I feel like this story is blogworthy, and as you can tell by the frequency of my previous posts, I rarely feel that way.

Last Friday night I was given the opportunity to open for Dar Williams. Dar was a significant early inspiration for me as a songwriter. I remember listening to her while I was in college and always being struck by songs like "The Ocean" and "Calling The Moon". She's one of the reasons I starting on this whole acoustic singer-songwriter thing in the first place.

I arrived back at my apartment on Friday at 6:45 PM to find my landline answering blinking at me. It was my friend Marilyn, the volunteer coordinator at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River, asking me very cryptically to call her back. I did, and she asked me if I wanted to open for Dar Williams that evening. I said "yes". Then I asked her what time I would be going on. She said "8:15". Now, Mapquest says that from my house to Fall River it should take 1 hour and 8 minutes to go 55 miles, but it was 7:00 on a Friday, and in order to get there I had to take I-93 straight through the center of Boston. I knew this wasn't going to be easy...

It hit the usually early evening Friday traffic from Somerville all the way past Quincy. I was changing lanes like Ricky Bobby, getting flipped off and yelled at left and right. Boston drivers sure are vocal, if nothing else. Traffic opened up once I hit Route 24, I would like to personally thank the guy in the BMW who decided to drive about 85 the whole way to Fall River, he was a GREAT bird dog. I haven't driven my Subaru that fast in a long time. I hit the route 79 split around 8:03, called Marilyn and told her I was 10 minutes away. She told me they would wait.

I double parked in front of the Narrows at 8:13, threw my guitar on my back and grabbed my gig bag. I ran up the two large flights of stairs. At the top, I could hear the emcee Deb in the middle of her introduction. The night was sold out; there were over 250 people in the room. I handed my merch off at the ticket table, and I felt like a marathon runner hitting a water station. Everyone at the table was cheering me on, shouting, "Go", smiling and giving thumbs up.

I made my way through the crowd to stage left, took my guitar out of my case and grabbed my preamp and tuner out of the gig bag. I heard Deb say "Our opener Ryan Fitzsimmons should be here any minute". Then someone pointed to me on the side of the stage, frantically plugging my gear together. She said, "Oh he's here, ladies and gentleman, Ryan Fitzsimmons". And after a couple seconds of fumbling with cords, I was on. I'm going to guess it took about 2 minutes from the time I left my car to the time I was on stage, playing.

I had more adrenaline pumping than I knew what to do with, so actually performance is a bit blurry for me, but the crowd response was amazing. Thanks to that, I managed to pull together a whole set. I broke a string in the last song, but it didn't matter, it was an amazing night.

Afterwards, Dar was extremely gracious.  She is a genuine person, it is nice to open for someone with that kind of success that is still grounded. She also sounded amazing.

I sold quite a few Cds, and at the end I had a booking agent come up and offer their services. It really was one of those nights. I want to thank the Narrows for treating me so well for so long, it is the best stage in New England, and I can't wait to get back there on June 1st.

Ryan