Thank You, Philadelphia

Well, this is it.  My last entry as a busker in Philadelphia.  End of the month, I'll be heading south to the Lone Star State, Corpus Christi, to be exact.  Philadelphia has been a good music experience.  We started out at The Fire, a club on Girard Avenue with a band called August Sky.  I'm grateful to the McShanes, especially Michael for his encouragement and Brian for producing and recording two wonderfully engineered cd's. For Dan Giandomenico on bass, Faruq Daoud on trumpet, and Dave Buckery on percussion.  Papo Ramos for his songwriting and inspiration.  I'm grateful to Chuck Elliot, DJ at WXPN, for giving us air time on Sleepy Hollow, his laid-back Saturday morning show.  I'm grateful to all the coffee shops and bars for having us and giving us a stage and audience to share our music with.
August Sky morphed into Route 66 and took on a more electric rock/blues feel, as August Sky's backbone, Patricia White, stepped down, and Conrad Radcliffe stepped up, focusing now less on original music and more on classic rock and blues standards from the 60's and 70's.  Bill Conkin became the guiding force in this band.  I loved working with these guys. Brian Lawlor on bass, Dennis Jacoby, Frank Innamoratto, Jay Wiley on drums I also joined forces on keyboard with Andy Maher and his crew, including more of an alternative rock set of songs.  Ted Fink, Rich Bitner, Mike McKendry, and many others.  It's all good.
In spite of the band experience being fun, I missed the original music Pat and I wrote for August Sky, and I decided to perform solo, primarily on the streets.  Busking.  It was a whole different experience.  Unplugged, right out there, on the gritty street corners, brushing elbows with the hustling and bustling passers-by, some stopping to listen, talk, watch.
I think this busking things helped me to get to the soul of music, the soul of the city.  It was so immediate.  Intense.  I am so grateful to all the people who helped make this street musician experience so rich for me.
Check out this link to a song I wrote on a bench in Rittenhouse Square called "September Painting" which appears on our second August Sky albums called "Flight."  "We're all tied together, these creatures and me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mA1rUPCv6jc#!
Thank you, Philadelphia.

Buskers at Dasiwa

Today at Dasiwa Cafe was very cool.  We had buskers performing on stage at the quaint cafe in Fairmount.  N. 26th and Aspen, to be exact.  Tim Laborie performed solo (in the past he has performed with his acoustic band Elgie's Kitchen) and his Dylanesque performance was superb.

Huey Praise-Dobler McBanjo played a mean and sensuous claw-hammer style banjo with an amazing array of tunings.
Great performances by both artists.

Looking forward to the Fairmount Arts Crawl on April 29th, Dasiwa Cafe, 2-4 PM, no cover.  Just great music, good java, and cool company.  Hope you can be there....

Old School

I am so Old School.  I play acoustic guitar, unplugged.  I sing, no mic, no amp.  I play harmonica.  Au natural.
I sing in the train station and on city streets.  No stage.  No light show.  No smoke or back-up singers or dancers.
I know in this day and age it's not very interesting.  Imagine, a song, just a poem set to music.  Hmmm.  No commercial value whatsoever.
My biggest competition is technology.  Cell phones, the iPod, any hand-held device where the user has earplugs or headphones and is tuning out the environment around him.  Disconnected from his surroundings.
People are choosing more and more to disconnect from their surroundings.  I can hardly blame them.  But I find it sad.
Imagine, not wanting to take in the world around you.
So, I sing my songs.  I offer poems and music.  Half the people who walk by are listening intently to something else...music, perhaps, or the spoken word.  They walk past me, not seeing me at all.  "Nobody sees me, nobody cares, I'm like an empty box on a cellar shelf" are the words in one of my original songs.
It's not very zen to not be in the moment.  To be disconnected like that.
And then I look up.  A solitary woman is listening to my song "Summertime," the old standard from Porgy and Bess.  She applauds.  She has been listening to the whole song.  She has made my day.
She places a dollar in my guitar case, smiles and thanks me.  As she walks away, I start my next song, and original called "Starting Over."
I sing.  I start over.  Waiting for my next listener in a sea of technology.

