The Buskers Blog

Our Names Lit Up On A Marquee...

KZ writes: "I'm not trying to over-advertise this gig, but I couldn't pass this up. I passed through Chateaugay (NY) last week returning from Fiddleheads JamCamp. Craig's song "Spank That Tambourine" has a line in it, We know that we'll never see our names lit up on a marquee; well, here is that marquee with our name on it, so he might need to consider a new line. Hope to see you in Chateaugay this Friday."

Just for the record, folks, here's another from the archives, Capitol Center for the Arts, Concord, NH (5/12/11). We are totally legit, people. Clearly.

Music Returns to the League of NH Craftsmen Fair

Music has been fully restored to the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen Fair and we were invited to be a part of it. For several years they scaled it back to next to nothing. Apparently the reason wasn't so much the cost of paying performers; it was the ASCAP licensing fees and live audio engineer that made it prohibitive. This year the board finally got around the problem by having performers provide their own sound, which we are all used to lugging around, anyway, and only hiring groups that can play exclusively original and public domain music. So The Buskers returned, after several years, to the stage (which could have been smaller, though a bigger tent would be an improvement–a lot of the audience ended up listening from the food tent across the way to get out of the hot sun. Next year!).

Our three sets yesterday were, more than ever, a tour of our extensive original songbook, and though CD sales will never be what they were back in the days before streaming, we did a pretty brisk business at the merch table, thanks to an older, old school crowd (and two very charming salespeople). Why pay money to own music when you can stream it for free? Because the income from CD sales and digital downloads is the only way a band like ours, with limited exposure, can afford to keep recording our music. With as little as one tenth of a cent per streaming–on songs we have to pay a fee for to upload to iTunes or CDbaby, we can never recoup the four or five thousand dollars spent in the studio. So thank you, again, to all of you who have supported us along the road with a CD or download purchase. 

 

Karen, one of our two lovely merch table tenders.

Kyle Crane w/ Crystal Bowersox

Just off a tour wirth Everest opening for Neil Young, our former drummer Kyle Crane and his band Monte Mar played at the Sinclair in Cambridge, MA Tuesday night, opening for and backing up Crystal Bowersox.  I believe Kyle said they only had two rehearsals with her before the tour, but you wouldn't know.  They were a great complement to her style.   So good to see Kyle again, and KZ and I appreciated his putting us on the guest list. 

But I'd sold my Telecaster a couple of days before, and of course their guitarist played a Tele all night and got some great timbres and textures out of it.  sigh.  

Crystal Bowersox and Monte Mar, The Sinclair, Cambridge, MA, 3/5/13

Cabaret To Country & Western

What kind of moonlighting are The Buskers up to when not on tour together? Here are two very different events coming up that Craig will be playing piano for: On Saturday, February 6th, he will accompany cabaret singer Elizabeth Soychak again as she returns  from Manhattan to her hometown of Tilton, NH to raise funds for the community kitchen.  This event was sold out last year.  www.elizabethsoychak.com

The next Saturday, February 13, he will be part of the large back-up band for country singer-songwriter Bradley Parker when he performs songs from his two albums at the 100-seat  venue at Strings & Things in Concord, NH.   Craig's piano is featured prominently through much of Brad's latest album Cold November Night.  For more info on this one, call Strings & Things at 603-228-1971 or visit www.bradleywparker.com

Maria Muldaur & Her Garden of Joy Jug Band

 

Thank you New Hampshire friends who came down to MA to see us open for that irrepressible diva of ragtime and early blues Maria Muldaur at The Bull Run.  What a night.

I know a fair shake of tunes from early days, but I confess –oh, Lord, forgive a sinnuh - the onliest other jug band I seen before last night was Washboard Jungle, and they'd be quick to caveat, they're a  postmodern jug band–i.e. not exactly purists of genre or instrumentation. What would a Washboard performance be without a rendition of the immortal “Brandy,” I ask you?  

