James Alphonse – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the electro pop artist, James Alphonse, shares one of his stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

Battle of the Bands Tour:
In a previous pop-rock band of mine, I had been doing a “battle of the bands” tour. We were all from Dundas, so it was a decent trek to Western in London, Ontario, where we faced off against bands from across the region. When we arrived at this sold-out event, we were welcomed by some incredible artists and a curious crowd.

The unfolding of events involved a performance and some time for judging. At the end of the performance, the judges would give a critique of each performance. The panel included signed artists and some label reps, so the critique was definitely the most intimidating part of the show.

We performed and felt pretty good! We decided to perform all of our originals and an original cover of a Beatles classic. Everything mostly went according to plan… well, almost. We performed as we do in practice, but there was something I guess we could have done better…

The time for the judge critique finally came, and of course, we were panicked. How would we fair in front of these label reps and signed artists? The judges each began to talk, and they had the same critique “There were too many cover songs”. We listened, but we were really eager to tell them something… there was only one cover song! The rest of the 20-25 minute set was all original material. At this point, it was too late to impact their votes, but we really did want to let them know.

Overall, I feel like it was a huge compliment to have them think we’d been covering songs, and now I know that I might have to introduce my originals in the future. Although the judges thought we’d done too many covers, we managed to take home the “crowd favourite” award, which may or may not have been the result of our “cover songs”. Either way, we met great people and had some great times!

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