Andy Grammer Quotes

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

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.

I grew up in a really rural town, Stratford, Ontario, with 30,000 people. There's a big festival thrown in the town. A lot of people travel from all over the world to see it, and growing up, I actually used to busk on the street. I'd play my guitar, sing, and people would throw money in the case.

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.

Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals.

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.

One night I was standing on Third Avenue playing my guitar, when this big Irish policeman came strolling by, and stopped to listen to my singing and playing. When I was done, he politely handed me a ticket for disturbing the peace, while at the same time telling me how much he liked my voice. I wish I still had that ticket.

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

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.

When I'm not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I'll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.

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'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans.

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 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.

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.

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 growing up, there were a few musicians who would have regular gigs at restaurants, and I always thought it was so cool and unexpected how they would spontaneously perform. Being the ambitious kid that I was, I got into it and really studied it. I was so inspired by it.

Dance Monkey' is about the bad side of busking.

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.'

After school, instead of going into the restaurant scene, I very consciously took my guitar around everywhere I could, to Irish pubs and restaurants, and I played four nights a week to make ends meet.

Without busking, there is no Fantastic Negrito.