Tag Archives: open mic sessions

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

Posted on by
Reply

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!



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

Posted on by
Reply

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!



“Go Back to Him” (Original song by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

Posted on by
Reply

By Jim Fusco:

Here we are for another edition of The Open Mic Sessions with Jim Fusco!  Today is a song that I performed at Sam Ash music store in New Haven, CT.  With the help of my good friend Dana Camp manning the video camera, I’m able to bring you this week’s video!

“Go Back to Him” is the opening track off of my 2009 album, “Halfway There”.  When writing songs for that album, I took an amazing trip to Italy with another longtime friend, Dr. Alberto Distefano.  While at his uncle’s house in Sicily, we sat down with my newly-purchased classical guitar (you know, the one from my early Laptop Sessions cover song music videos) and were inspired to write a couple songs.  One was “Ruins” (pretty obvious, since we had just spent a week in mainland Italy looking at all the history) and the other was “Go Back To Him”.

This song is pretty straightforward- we’re basically saying, in kind of a sarcastic tone, to someone: hey, you’re impossible to convince otherwise, so just go back to that jerk that treats you like dirt.  I’m not exactly sure where the sentiment came from, but I can remember one thing- I wanted this to sound like a Beatles song.  In the studio version, which you can hear at http://jimfusco.com/albums/halfway-there.html, you can hear a clear Beatles influence.  I thought it would be a great start to the album, and I hope you agree!

So, enjoy today’s Open Mic Session and stay tuned for many more as I continue to perform my original songs for the world!


“When I Go” (Original song performed by Jim Fusco) – The Open Mic Sessions

Posted on by
Reply

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to another edition of “The Open Mic Sessions” with Jim Fusco!  Today, I reach back into the archives for a song off of the EP “Meaningless: Echoes of Dreams”.  You see, back when these tracks were recorded, the idea was to take an entire week’s vacation from school and record an album.  Our idea was to basically lock ourselves in and to write and record the whole thing.  It’s still an idea I’d like to try someday, but back then, it just didn’t turn out that way.

First, I had a bad cold so I couldn’t really sing.  Second, my brother and I are, well, brothers.  You can’t lock us in a room for a week (figuratively speaking, that is) and expect good results.  So, after some fights and even less work getting done (mostly because of arguments over how each song should’ve sounded), we ended up with nothing more than a few backing tracks at the end of the week.  Oh yeah, and a vow to never work together again…which we ditched in 2006 when we started MoU.  And now we’re still in the throes of the newest vow never to work together again. 🙂  Time heals all wounds, but some wounds take a bit longer to heal!  I guess that’s why certain bands that have stayed together longer aren’t really friends- they work together and go their separate ways.  It’s tough to think of playing music that way because of how social it is.  But, there’s so much passion involved.  And the addition of one vocal part one band member doesn’t think should be there seems like a life-or-death decision.  I kind of liken it to a marriage, except it’s even more stressful because there’s someone messing with something you’ve created!

That’s a long-winded way of saying that, even though we didn’t accomplish too much, what we did accomplish was really good.  Those tunes are some of the most enduring ones I can remember writing and participating in.  “When I Go” is played by my brother and me every time we jam together.  It’s just this great tune that has a great beat.  What more could you want?  So, when I went to play an open mic performance at The Space in Hamden, CT, I wanted to bust-out this song.  I never got to perform it there while in MoU, so it was my chance to resurrect it.

I hope you enjoy the performance- everyone there certainly seemed to!  Stay tuned for more from The Open Mic Sessions, as my solo acoustic and electric performances of original songs continues here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs and original music video blog!