The Poignancy of It All

The other day I was touched by several encounters.  First, I had just arrived at my spot in Suburban Station and I was beginning to unpack my ax and a woman came up to me and handed me a dollar.  Just because.  I smiled and said, "But I haven't even started playing..." and she said, "That's o.k.  That's o.k."  She smiled and walked away.  Two minutes later a young African-American woman walked over to me and said, "Mr. David Reichenbacher?"  I said, "Yes, you must be from Rhodes Middle School" where I taught for fifteen years in the heart of North Philadelphia.  She told me how she had been active in my peer mediation program.  I vaguely remembered her name and face, but to tell you the truth, fifteen years really changes people's appearances, especially  between the ages of ten and twenty-five.  Then she smiled, and I remembered her eyes.  Yes, the eyes.  She told me how she loved the program and how everyone loved me.  Well, I'm not sure that was true, but it surely was comforting to hear.  And sometimes we tend to remember only the positive things or even rewrite history, and that can be a good thing, especially if there was a lot of negative.  Which there was.  In North Philly.  But there was a lot of good, too.  And I'm glad she and I could celebrate that for a moment at least.  Thank you, Sweetheart, for that moment.
And then a few minutes later a young man in a worn army jacket, obviously drunk, but harmless, stood before me, listening to my song, rocking slightly to the rhythm.  At the end of the song, he said, "I have five dollars.  Play me something happy, and I'll take four back.  Would you do that for a veteran?"  I said, "Of course."  I played him "Hear Comes the Sun" by George Harrison.  He loved it.  "Play me another, and I'll give you another dollar."  So I played him an original, and he loved that, too.  He told me his wife was in jail, and she was about to be released.  And that he could sing and he was a writer.  I asked him what he wrote, and he stood there, looking off into the distance.  "Hold it, wait a minute, I'll see if I can remember..."  He stood there, staring...  I started playing softly, background music to his thinking.... "No, wait minute, I think I got it."  Then he broke into a blues rap, obviously original.  Full of pain and soul.  When he finished, he handed me the five spot and I gave him three back, and he smiled and hurried off down the hall, blending into the crowd.
I thank the woman who gave me a dollar on faith, the young former student who expressed her warm memories, and the vet who was struggling to make sense of this world.
Such blessings.

Swan Song

Philadelphia is a great city.  The music scene is fabulous.  Jazz, rock, folk, blues, rap, R&B, classical...Philly's got it all.  I've been in Philadelphia twenty years, and I've enjoyed being part of the musical fabric of this city.  I've given a lot to it, and it has given a lot to me. 
I've played in many venues and with three bands, but the experience which has shaped me most as a musician is my busking on the streets and in Suburban Station.  I've been playng on the streets now for three years.  The experience has strengthened my voice and my guitar playing.  I've enjoyed adding harmonica to my sound.
Now I am turning the page.  Moving to Texas.  Corpus Christi to be exact.  Eight years ago August Sky, the acoustic band my wife and I had, played in Port Aransas, just north of Corpus Christi.  I got a taste of the music scene then.  I'm looking forward to carving out my niche as a performer with new venues, and perhaps new musicians.  During a recent visit to Corpus, we ate at a restaurant and our waiter happened to be a bass player in a rock band.  I looked out the window onto the street and saw the perfect spot for busking.  Across the street, between two bars where they have live music.  I'm sure I'll meet musicians and find places to play and share my music.
Who knows.  Maybe I'll continue this blog as http://www.buskingincorpuschristi.blogspot.com/.
I feel sad leaving Philadelphia and my musician friends.  This is my swan song.  You've all been so good to me.
I hope I'm leaving you all with some fond memories as well.
Rock on, everyone of you....

