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Street Prophets Friday: Street Performers [1]

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Date: 2023-01-13

Sometime when I was in high school, I met all the regular buskers who worked State Street in Madison, Wisconsin. Well, all of them but the guy who sounded like James Taylor. He was an odd fish, never talked with the others. There were four other musicians who played regularly when I began hanging out downtown. Then there was Truly Remarkable Loon, the juggler, who regularly worked in a tiny park at the top of the street:

But I hung out with the musicians. I suppose it was one of my older brothers who got me started by introducing me to the Daves. They were both bearded guitar players and singers. They were called Rock and Roll Dave and Country Dave. Rock and Roll Dave was raucous, wild and perhaps a bit dangerous. Country Dave was older, mellower and more my speed. I'd find a spot to sit nearby and listen, chatting with Country Dave between songs and when the sidewalks emptied. Sometime toward the end of my first summer of evenings spent hanging out downtown, I walked up the street with Country Dave and was introduced to Catfish Stephenson. And hey, an old friend of mine, one that I used to go trick-or-treating with, was sitting there listening. Catfish was another guitarist/singer. He played blues and country. He played covers of Robert Johnson and old Hank Williams and stuff I’d never heard of. I was intrigued and became a regular listener. Friendship with the Daves who worked the lower half of State Street and Catfish who usually hung out somewhere in the middle also got me introduced to Saxophone Steve Wolf who usually set up closer to the Capitol end of State Street.

I got to be friends with all of them over the years. When I was going to college I designed business cards for Catfish and Steve. When Catfish packed up his guitar case in the wee hours, I'd walk him to his truck and we'd drive down to La Hacienda, the best Mexican restaurant open at that hour. Some nights I'd go hang out at Steve Wolf's place where we'd eat marinated hot wings and play chess.

I remember walking everywhere in those days, the occasional bus ride, but 10 miles was a pretty routine walk at 3 or 4 in the morning.

I always felt safe around all of them. I suppose it’s a privilege of being a fairly large person, but I was never much of a fighter. Catfish attracted professional musicians and those studying music at the university at the bottom of the street would stop and stare. His fingering was worth a stare. Always a good crowd around Catfish. He was small and hard and wiry and delightfully snarky, the unruly drunks didn't linger long. They were more likely to collect around Rock and Roll Dave who could outdrunk any of them and keep playing or around Saxophone Steve who may not have been exceedingly tall, but had spent a great deal of his youth working in his parents’ rodeo show in Wyoming and also worked as a professional welder. Wrestling bulls and oxy-acetylene tanks gives a person the strength to reposition frat boys before they vomit in your horn case.

Ah, but listen to me wallowing in nostalgia. The well-misspent nights of my youth. I don’t know why I felt the need to write about these people tonight, but other than Catfish, I don't think anyone has written much of anything about the other State Street buskers I hung around with back in the late 80s, early 90s.

A bit of Catfish playing a Rolling Stones cover is in order I think:

On a trip Mrs the Werelynx and I took to London in August to attend a wedding, we stopped by Covent Garden one morning.

The London Underground has style.

Covent Garden Market

Pricey, touristy, but kinda charming all the same.

Outside the market, an old Covent Garden tradition, the street performers set up and put on their shows, following a schedule. We caught the act of Spikey Will, a veteran performer and something of a Covent Garden institution, practically a landmark, if not a national treasure.

Spikey enlists a massive tourist to assist— forgot where the tourist was from, Poland? Sweden?

Massive tourist steadies himself by holding the hands of other massive tourists (Marko the Werelynx in the Pink Floyd shirt) and steps onto the Spikey, bed-of-nails sandwich.

Spikey’s pitted back after the stunt

There’s something about the cheesy jokes, the polished patter that I find utterly charming. There's something about the spirit of a person who puts themselves out there, on the street, making a living by entertaining.

Thanks for stopping by on this Friday the 13th, a lucky day to post a comment in an open thread.

This is an open thread.

Ehem.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/13/2147076/-Street-Prophets-Friday-Street-Performers

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