But the Garden of Joy Jug Band, led by ragtime guitarist phenom Kit Stovepipe, who Ms. Muldaur describes as looking like a cross between Rasputin and Oilcan Henry, are deep into the genre, and dress the part, too, from beaver hats, beards and mustachios down to big leather boots.

In addition to Kit, the Joys in last night's line-up included The Callus Brothers: the ever smiling Devin Champlin on guitar, banjo, fiddle, mando, uke and I forget what else, & Lucas Hicks on percussion – e.g. spoons and bones, tin cans, strategically placed call bell dings, and a thudding bass drum made out of a suitcase. Oh, and (on one tune only), that hilarious instrument, the jug, which if you’ve never heard it played, sounds like a bass fart. The Joy’s lively pulse and propulsion came from non-farting (or at least, none anyone noticed) bass player Kurt Jensen, a Muldaur regular, who was very friendly to the opening band.

They’re all from Washington state. Maria, of course, is from San Francisco, like her old buddies Taj Mahal and  (my musical hero) Dan Hicks, both of whom are on the Garden Of Joy album just out.  Between sets, Maria sweetly gave me a copy, but since I’ve just woken up I hain’t listened to it yet.

Curious, I asked the percussionist about his musical background.  He studied horns in college. I believe he said he studied under Chuck Israels, who, to confuse things further, is a jazz bassist, but I looked him up and he does teach at Washington State. So there you have it, the straight and narrow path laid out clearly for you: How To Become A Jug Band Percussionist.   Apparently there’s a pretty big revival of the tradition up there on the stoned coast..  My wife found it pretty funny that these guys are trying so hard to look old and worn-in when most musicians are doing all they can to look as young as they can.  I don't know Maria's age, but man, she wears it well, and I'm sure her little lopsided smile has won her many hearts in the 35 years since her first days with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.  Tough cookie, though. She lost her temper and stopped cold twice when people in the audience snapped pictures after she had requested no pictures please while performing.  And my favorite song of the evening was her almost-a-ballad version of Dan Hicks tune, "Let It Simmer," a song about, as she said, anger management. 

The sound guy at the Bull Run Steve is also a tough cookie; a hard-ass with a heart of a softie.  I would recommend getting him on your side if you ever play there.   Of course, you never want to annoy the sound guy, anyway--oh, the unconscionable power they hold over us--but Steve is very capable and quick and got the lowly opening act a good line check in about 15 minute.!  And the sound in that big room was good. 

Our bands were extremely well matched, if I do say so.  The Buskers have a great affinity for old fiddle tunes and songs from the early jazz and popular songbook, and Maria’s audience  knew and appreciated that repertoire. Last night, in a set of six or seven tunes, we played Dave McCarn’s "Cotton Mill Colic "(1926) and Fats Waller’s “Loungin’ At The Waldorf” (1936).  But The Buskers, Paul and I especially, spend more of our woodshed hours songwriting than studying other peoples' tunes or styles. And we are so not purists (so impure, did I hear you mumble?)   We each come into the band from  a different direction, with different, if compatible, agendas. We don’t even dress alike in performance. And as for music, we just bring stuff and throw it in the blender, see how it looks and tastes. Ew, it’s green.  Happy Halloween.

‘Human Kindness Day’ Concert, May 10, 1975

[Editor's Note: I had no idea so many people would weigh in on this when I wrote it back in 2005. I just noticed that old comments no longer appear, so I have cut-and-pasted every comment to date below, w/ the names (but not the addresses) of the various contributors. Thanks, everyone, for recording your experiences on that Day Of Irony. 10/4/11]

Talking about music in D.C. in the 1970’s… I only really knew the scene long-haired white kids would know, but one notable exception was the Human Kindness Day concert on the Mall in 1975. The headliners were Graham Central Station and Stevie Wonder. It was free, outdoors, on a perfect spring weekend and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, so my girlfriend and I and a few other friends walked downtown, working our way through the crowds and up close to the stage, where we spread out our blankets and laid back to enjoy the music along with 100,000 others. We were the only whites I could see. In my usual state of consciousness at the time (both heightened and diminished) I eventually noticed we seemed to be attracting more than our share of trash for some reason—until I realized people behind us somewhere were tossing their crabshells, etc. in our direction. But the families directly behind us kindly showed their disapproval of that and closed ranks around us. We thanked them and got back to watching the concert (and making out).

