Sometimes when I was kid, I would think, "If I could just get everyone to give me a quarter each, pretty soon I'd be rich." ... Okay, I still think that sometimes ... !

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Originally posted by Old Scratch

Sometimes when I was kid, I would think, "If I could just get everyone to give me a quarter each, pretty soon I'd be rich." ... Okay, I still think that sometimes ... !

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I still get the typical dollar tip.. A dollar doesn't go as far is it did ten years ago when I started busking.. Yes, if everyone just gave a quarter, I'd make more money... but alas..such is life.  Good for me that I love busking and really don't need the money..

Busking stories never end. For the past several years, on the street where I busk, there have been signs posted about every 100 feet discouraging people from giving money to those who might ask.. They are thinking of panhandlers...which I am not..City code clearly states that musicians with a tip jar/case are NOT to be considered panhandlers. However, visitors don't always know the difference so sometimes I'm slighted and visitors may be confused.
Lately though, the City downtown revitalization committee has decided that buskers are valuable to the downtown scene and have begun to PAY $100 per busker,,per hour..(No, not a lot of hours...it is the idea)..
This is great. Me and several others are signing up post haste. ALSO, I now see that the signs that discourage giving have all been removed. Along with that the City patrol has kept actual panhandlers off of that street...
.... Also, my friend Larry is also a busker.. Today he said he only made $10 in tips but the best tip of the day was a nickel, given by a littly boy...Kids are the best!!!

HOT< HOT< HOT... This has been one of the worst weeks for busking tips... Notwithstanding.. I had a great time chatting with people.. Yesterday in Nashville, Indiana up walks Hangout member Hokelore, aka Tim Hoke. We'd crossed paths just a few times over the years. He is recently retired and I expect to see him on the sidewalk busking, soon. Although he isn't the most prolific Member, his comments always seem to be to the point and he never has been contentious...Last week, bluegrass musician Douglas Mark Conway visited Bloomington and he and I went busking....Different repositories but we managed to find enough common tunes to make the event fun...

It was interesting as usual.. Across the street they were using a jackhammer!!! Nothing stops me.. After 90 minutes I got ready to leave and just as I had put the fiddle away a nice college girls came by lamenting that she couldn't hear me play... I still had 30 minutes on the parking meter so I took out the fiddle and played her some tunes.. She left a NICE tip.. Then, she mentioned that it was good for her to be out talking to a stranger, like me... After all she needed practice telling people about her Lord and Savour..!!! I should have known. However, undaunted I went into MY theology and after having heard it she said, "Wow, never heard anything like That before.."...I excused myself to leave.. It is only fair..if they try to 'corner' me.. I'll corner them first.. I do hope to see her again as she was a very nice young woman...We really did have a nice two sided conversation..

Chiming in late (I couldn't remember my log-in password), but it was great to run into you, Lee. It's been too long.

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Originally posted by hokelore

Chiming in late (I couldn't remember my log-in password), but it was great to run into you, Lee. It's been too long.

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I'll be looking for you in Nashville..

Two things today.. A shop owner who refers to me as the Busker Oracle of Kirkwood Street.. asked me what I thought would happen to our country in the next 20 years.. I replied that I don't even know what my lovely wife is fixing for dinner...so I can't speak for the world 20 years out....
Secondly, as I was walking to my car I encountered a favorite homeless guy.. I asked if he wanted to have a beer.. We shared, he talked.. Life is complex, it has both real and imaginary parts...!!

I posted this in another topic also... but it is appropriate both here and there..
While busking today I played the tune Rachael over and over.. trying 'this' bowing and 'that' bowing.. I realized that, as you know, there is not ONE way to play a tune.. but I realized that each way I played it would teach a different technique that IMO should be learned by an OT fiddler.. One way was a lot of saw stroke, another way was with a shuffle, another way used unison notes and drones.. another way used chords...
Where does one start? With SOME of the basic stuff that is included in OT tunes...
Once a student picks up on the fact that the bow-tricks are optional and the tune demands No unique bowing.. the door opens and the student becomes a fiddler

This may be a case of "you would have had to see this to believe it"..... I gave a little boy a bunny stamp and told him that if he showed it to the wait-staff in Any restaurant in town that he'd get.............Nothing... All laughed..
So.. His mother took him about ten feet away while Several other groups of kids got bunny stamps and each time when I told them that what they would get for it in local restaurants was...... and I directed their attention to the little kid sitting ten feet away .. Every time he yelled out..."NOTHING"... and again, all laughed....  I suggested to the mother of the kid that maybe she could just leave him for a few hours while I was busking... but she declined... It was a fun time..

Kinda reminds me of my musical trip down to South Carolina many years ago .... In the course of things, I met a retired judge; he had a gentle, dignified manner, and seemed in fine fettle for man of some 90 years. He gave me his business card, and I asked him if I could show it to the cop if I got stopped for speeding. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "You show him that card; he'll read it and hand it back to you - and then you can pay your fine."

Kids are great!
I was persuaded into playing a tune or two in a hotel lobby. There were kids coming out of the swimming pool room. Usually they were really wound up, coming out of there. These three kids came running out and literally stopped in their tracks, jaws open. I don't believe they'd ever seen a fiddler in real life.

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Originally posted by farmerjones

Kids are great!
I was persuaded into playing a tune or two in a hotel lobby. There were kids coming out of the swimming pool room. Usually they were really wound up, coming out of there. These three kids came running out and literally stopped in their tracks, jaws open. I don't believe they'd ever seen a fiddler in real life.

