” and will be thankful I delved-into that kind of thinking.  I think it helped me understand the relationships I had (have) and the ones I wanted.

I hope you enjoy my open mic session of “How Are You Feeling Tonight?”, another original song here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic music video blog!