Busking Quotes

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

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 busked from the age of 13 until I was 18.

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

I hate to say it, but Christmas as a kid was always a moneymaking venture for me. I played trumpet, and a friend of mine who played trombone and a guy who played tuba, every Christmas we'd go out for three or four days beforehand and play Christmas carols on our horns.

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

I'm so lucky to not have to busk anymore, but I realized as soon as I didn't need to do it that I really missed it.

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

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.

'Vagabond' is about owning where I come from, understanding the real power music had to transport myself with, whether that's busking in Europe or getting number ones.

When a street musician lowered his violin to inquire, 'Hey lovely, what you got there?' she said, 'Musicians who ask questions,' and kept on dragging.

For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.

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.

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.

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 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'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.

The trick is not to make eye contact. They don't charge if you don't make eye contact.

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

I had a $1.50 from playing the ukulele after owning it seven minutes. I thought, "Hmmm, this has some possibilities."

To be honest, busking was a massive part of becoming aware of homelessness. I used to run into a lot of 'Big Issue' sellers and a lot of people on the street. It really opened my eyes to the kind of life that they live and the options that are open for them - or not, actually.

If you do street music, do it. So be it. That's not me.

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

The Drifter was this guy where I'd put a guitar on my shoulder and walk from town to town, find my way however I can, whether it's hitchhiking, on a bus, walking, whatever I've gotta do.