BuskNY was proud to speak at Busker Ball 8, a showcase for the city’s most vibrant freelance performers, on Thursday. Under the direction of Theo Eastwind, the latest Busker Ball brought its focus to activism, criticizing the wrongful ejections, tickets, and arrests that have plagued the NYC subway performing community.
Grace Kalambay performs
BuskNY spoke and displayed the banner we used for our rally at City Hall, and the audience also heard a recorded update on buskers’ rights from Nick Broad of the Busking Project.
Performers included Lawrence Wilson, Eli Bridges and Ken Shoji, Theo Eastwind, Grace Kalambay, Cathie Russo, and Mr. Reed.
This Thursday we attended the 7th quarterly Busker Ball, an event organized by Theo Eastwind, in which some of the best buskers in New York performed at Williamsburg bar and music venue Spike Hill. Theo has been inviting us to speak about busker’s rights, distribute flyers and sell t-shirts for the past few Busker Balls.
The lineup for this season’s show:
Ken Ruan
Larry Wilson
Grace
Theo Eastwind Band
Cathy Grier
Gabriel Royal
Mr. Reed
Matthew Christian, back from Dakar, gave a presentation about BuskNY. Matthew outlined what we’ve done in the past year and our current projects, and announced our plans for the 2014 BuskNY T-shirt.
It turned out Matthew had left a cache of misprints of last year’s shirt in a drawer. We sold a few but gave most of them away to the performers.
Our design for this summer’s shirt. I’m planning on cleaning it up a bit and printing with four colors on dark colored shirts. I’m using a different technique of printing this time in which each layer will be hand-painted directly onto the screens without the need for photo emulsion or an exposure unit.
Following the success of last year’s Kickstarter campaign, we will be raising the money to make our new shirts free to all performers. We would like to include footage of a variety of buskers in our video, so if you would like to participate you can either send your own brief clips (webcam or phone video is fine) of yourself performing or speaking about busking and police harassment to milo@buskny.com, or contact us so that we can film you ourselves later in the month when we’re putting the video together.
The next Busker Ball is October 30th at 7:30 at Spike Hill!
Last Thursday was the 6th Busker Ball at Spike Hill, and BuskNY was there to give another report on the state of buskers’ rights in NYC.
Shiloh Levy gave a speech about the recent and planned further increases in enforcement of “quality of life crimes” (which results in increased enforcement of fictional laws as well.) Matthew asked me to check out Union Square a couple weeks ago and I went up and down every line; it was totally silent underground except for a single MUNY performer and a religious pamphlet table. Since then buskers have begun to return, but in smaller numbers, and I haven’t seen a churro vendor anywhere since.
In other news, last night I managed to make it down to open mic night at Goodbye Blue Monday for the first time since the place was saved from shutting down. In addition to coming out to the Busker Ball next time, I encourage everybody to check out GMB on a Tuesday night or whenever you can, and make sure the place doesn’t suddenly evaporate like Pearl Paint.
Theo Eastwind suggested we sell the leftover “Music is Legal!” t-shirts at the 5th Busker Ball last Thursday at Spike Hill so I went to set up a merchandise table and took a lot of blurry shots of the show. We even got one of our shirts pinned up to the curtain with Blueberry Season pins.
photo by Shiloh Levy
Robert Leslie
Supremo Massiv
Mount Moon
Theo Eastwind
Blueberry Season
Gabriel Royal
It was a great show! I encourage anybody who missed it to come to the next Busker Ball on April 24th– and ask Theo about getting involved if you want to perform.
Shiloh and Heth talking about BuskNY
Shiloh Levy gave a presentation about buskers’ rights explaining what BuskNY is all about, followed by Heth of Heth and Jed who discussed his recent legal victory. I gave the last ten or so shirts to Arthur and Shiloh to distribute, so now I have room for the 2014 shirts. We learned a lot about what people want in a shirt from the first run, so I’m planning on doing something a little more complicated, and with a more inclusive message. There may be another Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for materials and equipment. I’ll keep you updated!
This Wednesday I attended the fourth Busker Ball at Williamsburg bar Spike Hill, an event organized by Theo Eastwind that features performances by New York City buskers. Arthur Medrano and Shiloh Levy performed wearing their BuskNY “Music is Legal!” t-shirts.
Shiloh and Arthur
Ken Ruan went on second, and has also given me permission to use his photo here. Since I don’t have any training as a photographer, I considered myself pretty lucky to get some shots of everybody that weren’t totally blurry.
Ken Ruan
Great performances by everyone involved. Jess Goular at BreakThru Radio has written a more detailed article about the event,
We hope to see you at the next Busker Ball on January 23, 2014.
Milo and I just got back from Theo Eastwind’s 3rd Annual Busker Ball — and you should be sorry that you missed it! We stayed the full five hours with grins on our faces. If you want to hear one reason why, here’s a quick sample from Elijah Bridges, which I hope he won’t mind me posting. (A bit low-fi — but check that harmonica!)
For me, it was a bit of a tear-jerker too. These days I hear buskers in the subway every last day of my life, of course, but it’s different to have the evening to ourselves. For one thing, talent can do a lot more when it has hour-long sets to work with. (It also doesn’t hurt to have no trains coming through). I’m not saying that I forget how much artistry is in busking — but still, is it ever great to get a reminder of how high the high points can be. So thanks, Theo Eastwind, for making this happen!
One more thing. Just as we were taking off, we ran into Jesse Cohen, who played the third set. He asked if I had played the first set, since I was carrying my case. “No,” I said, “I was just out busking beforehand, that’s all. I play fiddle.” There was a pause — I could see the gears turning — and then, just about at the same moment, we realized that Jesse and I had shared a van the night we were both arrested in 2011.
I don’t want to retell that whole story here — soon, perhaps — but Jesse was already in the van when me and my fiddle were thrown in head-first that night. I was scared half to death at the time, and Jesse was the first bit of sanity I found and clung to. We were put in different cells on arrival and never swapped contact information, so we’ve been looking for each other for the last two years. And now, here we are. It’s a great big community, busking in NYC, but it seems smaller all the time.
The Kickstarter closed last night, and thanks to many wonderful friends, musicians, family members, and even unknown Kickstarter aficionados, we made it not just to 100 shirts, but to 135. We’ll be printing them this week and starting to distribute them just after that. Thanks so much, everyone!
On another note, we’d like to point out a concert date that’s not to be missed for those of you in NYC. Theo Eastwind, a long-term NYC busker and an outstanding musician, has organized the 3rd annual Busker Ball for this Wednesday at Spike Hill in Williamsburg. Theo will be performing himself, alongside a handful of the best new busking acts that he’s heard in the last few months. You can catch them all with a complementary ticket ($10 suggested donation). Doors open at 6:30 this Wednesday — and if you make it, find me there!
Shiloh and Heth talking about BuskNY
buskny.com 
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