Back on the Busking Beat

Fiddle Dave present and accounted for on the San Francisco busking beat. 6 months and nary a word written, besides the obligatory status updates on too many social media sites to mention and/or remember, what without status updates their may be a complete communication breakdown in civilization as we know it. Of course, while I was busy not writing I never quit busking. I avoided it. I procrastinated a lot about it. I consistently came to the conclusion that life would be far easier with a real "day job" as they say. However I have kept on with my busking adventures and have many a story to tell, although I realize sharing stories as they happen might be the most poignant way to go about all of this.

Sometimes a writer is jolted out of their self-imposed writer's block and in my case tonight this is most definitely true. I should be out busking now instead of trying to write about it amidst a complete cacophony of street corner madness. One should understand that I live on one of the busiest intersections in San Francisco. Little Italy meets Chinatown here and tourists meet the ghosts of yesteryear's beats. This is an inspiring place for many people and seems to be the "busking crossroads" as far as I can tell. A 3-way intersection where Stockton crosses Columbus flowing out of Chinatown's open air market and through North Beach down to the Wharf, and Green comes down the hill past old Italian restaurants and Irish pubs and runs into Telegraph after passing old musical haunts where Janis Joplin sang and Ginsberg read his poetry. So this incredibly busy intersection where from my 3rd floor hotel room I can sometimes count half a dozen busses at one time, legions of cabs and cars, hundreds of people and an occasional motorcycle gang, is somehow a busking hot spot. I always have some busking news to report from room 24, although the cacophony becomes maddening and days blur together falling asleep to the sounds of a doo-wop a cappella group singing gospel and waking up to a trumpet (far better then a jackhammer.) Luckily these stories that blow my mind the first time they happen seem to reoccur.

Here was my journalistic jolt for the evening. Things were proceeding like normal. I was procrastinating and finding little things to occupy myself with that didn't involve going out and actually working(busking). The young and talented trumpeter who I've been hearing regularly lately went through his evening serenades of jazz standards and the Godfather theme song. An older man across the street from him took his time setting up his steel drums and P.A. system while talking to folks on the corner. Eventually it was his turn and he turned on his metronome-like conga backing track on the P.A. and began to play. He doesn't know how to play so well so he plays in a minimalistic fashion. Here is where the sonic turf battle begins. A different trumpeter arrives on one of the opposite corners now and begins to play. I'm thinking to myself, in the right frame of mind you can listen to both buskers and with all the other industrial noise, make some sort of sonic collage that could be fun to listen to for a while if you use your imagination. Now the story get really interesting as ANOTHER steel drummer shows up on the scene. This is what amazes me how these stories actually repeat themselves! I've seen this happen minus the extra trumpeter and thought geeze, this must be a fluke, but here the madness repeats itself. This other, you might say, rival steel drummer that actually can play quite well, abandons any honorable busker's code (some buskers don't believe in it), and sets up right across the street from the other steel drummer and the trumpeter. I've seen this happen in the past and been blown away, like we live in this huge city and we have steel drummers competing for the same street corner!?

Normally I would have bolted out my door escaping the North Beach cacophony to find a quiet(in relative comparison) BART station to busk in, but being that I was busy procrastinating and this story is so bizarre that in presenting itself to me repeated times, I was jolted to break my blogger's block and get back on the busker's beat. Thanks for reading friends. I am now on my way to have more busking adventures far away from the dueling steel drums.

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.    

A quick thought on Synchronicity and Busking...

Synchronicity is a funny thing.  Today I heard a busker playing Neil Young's Heart of Gold at the Farmers Market on United Nations Plaza.  I tipped him, thanked him for playing one of my favorite songs, and moved on to the next fresh fruit sampling booth having a great free snack in the long November shadows under pure blue skies.  A moment ago, I was standing in a Walgreen's staring at 30 different kinds of dental floss and loud and clear over the intercom...of course, Heart of Gold is playing, rocking my world, sending me bounding back to my hotel room to write this blog on synchronicity and it's relative frequency in the world of the busker.  Such as the Autumn Leaves synchronicity that took place in my last little story.  Songs appear at the strangest and generally most significant times I find.  It's like spiritual sport after awhile, taking my cues from the universe.

Early November and sounds of Autumn Leaves

Yesterday and today's busking adventures have been synchronistic, cosmic and highly entertaining.  Last evening as I came out of the "singing tunnel", my ears were happy to hear my friend Ron Coolidge blowing  Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time from two blocks away at his spot on one of the corners of historic Union Square.  There is a statue in the middle of Union Square that has been there since the late 19th century and was a primary meeting spot and a beacon of hope after the great earthquake and fire of 1906 that left San Francisco in shambles.  I enjoy relaxing in Union Square after my busking shifts are through for the day.  This evening I pretended like I was in a rainforest in the middle of the city thanks to the palm trees in the park and the automatic sprinkler system.  I have an easy going imagination.  Helps when you lead the lifestyle of a busker!  

So Ron and I chat for a moment about all things busking which became more of a conversation about the ethical implications of buskers having their own "turf."  He mentioned in particular a saxophonist who in his eyes has been moving in on his spot.  They've been playing that game that buskers play sometimes, the "that's see who gets here first tomorrow!" game.  Anyhow, I know the aforementioned saxophonist and jokingly predicted that he and another friend of mine would be down in the 4th St. tunnel where I was headed to play.  Sure enough I was right, but that's jumping ahead of myself a little bit.  As we talked, I recalled the night a while back when I had been playing jazz with my friend the Jazz Buddah and we had been whipping up a version of Carole King's It's Too Late.  That particular evening I bumped into my trumpet wielding friend and told him about my jam that night.  As I walked home that evening towards Chinatown his trumpet echoed out a spontaneous and very good version of It's Too Late.  

We finished our conversation and Ron thanked me for reminding him of that tune.  As I continued on my busking quest Ron's trumpet sounded out a fresh version of It's Too Late and my night began to take focus.  As I thought about these great women songwriters and Ron's crystal clear sounding trumpet began to fade, the tones of an anonymous tenor saxophone began to grow more clear and like the perfect fade out/fade in I was immersed in this anonymous busker's version of Autumn Leaves.  Tis the season for the great jazz standard Autumn Leaves.  I've been playing that one a lot lately and having lots of fun with it!  Anyhow this tenor man was in between the Macy's buildings and the echo from this tenor saxophone made it apparent to me that I was walking through an urban canyon...

As I reveled in this version of Autumn Leaves, ducked down the escalator past the Mac store and into the Powell St. BART station.  There in the 4th St. tunnel, as predicted, were my friends the Jazz Buddah and the formerly mentioned saxophonist, my friend Aaron.  Observing the synchronistic events of my evening so far I couldn't help wearing a huge grin on my face as I approached my friends.  I stayed till the end of their song, greeted them and told them my little story about all the horn players in perfect "just out of earshot" distances away from one another.  I told them I was headed to the Mission and to have a good busk.  As I walked to the turnstiles and the escalators that would take me down two more levels underground, I listened to my friends improvise a very swinging and tasty version of...you guessed it...Autumn Leaves.

A Busker on Every Corner of the Corner

I write from my tower of song in Little Italy, "the Beach" as Kerouac called it, across from Chinatown, San Francisco, U.S.A., at a 3 way intersection infamous for buskers being on every corner of the corner. Right now at roughly twenty after four on a sunny November afternoon there is a busker, energetically playing what appears to be a homemade set of bongos and singing "Proud Mary."  Only in California...where people's sense of perfect timing and synchronicity seem to be raised to new heights.  And so he provides the background for my late afternoon musings as my clothes tumble dry around the corner and I get ready for my evening busk.

As the sun dips below the Pacific Ocean horizon the San Francisco skyline lights up before my very eyes.  Passed the Cathedral-like steeples of the National Shrine of St. Assisi, the modern day pyramid, erected just a couple years before my birth in 1975, the Trans-American Pyramid lights up like a Christmas tree.  A moment ago, in the twilight dusk of the Beach, another moment of California-style synchronicity occurs as I walk out of the laundromat and around the corner singing the Beatle's "With Love From Me to You", complete with Paul McCartney falsetto, and suddenly out of some North Beacher's abode comes another Fab Four song "Glass Onion" blasting out the window, and at that moment began to feel the oneness between myself and the city and everyone in this wonderful city.  Strolling through Little Italy on my way home on Veteran's Day, I felt a healthy sense of patriotism.  There were American flags rippling like a Hollywood movie picture against the setting sun sky.  American flags on buildings on my block and up the way on the Gothic rooftops of Knob Hill skyscrapers.  Then to remind us of our cultural diversity in this international melting pot, Chinese flags rippling against the pink sky in Chinatown, and Italian flags painted on every lamppost on my block.  

And so off I go on my busking trail.  Still some chores around the old hotel to take care of but then I will walk my way through Chinatown, through the Stockton Street "singing tunnel", and then off to an acoustically resonant underground railway station where I will tune up and play some fiddle music for the good people of SF.  I will probably end up in the Mission after awhile to check in with Classical Revolution, a twice a week classical music renegade experience and listen to some chamber music in the comfort of a coffee house.  Unless of course I catch busking fever which happens frequently and is a very welcomed sensation by yours truly.  Till next time friends, stay on your paths, as I will be on mine, and thank you for supporting your local buskers.  

The Busking Quest Continues-Reflections of ZEN

Back on the busking trail and feeling the true prize of busking more and more as the past couple days have unfolded themselves.  The true prize is the Zen.  That point in time when I am simply there.  Playing music, but almost outside of myself, observing myself playing the fiddle.  And then it happens...like a flash.  A sensation of total well-being.  I love to feel like a conduit for something greater.  The bigger picture.  The divine message.  Flowing through the universe, looking for open conduits to share the light.  It's wonderful when that moment happens.  I've learned new depths to my patience through busking...allowing any tense vibes or insecurities to float on by to make way for the good stuff.  The point in time where as a busker I can feel the oneness between myself, the people I am playing for and the people that I consider and think about when I am playing.  If I am fortunate, I can allow myself to be guided into a state of non-thinking.  There the music actually lives. I can then experience music as a language.  The universal language, as Music has become known.  I believe Music is the language that not only links all sentient beings but also other forces and beings in the universe.