BuskerBlog - by Ari Jewel - July, 2021

As I write, I’m thinking about “street culture,” and how I could define, or imagine, that phrase. For me, street culture is about the art and connection happening inside museums, music venues, and online, coming out to the sidewalks and the streets. It’s about community, and it’s about the comfort of leaving your house and still being at home. 

I’m realizing that, up until this point, nearly this entire blog post has boiled down to recognizing comfort. The comfort of hearing a familiar song, the comfort with which Lucky 4 perched on the street corner like they had been there forever, and the comfort of the streets becoming a center of community and home.  

But, before I wrap up, I want to talk about covers for a second longer. Beyond the joy of familiarity, covers can have an element of shock as well. Sometimes the best rendition of a familiar song is one which is altogether unfamiliar. For example, Aretha Franklin was a master of this skill. I’m thinking especially of her cover of “Eleanor Rigby,” in which she lyrically changes the entire plot (singing as Eleanor Rigby) and barely imitates The Beatles’ production. 

On Friday night, I stood for maybe an entire minute watching David Reed before recognizing the song he was performing. He played a three-string cigar box guitar with a slide on one finger, and tapped a tambourine with his left foot and a box drum pedal with his right. Reed’s talent is remarkable — I stood with Berkshire Busk! director Gene Carr as I watched, and when Reed began to play, Gene said to himself, “Oh my god!”  

Eventually we realized what song he was performing: Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.” On a slide guitar, playing in a style he calls “groove music,” Reed’s version of the song is so unlike Simon’s. It’s hard to imagine successfully messing with a song so well-loved and admired, but somehow Reed did it — even slipping into a brief chorus of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” midway through the song.  

The delight of watching Reed perform was different from hearing versions of “Moondance” and “Exactly Like You” earlier in the day. I wrote in my notes, “mostly I feel like I’m watching genius.” While the other covers I’d heard that day had felt like generous recognitions of the love we share for classic tunes, this performance felt miraculously new. For me, his performance rewrote the canon a bit — even if Paul Simon’s recording of his song will always be the same, I can never hear it the same way again. I will never hear it without this new possibility.  

I feel self-conscious of the fact that, each week, my post essentially comes to the same conclusion: this live music is changing me, and it is, for me, a direct link to joy. This week, I wanted to talk about covers and comfort and that intersection of new and old, but, still, the thesis has remained the same. There is a richness here. There is a huge euphoria. And even though I’m repeating myself, isn’t that repetition needed? Don’t we need every reminder we can get of this abundant and easy joy? 

  • Ari Jewell - 2021

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