I have been busking less after having decided that busking more would be better than trying to get a job with Concentrix, or whatever the name of the company that Wayne, my neighbor works for is.
Tuesday night, though, Jacob Scardino came over to my apartment to jam.
He brought his guitar and his amp, but forgot a pick, and the cable to plug the guitar into the amp.
Bobby in building C came to the rescue by lending us his cable and selling us a small amount of bud.
This is unfortunately the quality of song that bud smokers will always be hard pressed to rise above.
I used to do all my writing and arranging and recording of the basic parts on nothing but fruit juice all day, and then only burn a joint after having taken a shower and eaten supper, and then only for doing the lead guitar part; which would be the only example of soaring ambiguity, in an otherwise measured and counted out and mastered backing track.
This one, I kept at just two guitars and a vocal, adding a second vocal, but doing most of the "producing" using the digital cutting and pasting and repeating functions.
It's not really a song, but, in my attempt to make it more of one, I waited too long to post it here, and had gotten criticized for having written no "thanks for the tuning machines" on this blog, referring to ones that Alex in California sent.
Seriously man, you moved to New Orleans to busk. So busk.
ReplyDeleteTry getting in touch with your inner pack rat and when you get a chance to get an extra pick or cable, packrat that shit.
Do some CD's! You sound like you have enough originals to make a few, plus you could do one or more of cover tunes.
And for the love of God, why don't you try playing some slide? Take one of your guitars and set it up as your "slide special", tuned to some pleasant sounding open chord, get yourself a deep Craftsman socket that fits your finger, and try it out. The public loves slide and even I always tip anyone playing slide. Hell, if I had to go guitar busking, I think I'd play slide, myself.
I found Brian Hudson's blog, which could almost be the Planet's 4th busking blog except he only posts once every 6 months or so. He must be awfully good because he seems to make about $50 an hour. He mentions you in a couple of posts.
God that sounds horrible but hey, you're welcome.
ReplyDeleteYou should do some commercials for ... ammonia!
Honestly, you should do some reading up on, and listening to, Wesley Willis (RIP) he was awesome! And he'd do these sort of commercial lines at the end of his songs, you could do ones like that only for non-branded things like ammonia ... cat litter...
I have just hit my stride, with the slide, a recent awakening into lucidity which came like others -one day I just woke up and could play slide guitar, out of nowhere.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting theory is that the slide is more like a violin or a trombone, where you have to just about totally rely upon your ear, no frets to guide you, or any notches on the trombone slide that click in at each note's location.
Some musicians (most, actually) are horrible at the violin, and/or can't play a fret-less bass.
I even read somewhere that "the sound of someone learning to play the slide isn't pleasant," and this was another one of the Allmans complaining about Duane's initial foray into slide guitar.
But, Jacob grabbed my slide off the coffee table at one point and played it, for probably the second time in his life, on a couple of the songs we jammed on. At least one of them will appear here, and he sounded pretty good. I would venture to say, better than Duane Allman, who went on to "master" the thing, by all accounts.
I guess Brian Hudson should make about 72 bucks per hour, or 4 times the amount I do, based upon the "4X Rule of Volume," which states that any musician on the street who doubles his volume through amplification, will make 4 times as much as the "unplugged" busker.
It is something like quality of performance squared X pi X height (hence the advice to stand up when you busk) = $.
So, Brian is under performing at fifty bucks an hour.
I heard he and Christina Friis comparing notes when they were sharing the same gear which was set up at St. Louis and Royal streets. Brian had made 215 dollars in the 3 hours he played, to the 350 that Christina eked out in the same time-frame. She had struck gold with the sale of one of each of her 4 CDs to someone who had given a hundred bucks for them, tip included in purchase price type of thing...
So, yeah, CDs. And slide guitar.
And I could start drawing little faces left and right, knocking out one every couple days, and setting them for sale alongside me when I play; sort of playing the "multi-talented" angle. Maybe then, neither the drawing nor the music would have to be good enough to stand on its own, because I would also have the other thing.
Like a quarterback who also can run the ball. A regular Reggie Griffin III...
My artist friend Jim did tell me that it is illegal to sell any kind of copies of artwork here in NOLA. Only originals can be sold -you've got to be able to see the graphite or the oil. I'm not sure if it involves a fine or what for breaking that law.
* better than Duane Allman the second time Duane played a slide; not better than on the Statesboro Blues classic.
ReplyDeleteOh, and, it's decibels times performance quality times pi times height...
OK, so would the 4X Rule Of Volume also explain, then, why the trumpet player you've mentioned makes so much just playing things like the Eentsy Weentsy Spider?
ReplyDelete