If you follow The Busking Project I hope you’ve been wondering where I have been, and that you’re not too disappointed. You may have such questions as:
What happened to your tartan kilt and why are you were that crazy shirt?
And what the hell happened to your super nifty weekly updates from the road?!!!
This is the story of my busking adventures, but it’s also about my media misadventures. To be frank, busking across the nation was not the daunting part of this whole undertaking. The real challenge was navigating an internal conflict between blogging and busking. As a busking bagpiper — a troubadour, a minstrel, a gypsy — gathering and processing media and keeping up with blog posts, while busking on the move, was like juggling crystal balls. Going digital was the toughest part.
This is nitty-gritty-on-the-road-type-stuff! Or at least that’s how I feel…
I want to break it all down — the highlights, the big moments, the ups and downs; the hardware woes and software blues, and being left ill-equipped and unprepared when all else fails. Maybe I should have kept this all as a personal operation, maintaining my own blog and re-bloging through TBP? Maybe I should have thought twice before agreeing to be Mr. Blogging-Busking-Bagpiper-Music-Media-Man, while on a cross country tour with my girlfriend? But, though I’d like to think that the people of the world were pining for my next post, I am confident the humans will be happy just to have this one for now.
PRE TOUR DETOUR
‘Axie’s US Busking Tour’ commenced in August with high hopes, no expectations and little planning — just like any great misadventure — but, before I had a chance to pack the car and head west, I received an offer to work as crew on the Schooner Heritage, a wooden pleasure cruiser and one of the Great Maine Windjammers.
When Captain Linda called me through a bad connection out at sea asking if I could come aboard as crew for the rest of the season, I considered standing plans to depart cross-country in two weeks time and thought “Not a chance!” But, somehow, I was able to pull a logistical maneuver landing me on a one-hundred-foot hand-built wooden schooner for a week! Knowing that nobody gets to crew a dreamboat for one week only, I hardly slept and worked tirelessly trying to keep up with the crew during (and after) hours. I cooked, hauled lines, furled sails, and, yes, yes indeed, I busked! I say this in earnest because the crew was paid largely in tips at the end of the week and it was clear that the bags boosted our booty boastfully!
I busked with my bagpipes aboard the mid-ship cabin!
Off the boat, I scrubbed the decks and downed burgers and beers as I waited for the taxi to the puddle jumper that got me back in Boston for a great overnight (and a story for another day) before my flight to the Denver, Colorado.
DENVER
Denver is a tough place to busk. There are vibrant urban centers, but much of Denver is a sprawled out collection of suburban towns. Other than parks, the main planned public space in the city is a pedestrian mall that can feel more like a stark and sterile indoor shopping mall, sans ceiling. Oh, and busking is prohibited here. A few buskers lurk around the side streets and corners, but they don’t get much attention and thus aren’t very impressive. Without a supportive crowd or municipality, it’s hard to hone in a good act or gain attention and respect from a crowd.
BOULDER
Boulder on the other hand is a small town busking paradise with one of the country’s best and most popular pedestrian malls, the Pearl Street promenade. Buskers line every pitch, corner and awning. There are licensed performers endorsed by the city and random unlicensed performers are allowed and encouraged. The people of Boulder love and respect the constant culture and tourists are coming to downtown Boulder for the busking in the beautiful backdrop of the Flat Irons, the first ridge of the Front Range Rocky Mountains.
Unfortunately, we were hastened out of Colorado by a schedule with many miles and much do before we arrived in LA. There isn’t much in the way of busking between Denver and Los Angeles, unless you pull over to get kicked off the Las Vegas strip. We didn’t leave the casino.
VENICE
I had a long list of places to stop along the way, but our only definite destination truly captures the trip: Venice Beach in West Los Angeles.
http://youtu.be/TSobqp06Jc
In hindsight, my journey could have been called Axie’s So-Cal Busking Tour (bookended by a two very eventful trips across the country). It may be a tough placed to stay focused and a hard place to leave, but Venice is truly a busker’s paradise. It is also an adventurous Eurasian tourist’s paradise and drug-tourist, drop-out, homeless or international-freak-fest paradise. With these elements combined, it’s quite a scene. For more on Venice check out my previous posts “US Busking Tour Begins” and “Endless Summer in SoCal great news for Buskers”.
SANTA CRUZ
Northern California greets like you a warm evergreen blanket purging all the smog of SoCal. The people are milder, like the weather, and offer smiles more, as well as donations to the ever-changing busking population. Santa Cruz is the type of town that atracks as many migratory street performers as it does long term members of the alternative community that defines the unqiue coastal mountain town. Although there are regulars along the boardwalk and on the pedestrian mall downtown, most of the street performers are transient types who know they can make a buck, then sleep under the stars in Santa Cruz.
TOUR RE-ROUTED, BACK IN BOULDER
While still in California, an opportunity arose to extend our western adventure back in Boulder, where we were offered full time staff positions workings to get our man Obama back in office for a second term. With radical peace pipes a part of my performance past, I jumped at the chance to fight the good fight . . . with a job in Boulder — busking central.
With a decisive victory in Colorado and across the United States, we quickly packed up and headed back east, travelling 1,010 miles to the 95th floor of the Signature Lounge in Chicago, before an overnight in a Hostel and a long drive back to New York.
NEW YORK
After a jam-packed trip from coast to coast the tour ended with my bagpipes locked away by the very man who made them, in his workshop on the Hudson north of Manhattan, from whence the tour began and was to end.
Walking the streets of New York in November without my bagpipes I felt a little alone and out of place as I wandered the urban jungle above and the subterranean human zoo below. I stopped at every busker — as I always do in solidarity — looking and listening from a distance, or coming close for a quiet shot or clip in exchange for a contribution. I was without my instrument, but happy to hear theirs, and glad they were doing well exchanging entertainment and enjoyment for meager contributions that hopefully add up to enough to feed themselves, their family and their parents back in South America or Pakistan — all before 9:00am on a Tuesday morning.
Maybe it’s a good thing that my Great Highland Bagpipes are well north of the MTA’s decibel restrictions for the subway
~ a lot people need the underground stage more than I do. Not to mention the money…
Maybe it’s a sign with a silver lining to be separated from my pipes as I got reacquainted with my native city that I was soon to leave.
~ a lot of places need me more than New York. And vise versa…
ST. PATRICK’S DAY IN DENVER
In fact, I did not hear from my wacky pipe maker until the week before St. Patrick’s Day, where he rang to tell me that my bagpipes were ready and on there way. Serendipitously, my bags arrived just in time for a serious St. Patty’s Day celebration in Denver, our newfound mile high home.
MANIFEST DESTINY
Only now, after going through the motions and doing the damn thing —prepared or not, whether it was a failure or a little biter of bitter sweet success — am I ready to right and really do it again . . . and again, and again, and again.
THANK YOU
I could not do this alone — such is the nature of busking.
Special thanks to Nick and everyone at The Busking Project for believing and allowing constant street performing goodness, and to my partner, Maria, for her contributions, sweet soul and spirit of adventure.
It truly takes a village — in this case a global village.