It's story time boys and girls! Grab your blankies and snacks and give a listen!

As some of you know, I had a very cool gig offered to me last minute to open for Barenaked Ladies at the 2500 seat Bushnell Theater in Hartford, CT this past Friday night. I was replacing the singer Dido. That still cracks me up and became the running joke of the night. (During BNL's set, they quipped about "Dido was a lot funnier than I remembered her being...I was expecting something different, but she looked like a regular college guy)

First off, I'm a huge Barenaked Ladies fan and when the gig was offered (by Rob Steen of North Shore Comedy), there was no money but they said they would limo me from Boston to Hartford and offered a hotel. It was a benefit show for Care For the Children (sort of a Toys for Tots thing, which I try to perform at some TfT benefit every Christmas) put on by 96.5 in Hartford (sister station to 98.7 in L.A.) No problem, I'm there. Then the booker calls me back and says, "oh they are offering a couple of hundred bucks now because they are so thankful you bailed them
out on such short notice". So I ended up getting paid and drove myself down there instead of having them send the limo. There will be plenty of limo rides in my future :)

The show could not have been more fun and the guys in the band could not have been more gracious or nicer.

As I started my set, the crowd was still filing into the theater so I thought that could be a little
rough...it was fine..they were getting into it, good laughs. But I knew I had them when I did a joke about
having no chest hair (sad but true) and some girls in the crowd screamed out "SHOW US!"...so I did. I took
off my shirt and the place went nuts. Clapping and laughing. I said, "you ain't gonna get that kind of
action from Dido!" And that got another round of applause. I did about 30 minutes and it was a great
time. The radio station people were thrilled and so thankful and want to have me back for other events.
But that's not even the best part...

I go back downstairs to the dressing rooms and the guys from BNL are hanging out. They asked me how it
went and chatted...we took pictures together. And then Ed, the lead singer/guitarist, turns to me and
says, "hey, do you want to come out during the encore and sing 'Do They Know It's Christmas' with us?"

Ummm, yeah. I believe I do.

So I did! I watched the show from the first row in the crowd and during the encore went backstage and
went out with the station DJs when they hit the chorus (the band Guster was also on the show and out on the
stage) I got to go out and sing along with one of my favorite bands in front of close to 3000 people!

Pretty cool way to kick off the holidays!