Can't get express to work with Redis

I'm using Express 4.x. I declare Redis here:

var app = require('express')()
, express = require('express')
, connect = require('connect')
, http = require('http').Server(app)
, path = require('path')
, request = require("request")
, io = require('socket.io')(http);


// Cookie and Session Reqs:
var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
var cookieParser = require('cookie-parser');
var session = require('express-session');
var RedisStore = require('connect-redis')(session);
var sessionStore = new RedisStore();

And I set up my session:

app.use(session({
    secret: "xxxxx",
    store: sessionStore,    
    key: 'sid',
    cookie: {secure: false, maxAge: 600000},
}));

And I use my session variable in one of my routes:

app.get('/public/', function(req, res) {
    req.session.sessionAccessCode = "not set yet";
    res.redirect("index.html");
});

When I remove the store: sessionStore line, there are no problems and I can test that the session variable works. But if I have it, I'm given an error:

TypeError: Cannot set property 'sessionAccessCode' of undefined

Any ideas why Redis isn't working?

You need to start redis first somehow. Depending on how you installed redis, it could be as simple as starting a redis service if you installed via a package for example.