Read an Excerpt From The Fun Times Brigade by Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Lindsay Zier-Vogel has shown her valuable insights about writing life each month as an Open Book columnist, and she's been an integral part of the CanLit community for years now. So, it comes as no surprise that her new novel has a nuanced portrayal of an artist at its heart, and one who is trying to balance all of the joys and sorrows in her life along the way.

In The Fun Times Brigade (Book*hug Press), we follow the story of Amy, a new mother who is doing her best to wade through the fog of early parenthood, along with all of the struggles it brings. She has put aside her career as a successful children's musician for the time being, and this change disrupts the rhythm of her life and her sense of identity.

As we jump back and forth from the past to present narrative, we learn more about Amy's artistic journey, from performing as a solo singer-songwriter to eventually being a member of the famed Fun Times Brigade. But we are also met with a profound loss that shakes our protagonist to the core, and highlights how precarious our successes and our very lives can be. Nonetheless, Amy carries on and tries to find some measure of peace and control amidst the chaos, and find a way back to herself.

We're very excited to share an excerpt from the novel today, free for all of our wonderful Open Book readers. Read on for a taste of this fascinating new work!

Excerpt from The Fun Times Brigade (Book*hug Press) by Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Amy stood under a tent, on a makeshift stage, with a few dozen children standing on the scrubby grass. She could hear Sarah Harmer singing on the mainstage and forced a smile. She was twenty-seven years old and singing “Baby Beluga” while two kids fought over a melting popsicle. Playing the kids’ stage was her way of getting in front of the selection committee, she reminded herself. She’d have a better chance of playing one of Royal City Folk Fest’s bigger stages next year—probably not the mainstage, but at least the Sun Stage, or maybe even the Lake Stage. 

She sang the second verse twice, but no one seemed to notice. “All right, one final song.” She played “Skinnamarink,” her standard closer, and wondered if she could still make the last part of the mainstage set. 

She missed Sarah Harmer and was sitting at the meal tent, eating a scoop of lukewarm lentils on undercooked brown rice, when Fran and Jim came up to her. She recognized them immediately.

They had been folk musicians back in the seventies and were a pretty big deal, at least in Canada. Fran still wore long, flowy skirts, but Jim had retired his fringed vests and had shorter hair and a trimmed beard. They introduced themselves as if they weren’t Canadian music legends Fran & Jim.

“You were wonderful,” they said, in unison, or almost unison.

“Pardon?” Amy said, confused about what they were talking about.

“On the Rainbow Stage,” Jim said.

“Oh,” Amy said, shocked that they had been there.

“You played our son’s neighbour’s birthday party,” Fran said. Her hair was tied back in a long braid. “Albert hasn’t stopped talking about it!”

Amy vaguely remembered Albert, whose music-themed party had been at a newly renovated town house in the Annex and the kids had played along with guitars made out of shoeboxes with elastics.

“Thank you,” Amy stammered. “Wow.”

“We were thinking,” Jim started, “we should jam.”

“Jam?”

“You know, play some music together in the kids’ tent.”

“Oh, okay,” Amy said.

“Wonderful!” Fran said. Her smile was so radiant that Amy felt warm in its presence.

They met that afternoon, roughed out a set list, and played without mics or a sound guy. They sang the standards—“If I Had a Hammer,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Puff the Magic Dragon”—and kids danced in the tent while parents swayed on the sides.

It had been so long since Amy had played with other people, she had forgotten the magnetic power of feeding off the energy of others.

“That was so good!” Fran said afterward, her face flushed. “We should do this back in the city!”

“Yeah, sure!” Amy said, flattered that these folk legends wanted to play with her again.

The next week, Amy went over to Fran and Jim’s. Mid-August clung to her skin in a thin layer of sweat and grime, and her guitar case was sweaty on her back. She had bitten one of her pinky nails to the quick and had to keep herself from biting the other one off, too. It was just a meeting, she tried to remind herself, and if nothing came of it, she had plenty of birthday parties lined up for the fall. Before she could even ring the doorbell, Fran opened the door.

“Amy!” Fran pulled her into a tight hug like they were old friends. She smelled like ginger. “Come in!”

There were piles of books everywhere, and mugs on every surface. It smelled like stale coffee and old coats, and there was a pile of unopened mail next to a JUNO award. Amy left her guitar case in the front hall and followed Fran to the kitchen. There were daisies in a Mason jar on the kitchen table. “I’ve got soup on,” Fran said. It was twenty-five degrees too hot for soup, but Amy nodded.

“I didn’t ever really learn how to cook,” Fran said, apologetically, ladling soup into a bowl. “We were on the road until I was, what, Jim, thirty-two, thirty-three?”

“Something like that,” he said, coming up from the basement. He didn’t hug Amy and didn’t extend his hand, and Amy wasn’t sure if she should read into it or not.

“Jim’s the real cook around here,” Fran said.

“Sometimes,” he said, his blue eyes so intense Amy had to look away.

Fran handed her a bowl. Amy waited for her to fill more bowls for her and Jim, but she just handed Amy a spoon.

“Are you a vegetarian?” Fran asked her.

Amy was afraid the wrong answer would be no. They were bona fide hippies after all, but she couldn’t lie. “I’m not,” she said.

“Oh, thank god!” Jim said.

“Everyone back in the day was a vegetarian, and looking back, I think we were all hungry all the time,” Fran said.

“And high,” Jim added.

“True,” Fran said.

“Next time I’ll make burgers,” Jim said.

Amy couldn’t believe she was sitting at Jim and Fran’s kitchen table eating unsalted sweet potato soup, with the promise of hamburgers next time. They started telling her about Yorkville. “When it was a hippie paradise, not full of Bentleys and valet parking,” Jim said. They’d gotten their big break at the Mariposa Folk Festival, where they met Bruce Cockburn, who insisted they sing backup for him. “And then Bruce introduced us to Valdy, who introduced us to his manager, and we got our first record deal,” Jim said.

Amy knew this—they had played with Valdy at Massey Hall, and opened for Gordon Lightfoot on a cross-Canada tour, and sang with Joni Mitchell at a famous Yorkville folk club.

“In the mid-eighties, our asshat manager said our sound was stale and we were let go from the label,” Jim said. “We thought we were done, but we miss performing.”

“You know that feeling when you’re onstage and the audience is there, right with you and you’re all about to go somewhere together?” Fran asked Amy, pulling three beers from the fridge. “That feeling. That first note, that first chord. I miss that.”

Amy nodded. She knew what Fran meant, except that Fran’s feeling came from standing on a stage in front of thousands of people, where Amy’s came from an audience of fifteen.

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Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based author and the creator of the internationally beloved Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance, Zier-Vogel received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She is the author of the acclaimed novel Letters to Amelia, and her first picture book, Dear Street, was a Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for a Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award in 2024. The Fun Times Brigade is her second novel.