Down On The Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music (2024) Book Review

When I was getting into folk music in the 1980s and early 1990s, I found that it was everywhere in the Boston area, not just in the clubs, cafes and churches, but in the subways and on the streets, particularly around Harvard Square. Nearly every subway stop had someone performing, making the chore of waiting for a train actually enjoyable. Imagine that! And without even speaking a word to each other, we felt connected through the experience of listening to the music and, when we had a few coins to spare, contributing to those who were providing those moments, who were providing those snippets of songs that helped us along with our day. Music was a part of the city, and for me it was the most important part. Cary Baker is one of the most passionate and knowledgeable music lovers out there, his entire professional life revolving around music in some capacity. And in his new book, Down On The Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music, his knowledge and passion come across on every page. This is a book about those very people who make riding the subway and walking the streets more enjoyable, even more magical, through their presence, through their music. Some of the people profiled in this book you most certainly know (folks like Billy Bragg and Peter Case and Mojo Nixon), but you might not know these particular parts or aspects of their careers. This book is full of interesting stories.

The first couple of chapters take us to a specific spot in Chicago, giving us a taste of the musical history of the place, including the filming of The Blues Brothers. You’ll likely recall John Lee Hooker playing on the street in that film. Cary Baker provides some of his own personal history with the spot, the music being what drew him there again and again when he was growing up. And he relates a story that is something most of us would have loved to have done at one point or another, which is helping a musician get an album recorded. And he did that while he was still in high school. The artist in question was Arvella Gray, a musician who played on Maxwell Street. The book takes us to different parts of the country, from Washington Square Park in New York to the boardwalk of Venice Beach in southern California, with a few chapters about New Orleans in between (including one chapter that focuses on Tuba Skinny). It even takes us outside of the country, to Europe, that section beginning with a story about Elvis Costello getting arrested for playing on the streets. Some chapters focus on an area, while others focus on individual musicians, such as Mary Lou Lord, Cortelia Clark and Tim Easton. The chapter on Old Crow Medicine Show in particular includes some wild anecdotes, such as how busking led to a gig at Merlefest, where the band then continued to busk. The book contains quite a few surprises regarding the busking history of certain artists I had no idea played in the streets. A band like Poi Dog Pondering had extensive experience roaming the country, busking, before I’d become aware of them. And there are some great stories about that band here. Violent Femmes is another band I didn’t know played in the streets. I love the story about how a street performance led to those guys opening up for The Pretenders.

If you saw the documentary film Peter Case: A Million Miles Away, you probably recall the footage of Peter Case playing on the streets of San Francisco before the days of The Plimsouls, before even The Nerves. And if you are like me, you wanted to learn more about that time. Well, Cary Baker dedicates a chapter to Peter Case, providing some fantastic anecdotes about one of the country’s best singer/songwriters, including a crazy story about Allen Ginsberg sitting in with him on the street. (Now I need to read Peter Case’s book, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport.) Billy Bragg is another of the greats (Workers Playtime should be in every music lover’s collection), and in this book he talks about the influence busking has had on the way he performs, how that experience taught him the importance of determining the mood of a crowd. That’s one thing that is particularly interesting in this book, that busking was not just a way for these musicians to make money and to possibly get noticed by the record people, but also taught them things about performing that they carried into their careers in clubs and on larger stages.

While we get a feel for the history of busking, the book also addresses some of the modern concerns and challenges for street musicians, such as those presented by streaming services. If people no longer own CD players, then selling CDs is one method of earning money that is not available to the performers. And if people no longer carry cash, then the performers must have another way of accepting payment from passersby. I find that stuff fascinating, but it is not the main focus of the book. What Cary Baker and the musicians he interviewed really get across is the great joy of performing, and the need we as a society have for the music. What I felt all those years ago in Boston, that street music is an important, even integral, part of a community, of a city, is expressed here by the performers. As music fans, we all know that the live performances are where the action is, where the joy is. Well, what more immediate and more honest performance is there than that of the buskers?

Down On The Corner: Adventures In Busking & Street Music is scheduled to be published on November 12, 2024 through Jawbone Press. By the way, there is a cool section of photos, some of which were taken by Cary Baker himself in the early 1970s.