Busking Blues and Worn Out Shoes

Busking blues and worn out shoes.   I've been wearing out the tread on my hiking boots for a solid 9 months now in the great city of San Francisco, busking my fiddling heart out for a very diverse citizenship and an international onslaught of tourists.  I've learned a lot so far in this experience and the lessons learned continue to unfold themselves.  More then anything I have learned about being in the moment and surrendering to the flow.

Busking in itself is polite anarchy.  It stands to reason then that a busker's working environment is unpredictable and sometimes chaotic.  A typical 8 hour day for me as a busker is probably more in the range of a 13 hour day after all the trekking from one spot to the next,  looking for a peaceful/suitable place to play.  What seems to be an ideal spot one moment can be a chaotic mess the next moment.  Sometimes you can play through.  For instance, I've become very good at playing through the intercom announcements at the train stations.  Sometimes I even catch a rhythm with the announcements and perhaps it is sometimes even an intentional synchronicity with the train station agent when I finish a song and the intercom kicks on and I'm kicking off my next song as the intercom voice finishes the announcement with a thank you.  Other times though there is no ignoring a sonic interruption no matter what the cause.  A jackhammer for instance can put a quick end to a session.  Loud amplified music from above ground can get in the way.  Lawn mowers, pressure washers, boom boxes and other such noisy interruptions can also put a quick end to a session.

  Something that is more personal for a busker is when another busker interrupts a session.  What was a good spot for making music turns into an instant cacophony of awful dissonance.  This unfortunately happens all the time in the world of struggling musicians turned buskers.  The struggle for personal survival sometimes overwhelms any sort of honor code between buskers.  This is an unfortunate and unnecessary oversight by many unexperienced and/or careless buskers.  Some buskers don't stop to consider the "honor code" that exists between buskers.  I personally have been challenged to know when it is an alright time to communicate these ideas with other buskers and when the path of least resistance calls me to "exit stage left immediately" so to speak.  Sometimes I try to plant the seed for future cooperation between myself and other buskers.  I did that this morning when an electric guitarist set up around the corner from me, very much in ear shot.  I introduced myself and we had a conversation about busking ethics and I asked him for more cooperation in the future.  Other times I have had to stand up for myself, even confronting a 4 man a cappella group, more then once, who continued to ignore my busking presence in their own attempts to busk.  Often though I find it is best to just move on and view the moment as a nice opportunity to take a break.  I did that this morning.  After the conversation with my new busking associate, I went above ground knowing that this busker was after the exact thing I was after this morning.  Breakfast.  I wished him luck knowing that he would do well in that spot and would eventually enjoy breakfast as I was about to.  I went and got a cup of joe at the Bean and enjoyed a very tasty Cinnamon Danish from Eppler's Bakery.  These lessons in Zen Busking continue to reveal themselves as I allow my perspectives to shift and begin to see the bigger picture.  We are all in this quest for survival together.  Together we survive and together we thrive.

Yielding to the Force in Busking

I have had madcap adventures in the San Francisco busking underground in such a perpetuating fashion that I feel as if I've become a fiddling blur.  On a continuous journey, fiddle case in hand, always searching for a good spot to play.  A spot with good acoustics ideally.  A place to connect with the community.  A place to potentially fall into harmony with other buskers.   With this in mind, if I can get excited about my performance and potential spontaneous collaborations with busking buddies, the necessary aspect of generating some income follows naturally.  The music flows, people are often brought into the moment and some sort of positive group momentum seems to be achieved.  After all, we do make our Universe what it is, individually and then collectively.  A jolt like stumbling upon a dynamic spontaneous live performance can spur a contagious excitement in an appreciative audience member.  It's hard to comprehend the ripple effect that then takes place.  I know when I feel moved and inspired by somebody's music or art, I take that sensation with me as inspiration and that sense of joy I felt originally, carries over for a long time sometimes.  Profound musical experiences and memories stay with me forever and continue to inspire me.  This is what I mean by the ripple effect.

It's been a wonderful couple weeks since I last wrote in terms of personal growth as a busker as I continue learning about yielding to the force.  This has been the most evident in some new busking collaborations that have taken place and how they came to be as I explored some of these newly reenforced fiddleosophies.  In short, I got back to my jug band roots recently.  Back in 2000 I kicked off a big year-and- a- half with a psychedelic jug band from Wisconsin winning the coveted Waffle Iron at Minneapolis, Minnesota's "Battle of the Jug Bands," but that's a another story for a rainy day.  Anyhow, the Heart of Gold String Band writing was on the wall when I was sawing up the fiddle in a Mission BART station watching the sky above the top of the escalator go from shades of blue to shades of black and oh so early in the evening.  Long November shadows turn into a night sky and a brightly lit underground railway station by the time evening rush hour is at it's peak flow.  I saw a fellow busker whom I had met once before and had been seeing around more and more blaze past me with his guitar case and mid-song I shouted out a hello to him.  "Hey Brian!" as he was almost through the turnstiles, "you need a spot?"  I had been playing that spot already for a little while and had made some money and felt I should offer up the spot to him as a gesture of busking respect and friendship.  At first he acted like he didn't need the spot.  We talked for a moment about recent gigs and so forth.  Brian was enthusiastic about some gigs he had doing substitute guitar work for a local string band called the Jug Town Pirates.  I am familiar with them as they play in North Beach on a regular basis and they are also hard core buskers.  They have a pretty good story as to how they got to San Francisco from Vermont but that also is another story for a rainy day.  Rain is forecasted for next week.  Eventually Brian admitted that he was on his way to find a spot, it was rush hour so it was highly unlikely that someone would give up a spot, but I had been doing long days and treating this unique job as a lifestyle and I was definitely interested in making some new quality friends in the city, so I insisted he take the spot for awhile.  He appreciatively agreed and I began to pack up my fiddle and sort out my jungle of worn-out dollar bills.  As he tuned up his axe he mentioned that we should play one.  We had played an I Know You Rider together a month previous in a similar busking encounter at the Civic Center Station a month prior so naturally we kicked off our little jam with a rousing 2-man rendition of I Know You Rider.  We were sounding great in the grand acoustics of the Mission station with a bustling rush hour flowing past us and scads of tips went into the guitar case.  It seemed apparent to us both that we should keep on rocking out together and my new busking buddy encouraged me to stay on and keep playing.  We played classic songs by Bob Dylan like "Don't Think Twice it's Alright" and "Easy Chair", and John Prine anthems like"Angel from Montgomery" and acoustic Grateful Dead such as their classic "Ripple."  Brian sang a heartfelt rendition of the Bard's "It Aint Me Babe" that I related to heavily.

When it was all said and done we had done a dynamic hour long set of music and made a decent wage doing it.  Most importantly, we had established a new musical friendship and brought some very classic songs to life, up close and personal, for anyone who happened to walk on by.   Hard to beat the experience of spontaneous, spirited acoustic music.  I thank my lucky stars to have this as a daily experience.  In music we trust.   The jug band writing was on the wall... More on that, next time.  Thank you for reading everybody and please, tip a busker near you.  Music makes life nicer.  Sing out and rejoice friends, for this life is a miracle and it's happening NOW.