Then toward the end of the set there was some kind of commotion behind us. Suddenly everyone surged up and forward and toppled the crowd about eight feet closer to the stage. It was scary, but we were able to gather up our blankets and rearrange ourselves. When it happened again even I began to get the vibe that all was not well, and my friends decided to leave. I was ripped—we’d miss Stevie Wonder—but we picked our way back out through the crowd, finally emerging on city streets, out of range of the loudspeakers. On the edge of the crowd we saw people running around, kind of crazy, and one dazed white guy in his 20's or 30's walking around with blood streaming down his face.

For me it had been a cool afternoon of brotherly love and Graham Central Station. D.C was a cauldron of racial complexity, but I liked to think of myself as pretty downtown, pretty “street” in a long-haired, barefoot kind of way, and I was always acting counter-phobic to feel alive. Life was a dare, sometimes.

Back home with my parents that evening--I think it was a Sunday--I overheard on the news how "roving gangs of youths with chains and knives” had been robbing and assaulting, even stabbing--scores of whites. Dramatic. I hadn’t told my parents where I'd been, and I was glad I hadn’t. They would have “freaked,” as we used to say.

I just did a little research on the concert. Apparently the D.C. police agreed to back off to the perimeter (in 1975 police had a bad rep) and let some 800 volunteers with armbands do security. But only about 200 volunteers showed, and they had little training, so there was effectively no police presence for a crowd of over 100,000, which must have been a heady temptation to people wanting to make trouble.

But what I heard at the time was a rumor going around that the suspiciously perky-sounding Human Kindness Day coincided with Malcolm X’s birthday (it’s actually May 19--close, but no cigar), and some brothers thought the whole thing was yet another conspiracy, in this case to divert righteous black anger. Maybe it was, but after all, Jimmy Carter was the president, not Karl Rove or Donald Rumsfeld.

Where I live now-–New Hampshire—has its strengths, especially natural beauty, but it is way too homogenous racially and ethnically (and politically) for its own good. People here are serious about NASCAR and snowmobiling and Harleys and other pastimes just wildly popular with most African-Americans. And music? The headliners at Meadowbrook Farm (the big local outdoor concert venue) are touring geriatric rock acts and country hotties. No hip-hop, no old-school funk, no jazz (except Ray Charles back in the ‘90’s—I played keyboards with the opening act, and don’t you forget it!).

I haven't yet seen Stevie Wonder live, but I’m a fan, and am currently working on incorporating a bunch of his tunes into my repertoire for both my jazz gigs and The Buskers.

Comments:

Tom Hill said:
I was there that day, remember it as a saturday tho. Was a tense and ugly scene, there were bands of black youth punks running through the crowd, grabbing purses. Every so often the whole crowd would get spooked and jump up and run 10 or 15 feet, giving one the fear of getting trampled. An Ag Dept guy who had been working that Saturday walking down Constituion Ave got stabbed and blinded in the eye. Not much Human Kindness on that day.

Craig replied:
Well.. thousands of people and hardly any police..it just takes a couple dozen hardass hoods to mess a good party up, but I'll always remember those strangers around me– instinctively good, protecting us despite our being oblivious white kids they didn't owe shit to. I was so disappointed to walk away from Stevie Wonder, though.

Richard Lion said:
Does anyone remember the "Chocolate City" banner that was up in front of the Stage? A group of 6 or 7 of us suburbanites attended and about the time Stevie was to begin the "trains" of people stampeding in the crowd got too scary for us to remain. I remember using all my strength to hold off people so me and my friends could get on the same metrobus.. We didn't care where it took us - just away.. Come to think of it I was a bit of a hero for a few months... We all had a strong buzz on to add to the adventure..

