Busking the Blues


It took about a month but now I'm starting to get some really good tips...

The first night I busked in Little Rock was a Saturday night at the River Market. I was across the street from all the revelers at the bars so I didn't get many people coming my way and I only made a couple of dollars. I had just started to sing as I played guitar after 25 years of just playing so it was a good opportunity to practice in front of people although most people just tossed in a dollar and kept walking. I didn't busk again for a couple of months.

I decided to try a Thursday night thinking that the crowd would be a bit thinner but that this may result in more tips because people weren't being pushed along the sidewalk by the crowd. I chose a spot closer to where the action was and put my tip bucket on a bus bench and started to play. I got just a few dollars the first couple of hours but I figured (correctly) that I would do better as the patrons were moving from bar to bar and getting more inebriated. I think I ended up with about $20 that night which I thought was excellent considering the tiny entertainment district that made up the River Market and the fact that all of my previous busking attempts in Austin Texas yielded less than $5. I was off and running.

I played the next two nights (Fri and Sat) and also did about $20 per night. This was starting to look pretty good. I was actually getting paid to practice! I used my Regal Dobro guitar to get more volume. I had to use finger picks so I could really bang out the volume on the crowded street. This worked out well except for two things: the guitar was quite heavy and after three hours my shoulder was aching. It also kept sliding out of position as I played. The other drawback was that I was breaking strings left and right after a couple of days of three hour busking marathons. One night when it was very humid and rainy I broke 4 stings in about two hours. This obviously wasn't going to work a most of my tip money would have to go to strings!

I looked on the internet for a good battery powered amp and saw the new Roland Micro Cube. Always a big fan of Roland products, I sought one out at the local Guitar Center and was quite impressed. It has Roland's famous 'COSM' modeling effects, reverb, tremolo, flange, phase and even a tuner. It has 6 amp settings and uses 6 AA batteries that last a whopping 20 hours! I plugged in my trusty Simon and Patrick Cedar acoustic with a Dunlap acoustic pickup in the sound hole and dialed in a slightly distorted tube amp sound and proceeded to rock out. This little puppy ROCK! I was very impressed. This little amp would be PERFECT for the street! Check out the Roland Micro Cube here.

http://www.rolandus.com/products/details.asp?catid=7&subcatid=32&prodid=Micro+Cube

The following week I decided to test each night just to see what nights would be best for tips. Monday was awful, I made about $3 the entire night. Tues wasn't much better. Wednesday I did a little better ($10) but still not good enough to make it worth my while. Thursday I did about $18, Fri and Sat I did my average $20-25. OK, Fri and Sat night it was.

The following weekend I did a respectable $40 for both nights. I was really starting to get into the groove of my three hour jams, just zoning out and jamming while watching the drunk yuppies stumble down the street and drop dollar bills into my bucket. My fingers were getting very nice calluses, perfect for my finger style guitar playing. The amp was chugging along, showing no signs of battery weakness after 12 hours of usage - not bad.

I was also writing songs as I jammed, remembering key riffs and phrases and putting them together to form new compositions. Except for the occasional Skynyrd or Zeppelin request, I was free to play whatever I wanted. I generally stuck to my set list and played the entire list twice before winging it and jamming on new tunes. By the three hour mark, i was tired enough that I just simply played a blues shuffle for the last 30 minutes or so, continuing to gather tips slowly but surely.

Then the tips started to slow down a bit. Maybe it was the nasty weather or maybe people were simply getting bored seeing me there, I don't know. I didn't think much of it, I just kept on belting out my blues covers.I took in a pitiful $3 on Friday and about $10 the next night. I knew that some nights would be better than others so I didn't let it get to me and kept on playing. It's a good thing because the following weekend (my one month anniversary) I did a whopping $100.

On Friday night there were more people there than the previous weeks due to the nice weather and the fact that i was payday for many people. Time to go out and blow cash on some booze. I made only a $1 the first 90 minutes but kept going, awaiting the drunks later in the evening. Boy was I glad I stayed put. I got several $2 and $3 dollar tips and even a free Fat Tire beer. About 3 hous in a drunk fellow came up and screamed "ROAD HOUSE BLUES BY THE DOOORS! YEAAAAAAHHHHH! PLAY IT! PLAY IT! PLAY IT!"

I wasn't actually PLAYING Road House Blues but I pretended that I was. It was a random riff that was only vaguely similar but what the heck, 'I can pretend it's Road House Blues' I thought. I continued to play the riff and about 15 seconds later he gave me a $10 bill - the biggest tip I had gotten so far. I thanked him and continued to play. He complimented me on my playing and added another $5 to the pot. I thanked him and continued playing. He then said he wanted to purchase one of my home recorded CD's for $5. Then his buddy came up and gave me a few dollars. Then a cute drunk girl came up to me and removed my hat, put it on her head and proceeded to dance very badly. This brought several horny guys over form across the street who promptly threw in another $7.

Hey this is getting pretty good I thought 'just hire a cute drunk chick to dance and rake in the dough!' Total take for the evening: a whopping $37. Most of this was made between 1 and 2 am. I was ecstatic. I was making as much as a part time job but I could 'work' whenever I wanted for as long as I wanted and got to do something besides schlep burgers or do phone surveys for hours on end in a sweaty joint with an asshole boss. From now on I was going to play from 11 to 2 am on Fridays as the bars closed at 2 and 10- 1 am on Saturdays as the bars closed at 1 due to the archaic 'Sunday Blue Law' in Arkansas which bans the sale of alcoholic beverages on Sundays. I went to bed that night with a huge smile on my face. Little did I know that the next night would be even better.

I got a $50 tip from a fellow who said he had just gotten married. I don't remember which song I played to get the tip, but it doesn't matter anyway. That night it was 4 gorgeous drunk women with bib boobs that danced with each other and brought several horny ogling men over with wads of cash. Total take for the evening: and incredible $75. I would have been perfectly happy with the average $25 but the $50 tip was quite a surprise. I also passed out several guitar lesson business cards and sold 2 CD's. After playing guitar for nearly 30 years, it sure is nice to actually get paid for it.

Posted: Mon - February 14, 2005 at 12:31 AM        

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