Busking Beginnings

I was trying to do a bit of writing and piano playing in my somewhat jungle of a room the other day and ended up looking at old photographs instead. I love photographs, not the ones on your phone the ones that have a place in the home that someone has gone to the trouble of putting in a frame because they thought it was special and they are usually right about it. There's one or two that sit on top of my piano (among the debris) that can really hit me and send me back in time.

The photo below was taken outside Thomas Dillon's on Quay Street, I'm the fella playing my best tambourine and my pall Faichra O'Doherty is playing guitar. We met at music society when I first moved to Galway from Belfast in 2000 and in the summer of 2001 we became buskers. The spot in the photo, just across from Tigh Neachtain is still a hot spot for street performers today. We hadn't planned on busking, it just seemed like fun and a potential way to pay the rent while trying out the harmony singing we had practiced during weekends at Fiachra's home house in Ennistymon County Clare. I didn't get up home to Belfast much so I loved going to the O'Doherty house when I was invited despite the huge pressure from Faichra's parents to get our hair cut. Our favourite songs were the ones that showed off our harmonies like The Beatles, Neil Young and Simon and Garfunkel, we'd sing them for hours to get them right in a room with a piano and a guitar.

We did pretty well and the odd free pint or bag of cheesy bacon chips might appear in the guitar case among the shrapnel and on one occasion a little bottle of poitin. Busking is a great thing, both thrilling and nerve wrecking, you are totally exposed. It will toughen and tighten up any musician and break in a young mans voice pretty good. When you're busking the crowd is ever changing and moving in a hurry, it doesn't have to stop and take notice of you, kind of like the music industry I suppose. You have to focus on doing what you do do well and on the player beside you and now and again you'll look up and the whole street has stopped to listen. That's kind of how I still try to roll, focusing on playing well and maybe if I'm lucky that a song I write might just stop the whole street again.