Western singer takes show on the road, full time

Western musician Juni Fisher, her guitar, hats, boots and sound system tour together in a motor home.

Fisher and her gear have been traveling full time for seven years. Before that she toured part time. What makes the full-time schedule work is a system Fisher called “building territories.”

“You have to go out to do a show. That leads to another show and to another show, and then to the anchor show 100 miles away. The anchor is in a region where I know I can get other work or work on the way.”

	Juni Fisher WHEN: 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18 WHERE: South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway SE HOW MUCH: $15 by emailing inquiry@siliconheights.com, by calling 298-5589 or at the door

Fisher performs Thursday, Oct. 18, at the South Broadway Cultural Center. The Albuquerque gig fits in a swing through the Southwest. Fisher is giving several concerts in Arizona, then four in Texas and then on the way back to Prescott, Ariz., she will be in the Duke City, her only one in New Mexico on this tour.

In her shows, Fisher is playing some of the tunes from an album she released last spring.

“It’s a collection of old dance orchestra standards that I used to do in college,” she said. “I was a torch singer in a dance orchestra while I was a student at the College of the Sequoias.”

The CD, titled “Secret Chord,” has such oldies as “You Belong to Me,” “I’ll Be Seeing You” and the comedy number “Your Feets Too Big.”

The album also has some blues, some Fisher originals and songs by Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits and Percy Mayfield.

Fisher said when she’s on the road, which is about 240 days a year, she rarely listens to her own recordings.

“I listen to Bonnie Raitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Lyle Lovett. I listen to audiobooks a lot. The last one I listened to was called ‘Elegance of a Hedgehog,’ ” she said.

Before coming out to the Southwest, Fisher was at her mother’s home in California. She was staying there for a few days to have the generator in the motor home replaced by a friend.

Fisher may fly home to Franklin, Tenn., for Thanksgiving, but she said she won’t drive home again until the middle of December.