Dispatches from the road by Bill Poindexter
Profiles from Polebridge, Montana:
Ross Voorhees and The Art of busking and podcast link
In one sense we’re all buskers, that is, we all have our wares to pedal. We have services we provide, and we get paid for those services- some times, sometimes not, a fair wage.
For some of us, our work is art versus empty motion with no purpose; Just as a painter who paints on a canvas, the writers write their stories on paper, the farmer plants seeds, the musician plays their instrument, and creates music. So in a very broad sense, we were all buskers, who are artists.
But then there are some of us more commonly known as gypsies, vagabonds, dirtbags, street performers, wayfarers, who hit the roads, or seas, and sell their special talents to a lucky few who are open minded enough to the universe to appreciate what these busker entertainers provide.
I’ve been fortunate enough to know a few buskers in my life time and now up in Polebridge, Montana, I met a busker by the name of Ross. I interviewed Ross two days ago at a restaurant, Home Ranch Bottoms, just outside of the Hamlet of Polebridge Montana, in an outside storage shed with a metal roof while it was raining lightly as we sat on to plastic covered kitchen chairs from the 70s chatting over a dusty old steel, perhaps iron, work bench sipping pints of cold smoke scotch ale as a story began to unfold of the life of Ross and his experience busking, particularly in Paris, France. I have the full interview on audio, the attached podcast.
Back in 2011. Actually, the dates really don’t matter that much my friend Ross found himself in France, at 22. First he spent 6 months sleeping on a couch and busking full time and then later in Paris. He was living in a small studio apartment working a ““ real job doing some translating. And basically he would work all day, and then head out to various parts of Paris Find a little place to set up his amplifier and his guitar and start busking for francs/euros in Paris France. Ross told me that you can make quite a good living doing it. But there were some things you had to be careful of, for instance the police would occasionally come by and harass him, and other police would leave him alone, and some police would threaten to take away his equipment and his guitar. And then there were the other buskers who would sometimes harass him and other times befriend him. He learned that if he set up an a location that other more aggressive buskers wanted they would set up their amplifiers next to him and play their music louder. Ultimately driving him off to go find another place to busk. Ross also told me that sometimes it was more fun to partner with another performer -he found a fellow performer who was a violinist, and they played together well. Ross would work all day, head out and perform at night till late in the evening, drinking red wine eating French food and then perhaps find or restaurant or a bar at the end of the evening to finish his day and have conversations contemplating the existence of life. He also shares some pretty good lessons about busking life- for example-like to take breaks every hour or so to let an audience move on so a new audience could come, and if you stop playing after 45 minutes to an hour, people would tend to tip more, versus just standing there and playing for three hours at a time. There’s more and his story is extraordinary…enjoy!
Advice from Ross
Busking Lessons:
You can try to hog the pitch but sometimes, sharing just works out better for everyone.
Most art will flop without Context. Good art needs no context.
If you want to get good at something you have to do it a lot. Everyday.
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