Celebration for a Gray Day

The other day in Suburban Station an amazing "happening" happened.  I was singing next to Au Bon Pain where there are several tables for people to sit and enjoy their java and a group of people, maybe twenty, took up residence at the tables next to me.  Two or three middle-aged women rode herd on about fifteen young girls, all between four and ten years old, teeming with energy and giggles.  I started singing "Itsy, Bitsy, Spider" and caught the attention of one, then two, who elbowed the others and sat up and listened with bright eyes.  One jumped up and walked over to me, then another.  Soon I had a small audience, all smiles and eventually singing along.  "Oh, sing another," they called, as I ended with "...crawled up the spout again."  I began to sing "The People on the Bus," where each verse you name someone on the bus, like the babies, who go "Wah, wah, wah."  Soon the wheels were going round and round, the driver was saying "move on back," and the mothers were going "sh, sh, sh."  We were all having a grand old time.  I notice now that several adults were grinning, enjoying the singing, probably wishing they could join in.  Then some of the girls took up ballroom stance and started dancing.  They explained it was Kelly's birthday, and wouldn't I sing "Happy Birthday" to her, which I did.  There was applause, laughter, giggles.
It was all so innocent.  Yet at the next table down, a woman was still passed out.  She had been there all day.  When I had arrived earlier to busk, she was lying on the floor.  The police had come and escorted her out of the station.  They said she had been drunk yesterday as well.  An hour later she returned to the same table, only to fall asleep again.
As she lay there, passed out again in her drunkenness, the children danced, sang happy birthday, giggled.  They wanted to sing another song, so I sang "Colours" by Donovan, and they made up verses, adding their own colors to Donovan's, with objects which make them feel the best, when they see them in the morning, when they rise. 
All such innocense, existing side-by-side with drunkenness, the grittiness of the city.  These white kids were obviously killing time till their train would take them to the suburbs, to their safe communities, away from underbelly of the city, which had not seemed to rub off on them in the least bit during their day of pre-Christmas shopping.  I wanted to sing another song by Donovan which talks about the derelict buildings and huddling in the cold, but I figured, why spoil their party, why pop their bubble. 
On the other hand, maybe I missed a teaching moment.
Merry Christmas.

Lesson Learned

The world is not such a touchy-feely place.  Every once in a while I'm reminded of this.  Like the other day, for example.  I was singing my heart out in the subway concourse, and a heavy set woman, full of bags and layers, walked up to me and stood there, listening, eyeing my guitar case with the few dollars and coins that were in it.  Then she looked up at me.  Sometimes people ask me for money, and I figured, this is what was coming, so I sang on, smiled at her, waited for the question.  Finally at the end of the song, I greeted her.  She smiled at me warmly and said "Continue making music.  You sound good."  Then, to my surprise, she pulled out a wallet, stuffed with papers coupons, and found a ten-dollar bill.  She placed it in my case and smiled and then started to walk away.  I couldn't believe it.  I thanked her for her incredible generosity and I knew it was a hardship for her to give me that much money.  As she passed, I reached out to shake her hand, but because she was loaded down with bags, she didn't take my hand.  I touched her elbow and thanked her again.  Suddenly her face snapped into a rage and she hissed at me, "Don't you f**kin' touch me."  She turned around, went back over to my guitar case, reached down and took back her ten-dollar bill, turned at walked away, cursing at me as she left.  I called out an apology after her, but I don't think she heard it, as she disappeared around the corner.
I was temporarily disabled by this encounter.  I couldn't sing.  I forgot lyrics.  I took a coffee break and tried to sort out what had just happened.  I felt like packing it up and going home.
But I didn't.  I took some deep breaths, picked up my guitar, and started singing again.  Slowly I regained my mojo.  A few smiles later and dollars later, I began to feel whole again.
In a way, I thank that woman for reminding me, we all have our limits.  We all need to respect each other's space and sensibilities.  I just feel sad about the whole encounter.  But maybe I'm understanding human beings just a little bit better.