Backstage Banter

Hi, I’m John Maher. I’m the Marketing Manager at Reunion Blues and I love sharing my old-time Stride piano playing with others. One great way to do this is through busking, which is also a fun pathway to building your chops while making a little extra coin in the process. Over the years, I have busked the streets of Old St. Louis, Chicago, Meridian, Mississippi, Dallas and LA and, lately, established myself as “Petaluma Pete” in (you guessed it) beautiful Petaluma, California. I enjoy playing music and entertaining passer-bys in this very cool town and I’m happy (and lucky) to have been doing this for almost two years.

I looked up busker on dictionary.com which describes busking as a person who entertains (as by playing music) in public places. This sounds about right as I have been busking on and off for over 40 years! In fact, my 32-year-old son busked his way through the Berklee College of Music in the subways of Boston. This does not make us full-time experts but we have learned a lot of the tricks of the trade that are worth sharing.

Here are a few quick tips if you ever wish to hit the streets:

1.) Unless you are playing in a subway or train station where the audience constantly changes, don’t stay in one place too long because, sooner or later, you are going to run out of songs and repetition can annoy merchants who are close by. In other words, don’t wear out your welcome. Always leave them wanting more.

2.) Acknowledge as many people passing by as you can by making BRIEF eye contact, nodding your head and smiling. Why? Because if you ignore the people you are playing for they will ignore you in return and the tip jar will suffer for it.

3.) Get to know the merchants on your favorite corners. Always check with them to make sure you are not too loud, even if you already know you are not. Make them part of the process. Also work to make the local law enforcers and city workers you friend, by introducing yourself so they will know you, instead of feeling motivated to shoo you away.

You can find a good example of this by checking out the video at the following here.

Full-time buskers are my favorite. I don’t have the guts but I read about people who do and, deep down, I envy their free spirit. It’s the purest form of artistic risk, like stand-up comedy. However, in the real world of jobs, mortgages and car payments, you can still have a blast playing on the street and it beats the heck out of sitting in front of the tube!

Here’s a couple of cool busker web sites.
buskercentral.com
stiffarmingsociety.com/busking

Have you even played on the streets? Please feel free to share your tips and thoughts in the comments section!

Good luck out there!

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