Two years after her previously scheduled Tour De Fort show was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, jazz singer Molly Johnson is finally making her way to Fort Frances.
Johnson starts a tour of Western Canada tonight in Burnaby, BC and will end the tour in a week right here in Fort Frances on March 23 at 7:30. Johnson reaches Fort Frances after stops in Victoria, Calgary and Winnipeg among others.
The Times spoke with Johnson as she was boarding a flight to BC to start the tour.
“It’s like a bit of a dream,” Johnson said. “We’re out of practice in traveling.”
Johnson is traveling with “the boys in the band” as she called them, for the first time in two years. The band, which consists of Johnson, jazz pianist Robi Botos, upright bass player Mike Downes, and drummer Davide DiRenzo haven’t traveled together since the start of the pandemic, and are pleased to be back on the road.
“The four of us have been playing together for 20 years and we haven’t seen each other much,” Johnson said. “It’s really great to be with them and see them again in person.”
Johnson’s music is typically smooth and jazzy, and consists of originals and others from the Great American Songbook which is a compendium of some of the most popular jazz music from the earliest days of the genre’s history. With regards to what kind of setlist the band will bring to Fort Frances, Johnson says they try to shape the sets to the audience.
“You could just shake a snow globe and see what shakes out,” Johnson said. “We are doing a few songs off the newest record, because we designed it so it went past Christmas.”
In December Johnson released It’s a Snowglobe World. But she says the album isn’t just about Christmas; many of the songs can apply through the rest of winter or to other holidays as well.
“We tried to write songs about light and love and things that faith interacts with, that we all have in common,” Johnson said. “Muslims, Christians, Jews have an interesting common ground around light and love and family. We tried to make a record that would talk to all Canadians.”
Tickets for Johnson’s show can be purchased at Ski’s Variety or the Fort Frances Library Technology Centre. Anyone who has or had a passport from the 2019-2020 season can come to the show without paying again. If you still have your passport you can show it. But Tour de Fort also has a list of those who bought passports for the season and they can check your name off the list.
