$40.50 Saturday

I could only go for about 95 minutes, my first time busking in about 19 months.

Some left over Halloween Jam photos

The decision to not ride the bike on the somewhat soft tires was ill advised as, the street cars are still not going past the site of the building that collapsed a couple years ago. Even though there is nothing there now except an empty lot with a fence around it.

So, I wound up having to walk almost a mile with my guitar and backpack, which had the amp in it that probably weighs around 7 pounds. Being on day 4 of the juice fast had me feeling weak and focusing upon just putting one foot in front of the other.

I was surprised to see how much the Quarter was back to the normal of before the whole pandemic. There was the rapper guy on Canal Street, who sounded like he has gotten a little better at free-styling since a year and a half ago. Then a couple amplified black guys doing R&B a couple blocks apart on Royal Street, in between whom I saw that Bilal was out in front of his art gallery. He is the mafioso type, who dresses like Al Capone and even smokes cigars.

He befriended me a couple years after I got here, and has even said that I could play on the side of his gallery. That is a high traffic spot, but noisy. The Lilly Pad has gotten almost as noisy lately though, with the amplified pedicabs that like to park outside the bar and advertise the fact that their cabs are equipped with sound systems.

Tanya the violinist was at the corner of St. Louis and Royal, using a sound system of her own to play along with. I don't think that has the same "charm" as when she had a live accompanist in the form of Dorise Blackmon, but it allows her to do an even greater diversity of music. She was even rapping over something one time when I walked past.

She was smiling and playing for about a dozen people, but, for the first time ever, I heard her play some notes that didn't have perfect intonation. I wonder if she has Parkinson's Disease or some other "degenerative" thing, but is still playing for as long as she can before she is unable to hold on to the bow any more.

I know my ear hasn't gotten better to the point where I can now hear every little imperfection; I mean in the past 2 weeks of not drinking or drugging, that is. I didn't stop to say hello, because she has been rude to me the past couple times I did so. Of course that was almost 2 years ago,now.

She might feel slighted because after she stopped playing with Dorise, I just wasn't as interested in her music. Mostly because the soundtracks that she played along with were unrecognizable to me; like it was Hungarian Opera, or something. And I didn't even recognize the stuff she was rapping to the couple times I heard her doing that.

So, she might think that it had been because of Dorise that I used to hang around them for at the very least a half hour almost every single day. But that was because I was living under the wharf and they were right along my route to the Lily Pad, plus the fact that I was drinking and they were right along my route to the Unique Store for "more beer" every night..

Chinese people are hard to understand, said my friend Howard Westra (whom I also fell out of visiting, with the February 2019 Superbowl, right before the pandemic being the last time I saw him. It's strange how you just stop thinking about people sometimes and can't understand why. Maybe I could think about why I haven't really had the desire to take the bus across the river to see how ol' Howard is doing; if he's still alive, even.

I have the phone number to one of his housemates (I can't call Howard directly because he is just about deaf) and I could call him right now to see how Howard is doing. But, why don't I do it?

It has to do with a saying that my high school Philosophy teacher once uttered that goes something like: "Ashamed of not having made contact, we avoid contact."

When I got to the Lily Pad there was a young, long dark haired guy with a guitar across the street from the bar, not too far from where I set up. As I was setting up, he moved to Lily's other step, just 40 feet away. There was a skinny kid with him who was playing some kind of percussion thing.

I called Lilly to see if she was in the mood for shooing them away. But, after I started playing, they left. It may be that he is a novice guitarist and didn't want to compete with someone of my experience. He did say "good luck" to me in a not unfriendly way as he walked past.

One of the minor contributors

I told him that it had been a year and a half since I had "done this" and then added; "Yeah, I used to play here every night before the virus thing" so as to prepare him for seeing me there "every night" from now on. Maybe I won't have to enlist Lilly to protect my territory.

Right now, getting my sound back to where I can get people to listen for more than 5 minutes is a much more pressing issue. Ahead of protecting my turf; with the fact that I might have Covid-19 a not too distant third.

I just heard Ben Shapiro or someone say that there is only a 1% chance of dying from the thing. I believe him, and not the guy who "graduated at the top of his law school class" who actually graduated 76th out of 88 students...

As far as being 2 weeks free of drugs and alcohol, the thought of calling Howard's housemates to see how he is doing just gave me the strongest urge to drink a couple beers that I have had in the whole two weeks.