Canuco said:
Human Kindness Day....well I was there and I have to agree, those punks sure did make a mess of things. What was supposed to be a great weekend outing turned into a bad experience. I was serving in the United States Army Honor Guard at the White House back then and was sitting on the lawn with some friends when I noticed about 50 feet from me some black kids yanking a camera from some white female, she was also slapped. The people, both black and white around her got up and started stampeding in our direction. It looked like a wildebeest herd at full trollop. Well, you could feel the ground shudder from the force of thousands of feet thumping on it. In addition, seeing a wave of more and more humans rushing in panic towards you is a strong motivator. I got up, left my blanket and hauled ass outta there...hoping not to trip or fall. I did make it out of the lawn and onto the street, disgusted and ashamed. What should have been a pleasant afternoon of music and fellowship turned into a farce and only brought to the forefront for all to see just how angry the times were, especially for the those living the dog life and on the smelly end of a shitty stick. I didn't hang around to see the outcome but I made it a point to never expose myself inside a crowd as a reveler to potentially get stomped to death by a panicked mass of "human kind".

Mo said:
Well, I wasn't there but my dad was(I wasn't born yet) He still talks about that day. Sexual assaults, robberies, fighting and above all, Stevie Wonder on stage pleading with the crowd to stop.

Hook said:
I was there to visit the Smithsonian. I remember getting jumped and my girl friend's purse being stolen. Prior to then I never had a prejudiced bone in my body. Since then I am very guarded around African Americans and no longer are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. This experience effects me for the rest of my life.

Craig replied:
That's what trauma will do to you. A girl gets sexually assaulted by one guy and she has to work through issues with men for the rest of her life; a black kid gets stopped by the cops every time he drives through a white neighborhood, watched every time he enters a store, looked at nervously by white men when he passes on the street at night--no doubt that has an effect on you, too; and so on... hey--what about Jews and Arabs? They're conditioned to be pretty suspicious of each other. Therapy often helps, but only when people want to make a change. Each new story added to this post just reminds me how fortunate my friends and I were that day. I wnat to reiterate that we were surrounded by good, family-oriented, funk-loving people who didn't even stand for crabshells being tossed at us. God damn it, we all just wanted to dance to Larry Graham! And we did. But I remember well the anger seething under the surface in mostly segregated D.C. Anacostia was no bed of roses to live in or to drive through. Are things any better now?

Bob Metzler said:
I was the Stage Manager representing the National Park Service for Human Kindness Day. My picture is in Ebony behind Stevie Wonder. As I stood on the stage I would watch the crowd move like a snake from one side to the other. It was scary. I had done many other events on the mall and around DC and I had never seen a crowd that was so bent on anger and violence.

Craig replied:
eah, you would never expect Altamont on the Mall. Do you remember what the performers did, if anything, to try to calm things down? I'm curious.

smo-mo said:
I do remember Stevie said, "A moment of silence for the one who made life possible," and that was his effort to try to calm everyone. He might have said Alah, but I can't recall. Anyway, we left when we saw it wasn't working.

Ziveli said:
us three friends were there for the day - we were also caughed in the wave rushes of people, and we would pick up the little kids sitting around us with their mom and dad whose hands were full with other kids, in turn they shared their blankets with us, and we were all safe at the end of the day....the crowd was repetedly instructed to sit down and get completely quiet before Stevie would sing, and as I remember it, the crowd sat down and got quiet...

Frank said:
I was there as a member of the U.S. Park Police. I was part of a contingent of about 30 officers at the intersection of 17th & Constitution. We were prohibited from attempting to go into the crowd as we would easily have been swallowed up by the sheer numbers of an already anti-police, and I might add, anti-white crowd. What impressed me was the apathy that older blacks had for the condition of well meaning, albeit naive, white suburban kids who simply came to enjoy the day and the music but who had to endure the beatings and assaults of a bunch of younger black hoodlums. So much for racial harmony. It was a day that I'll never forget.

