Quebec Trip, Part 1: Accordion Jam with Bob Fournier (featuring “La Vie en Rose”, “Baby One More Time” and “Bye Bye Mon Cowboy”)

The passing of Labour Day means back to school for the kids, and back to work for me; my new job as CTO of Comprehensive Technology Services starts today.

Before the serious work of diving back into producing software, I decided to take my first proper vacation with the lovely lady pictured above. She came up to Toronto  to catch the Fan Expo sci-fi/horror/gaming/all-round-geek conference…

…after which we spent a week in Montreal with a side trip to Quebec City.

While in Quebec City, we stayed at Chateau Frontenac…

…and had dinner at Le Lapin Sauté (“The Jumping Rabbit”), a restaurant located right on Le Petit Champlain that specializes in rabbit dishes:

Le Lapin Sauté is right beside a courtyard where buskers play. When we started dinner, a guitarist was providing the music:

…but partway through our meal, he left and accordionist Bob Fournier took over:

He played a combination of classical accordion numbers as well as some less-expected ones including Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, all very well.

After dinner, I had to approach him and ask if he’d play a couple of numbers with me. He looked so delighted when he realized that I had an accordion with me, and so the jam session began:

He then sat me down and took me through a quick lesson on how to play La Vie en Rose:

He then asked me what sort of music I usually played, to which I replied “Le rock et le pop!”. Then I played a medley of Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time and Mitsou’s Bye Bye Mon Cowboy (a Quebec pop hit from the eighties):

We had a grand old time. I’ll post more photos from the jam session a little later today.

(And for old time’s sake, here’s the video for Bye Bye Mon Cowboy…)