Having money now is going to up the temptation.

I messed up the juice only fast earlier by making a stew out of the winter vegetables of potato, onion, carrot, horseradish and ginger root in alkaline water and MCT oil, with salt and pepper.

And then obliterated it with a chocolate chip cookie out of the machine which I washed down with strong coffee.

But, I persist in trying to feel happy and grateful for what I have.

As far as busking tonight, it is Sunday, and I will probably watch football. I have been up for about 18 hours as I sit here, and a normal person would start his 8 hours of sleep now.

I'll have to put new strings on the guitar; the ones on it were horrendous last night. And I'll have to come up with a list of songs that I can play loudly without screwing up -ones that are meant to be played loudly. I was pushing way too hard last night, which kind of negated all the improvements I've made to my playing, by practicing the Mel Bay stuff. The accuracy I honed went out the window when I started overplaying.

It's a wonder I was able to average about 27 bucks per hour; I certainly didn't deserve it. It might just be that people are assuming that musicians get no unemployment and on top of that, had no opportunity to even work, for a long time.

I'll have to start running through songs to reclaim them from the memory void. Maybe take 12 songs each day to play through at home before going out. And to definitely make a list of a thousand songs and laminate it to weather-proof it and take it with me to remind me of what I know...

I knew that if I went out too early, I might be worn out by the time the heavy pedestrian traffic, which is typical of the 11 p.m. until about 1:30 a.m. would pass by the Lily Pad.

So I had waited until it was approaching 11 o' clock before going to the street car stop. Not having played out there for a year and seven months, I expected to be out of shape. The practicing I had done at home could never match the urgency that comes from busking, when there are people who stop to listen. That is when you block out the pain of the blisters that might be forming on the fingertips, and push through until the end of the song.

Kevin Bape reacts to what the trick-or-treaters are saying into the microphone, which was brought to the door, in lieu of actual candy. They were given an opportunity to be on "our album."

Musically, it was an F+ if I had to give it a grade.

First of all, I was unable to locate a milk crate to sit on, and sitting "Indian style" on the only box I could find in the Lafitt's trash can, a very low one -all of the taller boxes were flimsy, and I would have had to stuff them with folded up pieces of cardboard or something to make them solid enough and raise myself to at least milk crate level.

The amp added a sweet sound to the harmonica, but having it an inch or so in front of that meant that it was maybe 2 and a half inches from my mouth, so that it only added a slight boost in volume to my vocals. I'm going to have to come up with a work-around for that.

Sitting so low put me in an awkward position as far as being able to look up in order to make eye contact with people without moving my lips "off" the microphone. Being at least up on a milk crate would help that situation. I might have to position the mic in front of my nose and aim it downward, that way I could tilt my head up to sing, and then downward for harmonica solos, which don't require the same eye contact as when I might be improvising lyrics and want to play off of what I see of the people. Like, noticing someone wearing a Grateful Dead shirt and changing to a Dead song on the fly...

I started out with the Beatles "Golden Slumbers," and, within 5 minutes someone had thrown 3 bucks in my basket, saying something about me sounding good. That was believable at that point, but, things kind of eroded due to memory lapses of chords and lyrics. I don't think I have ever played so bad in all of my years of busking.

At one point, a couple guys threw a big wad of maybe 30 bucks, with a lot of them missing the basket, so I had to go to scooping them up and putting all but a few of them in my pocket. It would have been an awful time for someone to run off with the thing, stealing the first 30 or so bucks that I have made in 19 months...

"My first tip in a year and a half!" I said to the first guy that threw the 3 bucks..

It was embarrassing, forget the chords to "Little Wing," after a couple guys had sat down on Lily's step to my right and seemed like they were getting comfortable as if planning upon listening to me for longer than they did, due to me screwing up. I had to make the excuse of "This is my first time out here in a year and a half," before I thought one of them might say: "Dude, you need to find a new profession.

There was a lot of noise, and even with the amp, I found myself over playing. I need to work on that, because it leads to missed notes. Better to play more softly and accurately than to have people a greater distance away hear you sucking, I always say.

But, the 40 bucks took me from 55 cents up to $41.10, closing the gap some between myself and Elon Musk. I don't feel the disparity as much, nor resent him for his wealth as much, now that we are closer to being in the same economic class.