the folksinger
My third day living in New York, my girlfriend Jennie and I were walking through Washington Square Park when we stumbled on a street performance. It was the first I’d seen in the city. A man with camouflaged pants and desert army boots was standing in front of a crowd of about 30 or 40 people all sitting around him in rapt attention while he sang Woody Guthrie style folk songs about war and unions. He looked like any traveling bum musician I had ever seen. This excited me. I knew it was a political time, with the Republican National Convention being held just thirty blocks to the north, but the fact that a political folk singer could draw such a large crowd of passersby in the park gave me a lot of hope for my own street performing career. Around him several other people were playing along on their guitars. They looked shy and nervous. Seeing an impromptu jam session like this reminded me of home, and I regretted having left my guitar back at the apartment.
I was shy and nervous too, not having played publicly in New York yet. I was inspired though. The day before we had been welcomed to the city by half a million people in the streets protesting the Republican Convention. Later we had gone to see a radical documentary at a small art house theatre, and now this. I knew I had come to the right town.
I wanted to take part. I saw them playing and thought “I can do that!” I had the perfect song too, a fast aggressive cover of Dylan’s “When The Ship Comes In.” Perfect for the election and I figured a perfect song to rouse the crowd.
Jennie and I hung back while I complained that I was too scared to ask to play a song. Only the man with the desert boots had sung anything, appearing to be the default leader of the circle. The others strummed along contentedly if a little awkwardly.
An older black man walked by and the folksinger called out to him. “Come on over, we need some more diversity in the crowd,” he said. The man seemed a little embarrassed or annoyed, but complied good naturedly enough while the folksinger positioned him up front. “Here, I’ve got one you’ll like,” he said, then began playing “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” After the song the man nodded uncomfortably and quickly made his escape.
We took a seat with the crowd while I grew more and more anxious watching them play from the sidelines. Jennie kept egging me on, saying it was a perfect song and that the crowd was sure to love it. Finally I couldn’t take it any more and in between songs I got up and walked down to the folksinger. “Hi, I don’t have my guitar with me, but I have a song I’d like to play if I could borrow one,” I said with a bit of nervous elation. He seemed a little taken aback, and looked at me kind of funny for a moment before catching himself and smiling.
“Sure man, sure,” he said handing me his guitar. “Go for it.” He sat down with the crowd. I wasn’t really expecting him to give me his own guitar, but I was excited to play. I showed the others the chords quickly and then launched into the song. At first the crowd seemed confused, which struck me as odd. Back home, everyone always took turns trading off songs at an impromptu session like this. But pretty quickly I felt I had won them over. The folksinger was smiling and the crowd was enthusiastically clapping along. When I finished, people whooped and applauded. My first New York performance had gone well.
“Do another,” the folksinger called from the crowd. I hadn’t really planned on doing a second one, and didn’t know what to follow up with. I politely declined, but he urged me on.
(pg 1 of 2)
