In the mid 70's,
I developed a passion for street performing and for several months
played guitar 5 or 6 days a week in an old time string band in
San Diego. We played at the beach, the city parks, downtown, and
anywhere we could find a crowd. We played in pizza parlors for
dinner, for square and contra dances, and for anyone who would
listen. We were actually pretty good, and lined up a number of
paid gigs from people who heard us in public. At one point we
auditioned at a topless bar in downtown San Diego and the dancers
attempted to boogaloo to fiddle and banjo tunes. At the beach
one day, on a sunny afternoon, some band members from the then
popular Loggins and Messina band happened to be lying close by
on their beach towels, heard us, and invited us back to their
hotel rooms to jam. We didn't end up going, I'm sorry to say.
Finally, our banjo player entered the later stages of pregnancy,
and we disbanded. I wasn't ready to quit however, and so helped
organize a group of other local musicians into a traveling street
performing unit. We decided to spend the summer of 1976 traveling
across the US, and making our living as street performers. We
drew up a list of possible performance sites with the largest
crowds and headed east. We had many adventures along the way but
my favorite performance was at Yellowstone National Park. I had
visited there as a child and knew the layout. It had occurred
to me that a perfect venue for a street performing band was the
Old Faithful Geyser. It was a national shrine, visited by thousands
of people every day.
It was a street performers dream come true. The geyser erupted
every hour, on the hour, all day long. Crowds would start gathering
25 minutes before each eruption. A sleeping geyser is pretty dull.
A couple hundred people would be standing around with nothing
to do. We would take out our instruments, open our cases on the
ground, burst into song, and play for a captive audience. We made
money at a good clip until the moment the geyser erupted, and
then all attention was focused away from the us. As soon as the
eruption was over, everyone left, we divided up the money, and
then a new crowd would start to gather, and we would repeat the
show.
We performed in this fashion for a couple of days until the head
ranger for the park decided that there was a problem. After consultations
and discussion, we were granted permission to perform in front
of the main lodge in the park, but to avoid geysers and other
natural features. The park administration drew up new public guidelines
to implement this rule. No more performances at Old Faithful.
Our income at the lodge turned out to be much lower than that
at Old Faithful, and so we packed up and headed for Mount Rushmore.
But that's another story!
This article by Ryan Thomson copyright 1996