Steve said:
That day was a trip. I was home on leave from the Air Force and was sitting on the grass drinking TJ Swan and smoking some good weed. All of the sudden folks started running saying it's a bomb!!! Me and my partner looked up and we saw something black floating in the air. Naturally it was just a balloon but when you see a couple of thousand folks running and you were as high as we were... IT WAS A FREAKING BOMB!!! We laughed our asses off later... DC in the seventies was something else...

Bruce Bennett said:
I was there with a bunch of my college buddies from Howard U. I believe this was the 2nd of the 2 'Human Kindness' festival concerts. And yes, I saw the packs of thugs attacking any whites within sight. And the trampling could be seen as roves of people were mowed down like dominos. Seeing the innocent whites getting beaten and abused was terrifying and disgusting; the least of which was a teenage white boy get his wallet snatched. Better than the girl who was dragged about 30 yards by her backpack or the young man whose face was gashed by a broken soda bottle while trying to protect his girlfriend from being molested. It was the worst outdoor concert I've ever attended and changed my attitude about attending non seating, outdoor shows.

Joe said:
I was there, with my broken leg in a cast. My mother was participating as an artist selling hand crafts near the Smithsonian Castle. We could tell that things were getting ugly in the crowd, and some DC teens got bold enough to grab jewelry from an adjacent stall. The moment we knew if was time to go was when three black 20 somethings snatched a white 1 year old infant from another adjacent stall. It was a dare, I'll assume. The father took off after the assailants, and a crowd took off after him. The mother was left, hysterical, holding her remaining child, and looking for the non-existent DC police. The father returned, about 15 minutes later, holding his infant. At that point, we literally threw our wares in the back of the car and got the fuck out of there. Later, we talked with a family friend who was a student at American University at the time. She had planned to walk over to see us, but by the time she was halfway across the Mall she had lost all the buttons on her shirt from hands grabbing her, trying to pull it open/off.

Fred Cox said:
I was there right in front of the sound board, 13 and by myself. I was a little shocked after the show hearing all these stories. I actually didn't witness any violence past what I might normally see in Capital Hill in those times. Everyone was nice to me. It was a big party, I was there till the end. It was a great show!

Joe Hamilton said:
I was 25 years old and driving for Arlington Red Top Cab that day. Very sad and scary and ironic, all the assaults and stabbings on Human Kindness Day. Don't it always seem to go...

GEAH said:
Ford was President in 1975. Carter wasn't President until 1977.

Craig replied:
Right; how could I have forgotten Gerry Ford? I love him for who he wasn't: Nixon.

msw said:
Wow! Im so glad I came upon this blog. I have often thought about that day in D.C..It was far from a human kindness day, but that's what it was supposed to be. I went downtown with a bunch of my friends from my high school in No. VA. It was pretty scary for a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds from a school in the suburbs. Every 10 minutes or so, we were "rushed" by a group of hoodlums. Later we found out they were stealing purses and other items. We did see Stevie though, so that made it all worth it.

Tammy H said:
Stevie Wonder was worth all the confusion and chaos that day. Sadly people were hurt and that's not right. God forgive the ones responsible. Stevie of course was awesome!!!!!! as always!!! @ msw... they weren't hoodlums just misguided kids. God bless you, not your place to judge.

Steve Kromer said:
Amazing to read this. I might have been the white kid that Bruce Bennet mentions in his post above. I got one-punched from behind and came up without a wallet. I remember all the things said above, about the crowds moving in waves and trampling everything and everyone in their paths. 33 years later, during the Obama inauguration festivities, I got to go back to that same spot, just under the Washington Monument and listen to Stevie Wonder - in peace. That was a cathartic moment.

