Penn Jillette Quotes

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 a kid, there was so much talent outside of recorded music.

I'd go to the farmers' market in Santa Barbara, and I'd put out my guitar case, and I'd test out these little ditty songs that I would write, and I would get a couple of avocados, a bag of pistachios, and, like, fifteen bucks. That was a lot of money for me.

I headed out to have a breather at the stage door, dressed in my tramp costume. I had my bowler hat between my feet and there were passers-by, and one of them turned back and said, 'Do you need help, brother?' And $1 fell into my hat!

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again.

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'm constantly warning people that are involved in my life that I can go busk and make a living. I can make my rent in New York City in the subway, I promise, if I'm forced to.

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 tour a lot and interview a lot. I'm on the Internet and doing stuff. I go out and promote. I've got a bass drum and a sandwich sign and a washboard. You just have to shout louder and louder that you're still alive.

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

I've never not appeared in front of a live audience for any longer period than a month or two.

There's pride on Bourbon Street for the musicians that work there. They take it very seriously. I've never worked there or played in band there, but it's a part of the city. They play for the tourists and represent a whole different side of the culture of our city.

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 was homeless and I was in San Diego and I started singing in a local coffee shop and people started coming to hear me sing.

I've been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.

I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else.

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

I used to be a street singer in San Francisco.

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.

Street performing can be a great teaching ground and a barometer for what you're doing. It's rough and unforgiving at times, but it can be wild and fun and a real open canvas for your creativity.

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

The truth is there's always a hum of people playing folk music in cities.

Passyunk Productions is our film & tv production company. The name comes from a street in Philly, Passyunk Avenue, where the concept of The Roots was born, as Ahmir and I started out busking on the corner of 5th & Passyunk back in the early '90s.