First Tracks Article--Livin' on the Streets (part 1)

My name is Brian Bergeron. I am a Boston-based acoustic  singer-songwriter and I'm competing in Gather.com's First Tracks Competition</a>  for a record deal with Decca Label Group. As part of immersing myself in the site and so people can get to know me better (and hopefully grow to support me), I have decided to post an article a day on the site during the length of the contest. Please comment on my song if you like what you hear and you can vote ONCE PER DAY until March 17th. You can listen to my song here and please comment on it...There, I've pimped myself enough. On with the article!

I have been in Philadelphia and Alexandria, VA (well, I'm still in VA until Friday) so my resolve to post a blog a day during the course of the First Tracks competition has fallen off its tracks. In fact, I was without Internet from Saturday until Monday, which is quite a weird feeling and the whole time I was thinking of all the e-mails I was missing and all the work I was getting backlogged on…

Anyways…

That's kind of sad.
 
I received a very important e-mail today from the head of the Faneuil Hall Street Performer's program saying that they would NOT be holding auditions this year because they have decided to keep everyone from last year, which is a big relief. I will be embarking on my third year performing and for the last two years, I've been freaking out that I'd somehow get cut from the program. During the summers, it is the principal way in which I make my living and I don't know what I'd do if I got kicked out.

So hooray.

It reminds me of a funny story. Last year, after my auditions, I began talking with friends of mine about moving in with them. I was living in Roxbury, MA at the time. It wasn't a very nice neighborhood and they wanted me to move to East Cambridge with them, which is only a stone's throw from Faneuil Hall. They were Cahill, an acoustic singer-songwriter duo, who I met shortly before my first season at Faneuil Hall, but cemented my friendship with them over the course of that summer. We both knew that if we didn't get Faneuil Hall that we'd have to get real jobs—Bob had a real job, Scott had recently quit his lucrative position as a software engineer, and I quit Starbucks and was about to graduate from Northeastern and had the loft goal of supporting myself solely on music.

Anyhow, we auditioned and a date was set in which we were supposed to hear about whether or not we got back into the program. This date also coincided with a date we were supposed to go sign a lease for an apartment in East Cambridge. All day we were calling each other to hear if the other person had heard, but as of 4pm we had no luck.

We were worried. None of us wanted to sign a lease if we hadn't secured a job so we were all going crazy waiting to hear. Phone tag pursued and then Bob called me at 4:30: 

"Hey Brian. Congratulations, we both got Faneuil Hall!"

Screaming on my end and probably the breaking of glass somewhere. I could now try and become a full-time musician. "Does Scott know?"

"No, but we're going to play a prank on him."

Bob decided that we should get Scott back—for what, I don't know, apparently he gives Bob a hard time, which I know now because I live with him and he gives everyone a hard time—and the plans were set into motion.

Scott and Bob picked me up at 5:30 and I told him that I still hadn't heard anything. He was freaking out and second-guessing everything. We were supposed to have heard by now! We had banked on this working out and now our plans were spoiled! We were driving into Cambridge when I stealthily called Bob from the back seat. Bob, who was in the passenger's seat, looked at his phone and said: "It's Janine (the head of the Street Performer's program)." Scott and I looked at each other wide-eyed.

Bob is a trained actor. A good one, in fact and this should have been an award-winning performance. I didn't have to do anything after that. I just sat back and watched things go. He apologized for calling Janine all day and explained that we were looking to sign a lease and wanted to hear if we had a job this summer and did we get it? After talking an listening for a while, his face dropped.

"Oh, ok," He said timidly. "Brian's with us too. Did he get it? Uh, huh." Pause. "Ok. Thanks anyways…Bye."

He hung up and didn't say anything for a couple minutes. He stared straight ahead and his face was red. He was getting teary-eyed and it was all I could do not to laugh. I put my head forward on the back of Bob's seat just to hide my face. Scott, white-knuckled and still wide-eyed, asked, "Well, what did she say?"

"We didn't get it."

"What?" Scott asked.

"She just said the applicant pool was too good this year."

Bob and I spent the next 10 minutes freaking out about not getting picked and we played it up for all it was worth. We were going to have to get jobs again now. After all the hard work we've put over the last few years, it was back to square one for now. Scott wasn't freaking out. He was staring ahead at the road, unresponsive, and it almost looked like he was just going to veer off the highway at any moment.

In retrospect, I think we all freaked out a little too much.

As we pulled within 15 minutes of the city, Bob let the cat out of the bag and Scott wasn't relieved, he was angry. It was priceless (and cruel) watching him as distraught as he was during that uncertain period. Actually, thinking back on it now, that whole experience probably makes me a bad person.

We got the gig and the apartment and the summer was great. I played about 5 days a week and made enough to live on my own with music right out of college, which I had always planned on doing but didn't know how. So I'm looking forward to another summer of it. I'm looking forward to the people I'll meet, the CDs I'll sell and being out in the sun once again (because Boston is no pleasant place when the sun isn't out).

That was awesome. More on Faneuil Hall later!