Tash Sultana Quotes

Well, playing a guy who writes songs and busks on Grafton Street in Dublin and falls in love with Marketa Irglova wasn't very difficult for me. There was very little acting going on.

When I moved to the East Village in the late seventies, I wanted to be a street performer, so I practiced daily. I never did work up the skills or the courage to perform on the street, though.

I was the highest-paid street performer, probably, in the history of Chicago. I was making like $800 a day.

In Irish law, busking is considered vagrancy - you can be arrested for it. It's risky asking people for money in public. So it's not like it's a high-art job. And people who do it as a high-art job make very little money.

I was just a folk singer. I cut my teeth on the streets, you know.

Well, everything about singing, I learned from busking. Everything I learned about songwriting, I learned from busking.

I'm a complete and utter busker.

When I went to England on my own, I became a busker. I played guitar for money in Leicester Square. And the guys who are supposedly blind and crippled, who aren't, got me after I'd collected a lot of money, took my money and threatened to break my arm if I ever came back to their 'kip,' their turf.

I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.

I've done my share of busking, and it's fun until it isn't. There are musicians in the subways that will make you cry, they're so good.

I was a street performer for two years.

I did pretty well busking. I would play two to eight hours a day, and I could make two or three hundred an hour.

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

I may have gotten my first job from 'Backstage.' I remember going to the Equity offices, and I signed up for an audition. I left. I was grabbing a coffee somewhere and looking at 'Backstage' and saw that there was an audition for another project going on at the same time. It was called 'Almost Heaven: The Songs of John Denver.'

I began singing in dive bars and really small clubs. I dragged my piano down the stairs, and I went down the street with my keyboard, and I would go to every different dive bar that I could get to agree to let me play. I'd call and pretend I was Lady Gaga's manager.

You get way better from playing to the passing public. You learn how to entertain. But it took me a good three years out on the promenade to figure that out. You also learn what makes them stop dead in their tracks and what doesn't.

When I was a street performer, before I had any songs of my own that anybody would stop and put in money for, I would always be doing covers. Even with covers, people wouldn't stop in the beginning.

In a typical day, I would wake up about 8 A.M., pile all my stuff into my mom's minivan - my guitar, my amp, CDs to sell, a table and a rug - drive it down to the street, and unload it all. I'd wait until about 12, then play for two hours. You could only play in two-hour intervals, so then I would move it all somewhere else.

When I was little, I had concerts on the subway, and old ladies came up to me like, 'You are so good!'

Maybe if you see me begging on the streets, you might find me doing The Stone Roses the next day.

I was on the train; I did play, but I also played in bars, in the streets, at birthday parties for people who discovered me on the train.

I don't busk any more because it's gotten too dangerous.

When I was 14, I auditioned for Michael Barrymore's 'My Kind Of People'.

I worked in retail for a bit and then I busked for two years. As soon as I started, I thought, 'I'll do busking until I'm 50 because this is the best job in the world.'

I'd get a train to some town and wander about to find a decent spot. Sometimes I'd play for three hours; sometimes I'd get moved on after three songs.