Franklin Williams said:
Just stumbled across this blog after I saw a picture of the flyer for this event on another site..I too was there on that day..I got there extremely early and left before Graham finished his set..At that time being a D.C. public school high school senior about to graduate, I had a full slate of events (monkey business) on my agenda for that saturday and it was too beautiful of a day in my mind at the time to spend it all at the concert. So I did not witness any of the atrocities..But I am still disturbed by the events that took place after I left.. There was no excuse for the reported actions of those that lost their sanity and humanity that day.. Human Kindness Day will always be "Human Madness Day" to me..BTW I thought it was the 2nd annual event, but according to the flyer it was the 4th.. See the links below.. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dcsoulrecordings/387339894/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecluttery/3985707436/

Ruthie said:
I was 15 at the time and hitch hiked to the event from Arlington with my best friend, blanket and small cooler in hand. We sat down somewhere in the middle of the crowd with a good view of the stage, just two white girls enjoying the day. An hour or so later, we noticed bands of black youth going from blanket to blanket demanding watches, jewelry, and anything of value from defenseless white people. We inventoried our jewelry and put it in our pockets for safe keeping. At some point thereafter, I got the gut feeling that this black audience didn't want any white people amongst them. I shared this gut feeling with my friend, who didn't share the same feeling, and told her I wanted to go. Since she didn't feel the same way, I gathered up my stuff and headed out of the crowd toward the street (any street!). Some black boy, out of the blue, busted me up aside my head as I was walking by, and shook me up a bit, but once I made it to the street and latched on to a group of white people until I reached safety (and a ride into Virginia), I was okay. My friend made it home unscathed too, but I don't know her story. Clearly, it was a racial targeting! Since some of this is happening now, in 2011, it reminded me of this experience and that's how I came upon this blog.

Craig replied to Ruthie:
Racial profiling certainly lives on in 2011, but more often from the police side of the state. As the former park policeman wrote, the event was very poorly policed, if at all, so, as the audience was african american, the few who are always out to make trouble were, too, and D.C. was a tough, barely integrated town. Naive young white kids from over the bridge were easy to spot. I'm glad you were OK. And thank God no one got killed like happened at the white audience at Altamont, when the Hell's Angels were policing (another "what were they thinking?!" stunner), or the Who concert in Cincinnati, where the mostly white kids crushed the doors and left seven people dead.

D said:
Well it was Saturday & we knew there was free concert downtown but Judy & I said we weren't going to go but there wasn't anything else going on so we decided to check it out any way.We parked my Charger 500 & put her pocketbook & my wallet in the trunk.We just walked onto the monument grounds when we saw a poor white guy sitting under a tree with a ice pack on his right eye I said wow look at that poor guy.We then walked many two steps & looked to the rise I saw a white girl get her pocketbook ripped from her arm & her boyfriend took off after the afro americans guys,I thought good luck & all of a sudden there was eight or ten afro americans kids all around us with their hands in our pockets & who knows what else,we couldn't do anything and then they were gone just fast as they had came.We checked to see what they had gotten.They had stolen my pot & pipe which were together in a hand made silver stash box which I was very attached to but at least I still had my car keys which I was thankful they had not gotten & had thrown into the crown.I said lets get the hell out of here & we turned to walk back to car.I said I bet we haven't been her five minutes when I noticed that my watch which was on one of those leather watch bands with snaps was gone.Well needless to say my anger didn't really rise up until I got back in the car & at that point I must say I was really disappointed in human kind & I just wanted to be on my way.So much for human kindness day you all! PS PEACE BROTHER

Yemmy said:
OMG... I am sitting in my office here at work today talking with a younger co-worker, about life in DC when I was very young woman. And I suddenly remembered Human Kindness Day. I explained to my co-worker that on this day, we sat on the grass and listened to music and smoked weed. Then I mentioned how the people would suddenly start running for no reason. I laughed so hard explaining this to my coworker that I had her laughing as well. Then it dawned on me - I wonder if I googled "Human Kindness Day" would it bring up something. It brought me to this site. I also remember a white guy being beaten pretty bad and a tourist asked us if this function was some kind of rally or protest. I mentioned that it was neither, it is "Human Kindness Day" her replied was "WHAT"!!

Craig replied to Yemmy:
An appreciation for irony (which you obviously have) is the way to go. More fun than disappointment in the human race.