The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer, is Singing Loud for All to Hear!

The 15th edition of Bands for Baskets took place on December 5th this year. After a one year Covid hiatus, it was great to have this event back in action. This year’s Bands for Baskets took place at a new venue, Bar Sportif Biggs in Vaudreuil.

A new location is always a little nerve-racking, as you hope that people will make it out, but you are never really sure if they will. Well, people were itching for Bands for Baskets entertainment, and the place was already packed when the festivities began at 3pm.

The event had some regular Bands for Baskets favourites as well as some new faces. Cliff Stevens, Less Than 4, Karma, Elton Songs, Pete Dumoulin & Dave Elbourn, Tangoluna (one of Ross’s alter egos), and of course, everyone’s favourite acoustic duo, This is 2!

Our set started at 4pm to a full house! Playing a “one set” gig needs a different approach from playing an entire evening. When it comes to This is 2’s ethos, we needed to try and cram in a whole night’s worth of ridiculousness into 45 minutes! Not always an easy task.

However, the response from the enthusiastic crowd made it easy…

There was hootin’ and hollerin’;
There was cheering and whistling;
There was singing and clapping along;
These are a few of our favourite things…

For those who were there, you got to see a great set. As always, we hadn’t planned out anything in advance; we just let the Christmas spirit take over. There were some This is 2 standards and some odd ball covers, but for those of you who know us well, you would expect nothing less.

At the end of our set, we even had to come back for an encore. And not one of those cheesy, planned out encores, but a legitimate loving response from the audience, encouraging us to play “one more song”!

It was an absolute pleasure to be a part of this event again this year. Ross and Paul have consistently been a part of Bands for Baskets every year since its inception, and it’s always an honour to participate.

Thanks to the hard work of everyone involved, especially Peter Angrove (the event’s organizer), over $3000 was raised for local charities.

and isn’t that the whole point of the season…?

A special thank you to RTISTS for all the excellent photos included here. It’s always fun to have such high quality photos for the blog, and Rik was gracious enough to let us use his shots! It was hard to choose from so many great ones, so here’s a little collage: