Street Busking or Things You See Passing By...

As I move along in what I call my music career I enjoy street busking and playing in the park more and more. Cathy claims when she soon retires she might be up for some also. Certainly the downtown area of Lufkin is ready for that and with plans to develop more gathering areas I think it's something we need. 

There's some musicians that like to have an audience out there. They like to have people sit and listen or depending on the venue get up and dance. I've done those things and probably will again but I like to play to the passerby and I think I have traced that back to it's roots.

Once years ago I took a flight to New Orleans. I can't recall the occasion and don't remember anything about the trip other than what I describe here but I was drinking then and flew because I knew having a car was just going to be an encumbrance. After all some famous person said once that all you need to discover New Orleans is a good pair of shoes. This incident took place years before I knew of that quote. If shoes could talk. 

At the end of our trip we departed early by taxi from our hotel. This was before Uber and you could get the nice gay men that always seem to work the desk at the better French Quarter hotels to call you a taxi for timely departure. We loaded up and slowly cruised through the sights of the neighborhood and were already beginning to suffer from what I call post New Orleans depression. My attention was drawn to a small group of people I spotted leaving a corner bar. 

The center of this group was a big, burly, bearded guy with long hair. He was wearing a spaghetti strap t-shirt, cut off blue jean very brief daisy duke style shorts and black fishnet stockings. I did not see the shoes but I'm sure they were perfect. Obviously the group had spent the night bouncing from bar to bar in the Quarter and were is the process of being surprised as they exited this one that it was broad daylight. 

My taxi carried me on out to the airport but I have always remembered this incident and when I street busk with tuba to passing people I hope to turn their heads the say way. "Did you see that, a guy playing a tuba!" just like I said "a guy in fishnet stockings!"

Yesterday while busking Christmas music on my tuba in the downtown area there was the occasional passerby on foot, people who drove slowly past possibly making the block again, (that's hard to tell these days, all cars look alike and there is not but about 4 colors in use) one car who stopped at the curb for awhile and listened with windows down, and the big guy who took a cell phone video from 75 yards away and yelled "woo hoo" as encouragement. He had on shorts, not too short and no stockings.

Hopefully these people are all are writing blogs today about the guy with the tuba they saw. Maybe I will be as influential to them as the guy with the fishnet hose was to me all those years ago. There are enough things in the world that need our involvement. Climate change, the poor, Covid 19, politics, and so on you can make your own list. For a minute there you passed a guy on the street in fishnet stockings or with a tuba and you forgot about all that stuff.            

I try to take a photo of any buskers I see. I drop money in the hat so they get paid when I use their image. Here's a couple of shots of guys drumming on buckets in downtown Chicago. 

Whenever I see buskers on the street I like to think they are junior high band directors just out on a Saturday morning supplementing their income.       

I mean they could be in fishnet stockings. They could have a tuba.