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EXACTLY... Many children get their first look at a fiddle via such performances...Sometimes the impression sticks!!!

Another interesting busking day.. Labor Day...At some point a young man dressed in ragged pants and a hoodie passed by and stopped about 20 feet away and sat on a planter...listened for a Loooong time and left..A little later he came back and left a $40 tip!!! I called him back and we chatted..He is not in college but is working hard, full time.. I have great hopes for him.......He said that in his town there are never buskers and he appreciated my music... ...I'm touched''......

Over the years I've noted that it is impossible to tell who will tip.. Sometimes I've gotten tips from homeless people...Sometimes well dressed people tip generously and sometimes they don't.. ya never can tell.....Nobody owes me anything ..so I appreciate every tip..that I'm not owed.

Aw, that’s great!
( yea you can never tell…client who was a Wall Street banker wanted free work. My clients who are struggling small businesses pay as soon as they open the invoice…)

I was in my front yard and a young couple with a dog came walking by.. They recognized me as a busker and introduced themselves as buskers....They had questions about the process of busking. I told them that there are just two things to remember: One, nobody owes you a tip..and Two, if you don't get tips on any particular day, don't take it personal........Just keep busking.. you'll have good and bad days,, mostly bad, but it is worth it.

This afternoon several of us fiddlers/buskers from the Bloomington area attended a 'celebration of life' of Roger Grisette.. Roger was a functional fiddler, that is, not amazing but he did put his heart into his fiddling.. He was a regular busker and on occasion he would join my busking for a few tunes while he was on his way to his favored busking spot.. He always impressed me because his personality was so great that he always made great tips and the kids loved him..I'll miss him..
Like many people Roger just looked like another old man playing a fiddle, but unseen was the fact that Roger was an experienced Sierra Club Guide who lead hikers on over 100 trips to the Rocky Mountains...
This rings true for everyone.. When we see someone, for instance, busking... we have absolutely NO IDEA what their life's experiences have been....

Same applies to people you think you know fairly well. I was at such a 'Celebration' the other day, for a guy I'd been gigging with for the past twelve years, as a duo. Nothing dramatic emerged from the talk about his life, but a number of little things - for instance, his family remembered him as always drawing, and apparently he had considered training in commercial art after high school. I, on the other hand, had never seen him do any more with a pencil than write down a phone number.

Another day, another interesting happening.. Today a lady approached me with tears in her eyes.. Big Tears.. She related that she is moving to Cleveland and will miss Me and Harry Hare in that we have become part of the fabric of the city.......Wow.. what a compliment.. I accepted her generous tip and wished her well.. It is nice to be considered part of the "Fabric" of the community.... Touching!!

OK, I told you about the couple that wanted advice about busking... Did I mention the college kid who wanted to know where to busk and what to expect if he played his guitar for 'pin' money? Well, today, a homeless guy on his way to the bus station for a trip to Louisville stopped by..(Where do these people come from?)...and said that he was a busker.. His 'shtick' was to hold up a leafed branch and pop out when people walked by and he'd say something silly to get attention...(nothing at all like having a puppet!!!).... Anyway.. that is today's event... Folks, I can't make this stuff up..

Two young ladies came by today and admitted that they didn't have any money but would like a 'bunny' stamp.. I reminded them that the amount of money they owe me is Zero.. I gave them the stamp on their arms.. Later a young man came by, dropped a dollar and said he was a big fan.. Of course, he didn't get away without a bunny stamp..!

While I may be the most prolific busker making posts here, I know I'm not the Only busker..
I'd like to hear from other buskers.. How have things changed in the busking world in the past two years??
For me and my busking buddy, Larry, we have both noticed that the tourist town crowds are smaller and the tip totals are about 40% lower than they have been in the past... (We keep records)....
Probably something about the high cost of gas, food, cars, living, etc... What have YOU noticed??

I enjoy busking but don't do it much here because Wichita, Kansas just isn't that type of town. We did a World Fiddle Day busk last year in front of a new microbrewery and it was honestly kind of boring and noisy as this is a city where people enjoy revving their engines loudly at people doing things out of the ordinary like walking, bicycling... or busking.

We did it another time after that and it was almost undoable due to all the revving engines. And I live in what iis supposed to be the 'artsy' quiet, cultural part of town. It isn't. haha

There is a Saturday morning farmer's market here where people do some busking, but it is also very noisy. I've seen some buskers do okay if they are amplified. But for me, if you're dragging out amps etc, it isn't busking...There is a good fiddler that busks acoustically and makes some cash. Although, if yer not right up on him, it is almost unhearable.

We were hired as official musicians for the Farmer's Market and I thought we'd do a quiet busking sort of thing and a handful of people appreciated it. The event director wanted us to be louder... At 10 in the morning I don't want to be loud. So I probably won't do that again...

I miss busking. My best memories of it are Boulder Co and Santa Fe NM... I did a lot of busking in Yosemite and that was fun...years ago now.

I did a bit of busking in Melbourne about 40 years ago and it was great fun. Didn’t make a whole pile of money but I didn’t need to either. It was at a time when they just introduced busking licenses. The requirement of license was that you had to shift location every 20 minutes so l stopped doing it after that. I also put in a huge amount of work learning Greek trad music with a Greek singer to bring it to the streets as a busking project. We worked for a couple of months, got a small body of material together and went out busking. What a blast! The Greek guy had expectations that we would make decent money so after a few weeks he gave up. I was hugely disappointed at the time because the response we received from Greek people was almost overwhelming. Plus I was just getting a handle of melodies in 5 and 10 bar turn arounds.