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‘I was there…’: Man gets fired from Fairmont Lodge when children start singing along to his piano playing. Then the guests hear about it

David DeWolfe left his day job as a construction worker after receiving an offer to play piano at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge.

The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge is a cabin-style, 4-star hotel in Jasper, Alberta, Canada. Celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and even members of the British royal family have frequented the resort.

For DeWolfe, who has been a musician since he was 3 years old, the gig there was “a dream come true,” he tells the Daily Dot.

However, DeWolfe would soon find out that the dream was short-lived.

Just a few days into the 6-week gig, he says he was “fired” after a hotel manager got upset that a group of children sang along to his piano playing. He posted several TikToks sharing his side of the story, and the first one has garnered 3.6 million views since Monday.

DeWolfe says the hotel guests engaged with his music throughout his time there. “People were clapping after all of my songs,” he says. “People are nodding their heads, singing along, tapping their feet, having a great time.”

But DeWolfe says he kept receiving conflicting directives and feedback from management over his music. He says they initially told him to “‘make sure you bring your microphone… You’re going to be singing. You’re going to be doing modern music that people know.'”

However, he says, one day, a hotel manager pulled him aside, and they instructed him not to sing and to only play “background piano music.” DeWolfe says he obliged.

He says another manager directed him to “‘just read the room.’” “‘Some nights, you’re going to be a fly on the wall playing elevator music. Other nights, you’re going to be playing Bon Jovi and Billy Joel,’” he recalls the manager saying.

A choir of children

Then, he says, on Saturday, a little girl and her brother approached him. “‘Can you play ‘Roar’ from Katy Perry?’” he says they requested.

“‘Bet, I got this,’” he says he responded. “These kids—they start singing along because they know the words. They love it. It’s their favorite song, right? Other kids see this, and other kids start running up.”

“Next thing you know, I got, like, 40 kids surrounding the grand piano. They’re everywhere,” he recalls. “They’re making requests. And they’re all singing the songs I’m playing. … Everyone’s having a great time. After each song, everyone’s going wild. They’re clapping their hands. Everyone’s having so much fun.”

Later, DeWolfe posted a video of a group of kids standing by his piano, singing along to his rendition of “Let It Go” from the Disney animated film, Frozen.

He also emphasizes that he wasn’t the one singing; the children were.

“I didn’t encourage them to sing. … They just started singing,” he says. “What was I supposed to do? Tell them, ‘Hey kids, don’t sing.’”

He tells the Daily Dot that he even approached the manager later and said in a joking tone, “'I'm surprised you didn't come and save me from all those kids.'”

“He looked at me, and he's like, ‘What am I supposed to do? There was like 40 of them. It would have been like a WWE massacre,’” he says the manager quipped back in response. “He's like, ‘Honestly, the kids were having so much fun, and, like, if you look around, everybody was really enjoying it, and most importantly, nobody complained.’”

'Pack your bags'

Afterward, DeWolfe says the following day, as he was getting ready to go to the gig, he received an email from his booking agent telling him the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge “no longer needs [his] services.”

“‘Pack your bags and leave. You weren’t hired to do piano karaoke. And they don’t want you there anymore,’” he recalls being told.

He maintains they never told him the guests couldn't sing along.

“Fairmont really dropped the ball,” he tells the Daily Dot. “They didn’t have any idea what they wanted. Or if they did know what they wanted, they had no idea how to communicate that with me.”

DeWolfe describes feeling “bitter” about the decision. “I honestly don’t think I did anything wrong,” he says in his video.

@daviddewolfemusic Does this make sense to anyone?!? 24 hours later I'm still in shock! I have played piano all over the world and nothing like this has EVER happened to me... #jasper #alberta #fairmont #siegelentertainment @Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge ♬ original sound - David DeWolfe

The Daily Dot has reached out to Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge via press contact. The hotel has its TikTok comments turned off.

In a follow-up video, DeWolfe urges viewers to “take it easy” on the hotel, as they had flooded his comments section with criticism against it. Viewers are vowing to never stay at the hotel. One of the top comments on DeWolfe’s post reads, “Just cancelled my reservation with Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, if they’re not family friendly we’re not interested.”

However, DeWolfe tells the Daily Dot he still thinks “the resort is fantastic.” The musician says he doesn’t believe the decision is a “reflection of Fairmont as a whole” and is placing the blame squarely on one manager. He says that the manager caught wind that the children were singing along to his music and was upset about it for an undisclosed reason.

“I still don’t understand what I did wrong or what they didn’t like,” he says. “I still haven’t heard … from Fairmont.”

What about his contract?

DeWolfe says he signed the 1-and-a-half-month contract with the hotel and isn't sure if he is receiving full payment for it. “It doesn’t say anywhere in the contract they can cancel it because they don’t want kids singing along to my music,” he says. Due to this, he says he believes the hotel breached his contract.

“At the end of the day, I'm a struggling artist that can barely afford to feed my kids,” he tells the Daily Dot.

On standing his ground

He says his booking agent is encouraging him to take his posts about the hotel down in the hopes the hotel will be more willing to pay the remainder of his contract out.

“I just don't feel comfortable doing that right now,” he says, explaining that he’s worried that if he takes the videos down, a broader issue that he brought attention to is going to get swept back under the rug.

“Nobody knows about these unfair practices and what's going on, and it continues to happen to other artists. I've received quite a few messages from other artists in similar situations with booking agents and with certain hotels. And it really opened my eyes that this is actually way more common than just happening to me,” he says.

DeWolfe says the overwhelming support online viewers have given him has been “validating.”

“By posting that video, I realize that this has the potential to end my career as a musician. I could get blacklisted everywhere,” he says. “That's not what's happened.”

He says they have already offered him 15 new job opportunities after his TikToks went viral.

“I want the name David DeWolfe to be synonymous with piano. … That's been the dream. Since I was 3 years old, that's been my goal. I want to be a rock star. I want to be the piano man,” he says.

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The post ‘I was there…’: Man gets fired from Fairmont Lodge when children start singing along to his piano playing. Then the guests hear about it appeared first on The Daily Dot.